Matt Hamilton/Daily Citizen-NewsWhitfield County officials plan to use $3 million left in funds from the 2007 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax money to improve the sight lines on Hill Road, just southeast of Dalton. They there's significant pedestrian traffic along the road and the limited sight lines could be dangerous.

DALTON, Ga. — As local officials are pitching a six-year, $100 million Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) that residents will vote on in March 2019, plans are being made to spend the remaining $5.61 million of a previous SPLOST that ended almost eight years ago.

In 2007, Whitfield County voters approved a three-year transportation SPLOST that raised a little over $51 million before expiring at the end of 2010. Among the 30 projects it funded were the widening of Airport Road from Walnut Avenue to the south Bypass; the extension of Veterans Drive to Morris Street; the extension of Brooker Drive; moving the intersection of College Drive and Dug Gap Battle Road; and dozens of more minor improvements to streets and roads across Dalton and Whitfield County.

“When we were putting together the SPLOST, commissioners were originally thinking of a six-year SPLOST. We had six years worth of projects,” said county engineer Kent Benson. “When commissioners decided on a three-year SPLOST, we had to prioritize.”

But Benson said the way the SPLOST was written if there was enough money left over after the top 30 projects were finished, they could move on to the next-highest priority items.

“All but two of the projects came in under budget,” said Benson. “And those two projects were only about 2 percent over budget.”

The result is that the county has $5.61 million left from the SPLOST.

“We had to wait until all of the projects we had were finished, so that we knew exactly how much we had left before we could begin planning any further projects,” he said.

So why are local governments still working on projects funded by the 2007 SPLOST almost eight years after it ended?

One reason, officials say, is that they did not use any bonds, which meant they had to wait for the money to come in before they could start.

“And we did not have plans for these projects sitting on the shelf,” said Benson. “That means we had to do the planning and design and acquire the right-of-way before we could even begin construction.”

Benson said that they also wanted to phase the projects over time.

“You can’t put 30 projects out for bid at once,” he said. “There are only so many contractors out there to do this work.”

Dalton Assistant Public Works Director Andrew Parker agreed.

“Transportation projects are a little bit different,” he said. “The design of a lot of these projects can take a year. Then there’s a lot of permitting required that you don’t see on other types of projects. You’ve got to acquire the right-of-way. On the Fields Avenue/Veterans Drive project alone, there were over 70 parcels that we had to work with the owners to either acquire the property or get an easement.”

Whitfield County Board of Commissioners member Harold Brooker believes all of the projects have proceeded about as quickly as could be expected.

“If you built the interstate system today, it would take 50 years,” he said. “There’s so many agencies that have to sign off on these things now. The (U.S. Army) Corps of Engineers, the EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), the EPD (state Environmental Protection Division). They all have to review it, and that all takes time. All of these rules and red tape just slow things down to a crawl.”

Benson said the next project will be Hill Road from Airport Road to Eastbrook Drive.

“Hill Road is appropriately named. It has several hills that need to be corrected. They are sharp at the top, sharp at the bottom. Because it’s fairly straight, drivers tend to drive pretty fast even with the limited sight lines. But there’s a school at each end, and along the road, there’s a mix of residential and light industrial. So there’s a lot of pedestrian traffic,” Benson said.

That budget for that project is about $3 million.

“The remainder of the county’s portion will go to a project at Carbondale Road and Eber Road,” Benson said. “That’s part of a larger rail safety project. Norfolk Southern comes through there, and there’s some unsafe crossings. The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) is actually going to pay for construction of a new road on the west side of the railroad track, and the county is going to close some unsafe crossings on the east side of the railroad track. There’s $1 million in the budget for that. And there’s $800,000 for the GDOT project on the west side. The county has committed to buying the right of way for that project.”

Benson said the plans for those projects are currently being finalized and should be put out for bid in 2019.

In addition, there’s about $288,500 total left that has been targeted for safety and traffic signal improvements in the city of Dalton.

Some of the safety improvements planned include guardrail replacement on Thornton Avenue near Cedar Street, South Hamilton Street near Friendship House and North Chattanooga Avenue near Chenille Drive.

“We have about $120,000 remaining for safety,” Parker said. “Our goal is to have those projects done in the first quarter of 2019. They will likely exhaust the $120,000 we have left for safety.”

Parker says the $168,500 left for traffic signal improvement will be used at the intersection of Abutment Road and V.D. Parrott Jr. Parkway.

“We’ve got the material ordered for that, and it will also likely be completed in the first quarter of 2019,” he said. “We’ve had at least two pretty serious crashes there in the last 18 months or so, and we’ve had numerous complaints about that intersection. We did an analysis of that intersection and found that the traffic volume and other measures do meet national standards to install a traffic signal there.”