RUMOR brought to Jimmy's Camp:
The city doesn’t complete road projects
Jimmy's Fact to Trade:
This rumor is true if you add the word quickly; The city can’t always complete road projects quickly. Overall, this rumor is false, road/ street projects are not tasks that can be completed with ease. There is a very grueling process to complete in order to even start a roadway project. Once a roadway project is created, multiple departments must collaborate to answer a mountain of questions: Is it a city owned road? Do any other entities have ownership or property attached to project area? Does the city have the budget to fund the entire project, if not, how do we get access to funding? Once we get the funding, can we handle the project ourselves or do we need to contract it out? When can we start, how long will it take? And that’s just a few blocks from the Jenga stack of questions. The good news is that the City of Fountain collaborates extremely well and continues pushing to finish projects that the Taxpayers have approved no matter the time lapsed.
The city is excited to announce that they are in the final stages of completing the Indiana Rd project that was envisioned nineteen years ago! The story of this project starts in 2005; the City of Fountain began coordinating with Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway on an alternate railroad (RR) crossing at Indiana Rd, so that the Illinois Rd crossing next to Aragon Elementary School could be closed and act as a dedicated roadway, for improved access to the southern areas of the city. The Indiana Rd improvement was initiated by the Moving Fountain Forward (MFF) initiative that was approved by Taxpayers in 2009. The project was hindered by ballot language that stated money for projects had to be saved up prior to the project being built. So, the city started on its path to start saving (MFF) funding while also applying for grant funding that could help. In 2015, the City Engineer was able to procure a $850K grant, but that still wasn’t enough, as prices increased over the years. The estimated price in 2009 was between $750K-$1.5M, and that was no longer accurate. After the Great Recession, years of Colorado population growth, and the COVID-19 Pandemic, the estimated completion cost continued to sharply rise. However, between 2020-2022, the City Engineer procured multiple grants totaling $3.5 M to assist with funding, and finally enough money had been secured to start the project! Construction began on Indiana Rd in 2023 and will be completed in the summer of 2024. The final costs will be approximately $5 million to complete the work. After almost 20 years, the project is almost complete, and the City of Fountain can’t wait to share its opening with the community!