Sardis City awarded state grant to resurface multiple roads

Sardis City has been awarded a grant from the Alabama Department of Transportation that will allow the town to embark on a $500,000 paving project on several streets in the community, according to an announcement on Thursday from Gov. Kay Ivey.

All or portions of Patterson Street, Sardis Cutoff Road, Gaines Street and Son Johnson Road will be resurfaced through the project, to which the state will contribute $250,000.

According to Mayor Russell Amos, the plan is to improve the roads that serve as main arteries to U.S. Highway 431.

“Our focus has been to do the roads that everybody travels so that everyone benefits,” he said on Thursday.

While some portions of Patterson Street were repaved in recent years because of their condition, the project will allow the rest of the roadway to be resurfaced from the county line to Sardis Drive. Patterson Street becomes Roden Avenue once inside Marshall County before connecting to U.S. 431, and that road is included in the City of Boaz’s resurfacing plans for this year, according to the city’s website.

Sardis Cutoff Road also serves as a connection between Sardis Drive and the highway, and Gaines Street provides access to U.S. 431 from Church Street.

Son Johnson Road, which is in the eastern part of the town, will be resurfaced after the recent completion of a bridge replacement project, and the mayor said the road would be resurfaced from that new bridge to the intersection of Oak Drive.

The $250,000 that Sardis City will contribute was generated from a 1-cent sales tax increase in 2014, which Amos said was earmarked for road projects. He added that the city already was looking at projects it could use those funds for, but the awarding of the grant from the state will allow it to do more.

“We’re very thrilled and feel very fortunate and blessed to be awarded this grant,” he said.

The projects in Sardis City are among 31 projects selected across the state to receive funding totaling $7 million from ALDOT.

Those funds are available through the Annual Grant Program, a new program created under the Rebuild Alabama Act, an act passed in March 2019 that increased gasoline taxes across the state for the purpose of improving infrastructure. The act requires that ALDOT set aside $10 million each year for local road and bridge projects. The remaining $3 million of that funding will be awarded for more projects later in the year.

The newly announced resurfacing plans will coincide with the resurfacing of Sardis Drive from U.S. 431 to the DeKalb County line, which was included in Etowah County’s 2020 Transportation Plan and also will be funded in part by the gas tax increase.

Amos said he was thankful for Ivey’s oversight over the gas tax increases, as well as for Rep. Becky Nordgren, R-Gadsden, and Sen. Andrew Jones, R-Centre, who both supported the town’s application for the grant in Montgomery.

The mayor said that he was excited that Sardis City was awarded the grant and said they are hoping to have the new projects underway by summer.