Cities and towns don’t have to pass a new tax to get state funds for their roads and bridges, a key state lawmaker said Thursday.
State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, who led the effort in this year’s legislature to get more money for local roads, explained some of the funding requirements to city and town officials at a Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission meeting in Portage.
Portage has adopted a $25 “wheel tax” on every car in town, starting next year, and other Northwest Indiana communities are considering that tax because they could use the revenue to obtain money from the state.
The wheel tax has to be passed before July 1 for the community to start getting the money next January.
But that’s not the only option, Soliday said. A city or town can use one of three other sources – its share of county-adopted local income tax revenue, a one-time income tax refund it’ll get this year from the state, or a local “rainy day” savings fund – to obtain a state roads grant.
Hobart, for instance, plans to use income tax refund to seek the state roads grant, Mayor Brian Snedecor said after the NIRPC meeting.
Soliday said communities won’t be penalized for not passing a new tax.
“We have no interest, contrary to what you may have heard, in trying to force you into adopting a wheel tax,” he said.
And, he added, each municipality will get its state money as soon as the grant is approved – not as a reimbursement for money already spent, as with some other grants. He said the application process will be simple so communities don’t have to hire consultants for it.
“All of us want this project to work,” Soliday said. “It’s a tool for you to use.”
LaPorte Mayor Blair Milo said her city has $17 million in road needs, hopes to get $2 million to address them, and plans to “fully leverage” its new funding options.
Soliday said the legislature made $186 million available for the local matching program this year and will have $100 million for the program in coming years.
He said the Indiana Department of Transportation, which will issue the money, will begin asking for projects in June.
The INDOT district based in LaPorte will host information sessions on local road funding on May 31.
Also at Thursday’s NIRPC meeting:
*The commission approved INDOT’s project to add one lane in each direction to Interstate 65 between Indiana 2 in Lowell to Indiana 10 in Jasper County. Three years ago, NIRPC approved a plan to widen I-65 between U.S. 30 and Indiana 2 as part of the now-stalled Illiana toll road project.
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Geof Benson, a Beverly Shores Town Council member, said NIRPC’s long-range plan, updated last year, emphasizes transportation development in the northern, heavily populated parts of Northwest Indiana. The I-65 project in southern Lake County “seems to fly in the face of” that plan, he said.
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr agreed. Seven of the 29 NIRPC members at the meeting voted against the final motion on the project; six previous motions related to the project had passed unanimously earlier in the meeting.
NIRPC’s approval is one stage in the process of getting federal funding for the widening work, which INDOT expects to start next year. When the project is completed, I-65 will have three lanes in each direction between the Borman Expressway (Interstates 80 and 94) and Indiana 10.
NIRPC staffers said their analysis showed that the project would relieve future congestion and wouldn’t hurt minority and low-income communities in northern Lake County.
*David Wright, the Gary Public Transportation Corp. planning and marketing director, told NIRPC that water standing on 4th and 5th avenues in downtown Gary long after rainstorms has hindered bus service and sometimes made people walk through deep puddles to reach buses. The water problem has been worse, he said, since INDOT contractors repaved 4th and 5th avenues a few years ago.
“We want to find out what the exact nature of the problem is, who’s responsible, and who can fix it,” he said.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.