When a road straddles the Crawfordsville and Montgomery County boundaries — like C.R. 150S — which crews are responsible for taking care of it?
A new agreement approved by the Board of Commissioners on Monday seeks to clear up the confusion by formally dividing up the maintenance of the county’s 15 shared roads between the two municipalities.
It works like this: On 150S, the county will handle the stretch running between State Road 47 and U.S. 231 South. The city then picks up the rest of the maintenance up to Ladoga Road.
“What that means is our snow plows aren’t running up and down the same road. We’re not having the variations in maintenance — one side’s been patched on potholes, one hasn’t, that sort of thing,” county attorney Dan Taylor told the commissioners.
The shared roads were created under the old annexation laws where the city annexed land from the center of the road. The annexed property stretched across the road to the edge of the right-of-way, bringing half of the road inside the city limits and leaving the other half under the county’s jurisdiction.
If city crews were filling potholes or clearing snow and saw that the county’s half of the road needed attention, they usually kept patching or plowing the rest of the way, Crawfordsville street commissioner Scott Hesler said. County highway crews did the same.
“The big question always came up when it was time to pave those roads as to who was actually responsible for handling those,” Hesler said.
County highway superintendent Jeremy Phillips said the agreement would “take away a lot of confusion” about the roads.
Each municipality will do the maintenance at their own expense and no money will change hands between the city and county, Taylor said.
In other business, the commissioners passed a resolution formally approving the build operate transfer agreement and other contracts with Envoy Construction Services for the courthouse annex project.
Envoy plans to acquire the former Williamsburg Health Care property for the project later this week, Taylor said. As part of the process, the company’s bank requested the commissioners re-affirm their support of the public-private partnership. The county council will be asked to approve a similar resolution.
“We’ll have a lot better meeting room soon,” commission president Jim Fulwider said of the annex.
The commissioners also:
• Held a moment silence for county council president Terry Hockersmith, who died last week after a battle with cancer. The auditor’s office will be closed from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Thursday for staff to attend Hockersmith’s funeral. Hockersmith was auditor Jennifer Andel’s father.
• Approved the 2021 county holiday schedule, adding Columbus Day as a paid day off for employees. The county and city governments will observe the same holidays.
The commissioners next meeting is set for 8 a.m. Aug. 24.
