Trempealeau township gets transportation grant
The town of Trempealeau was among 84 towns in the state to receive grant awards from the Multimodal Local Supplement (MLS), which is a one-time $75 million funding program for local transportation projects, announced by Gov. Tony Evers last week.
The town of Trempealeau received $275,967.93, which will go toward repairing the Sonsalla bridge, which runs over Tamarack Creek on Sonsalla Road. The bridge was built in 1954 and received a “poor rating” when it was inspected in 2017, according to bridgereports.com.
Statewide, 84 towns, 34 cities and villages, and 34 counties will receive funding from the program.
“No matter where you go in Wisconsin, folks can all agree that we need to fix our crumbling roads. These newly funded projects are going to impact folks all across our state, improving safety, connectivity, and economic growth in each community,” said Gov. Evers. “I am proud of the work we did through the budget to get this done as communities from the town of Port Wing to the village of Cassville, to Kenosha County will see these benefits.”
Over 1,600 applications were received, largely for road projects. Local government officials attributed the large number of applications both to the need and to the streamlined application design of the MLS program.
In January and February, three separate committees comprised of local representatives from counties, cities, villages and towns met to review the applications. While the program allowed up to 90 percent state funding to any project, the committee chose to increase the local match in order to spread the funds as widely as possible. As a result, 152 projects were funded in nearly all of Wisconsin’s 72 counties.
Work is expected to start shortly on these selected projects. A map of approved projects is available here and a full list of the projects selected is available on the WisDOT website
The governor’s biennial budget invested more than $465 million in new funding for highways, local roads, and transit aids, including $320 million to go directly to state highway rehabilitation. Additionally, the governor’s budget provided a 10 percent increase in generation transportation aids, paratransit aid, and tribal elderly transportation aid, while also providing an inflationary bump to mass transit aids for the first time in years. This was all accomplished while keeping bonding at the lowest level in 20 years.
