The Boone County Commission approved guidelines for a rural pavement program yesterday. Gravel roads driven by more than 200 cars a day will undergo construction over the next six to eight years.
The $14.7 million budget drafted for fiscal year 2025 is expected to cover costs for a 32-mile span of gravel roads in the county.
Presiding Commissioner Kip Kendrick said this is the first time in 30 years that the county has focused heavily on paving gravel roads.
“Over the last decade, the focus has really been on improving the safety and longevity of bridges across the county,” Kendrick said.
In addition to average daily traffic, the county is also considering factors such as road width, utility conflicts and culvert replacements in assigning priority. These factors were taken into consideration this fall when the County piloted the program by paving Calvin Drive and Cedar Tree Lane.
The county has developed a tentative list of roads that could be paved in the next couple of years. Currently, the plan for 2025 includes roughly 4 miles of pavement spread across four different roads.
Jeff McCann is the Chief Engineer for County Resource Management. He says these roads will be grouped and bid to a contractor who will get a mid-October to early-November deadline.
“We set our projects up to where they have a window of time they can start in, then we restrict the number of working days that they have to complete it once they start,” McCann said.
The County Road and Bridge Department is also allocating $2.9 million to another pavement project. The pavement plan for Bonne Femme Church Road is tentatively set to take place in 2026. It will stretch over 2 and a half miles and take around two years to complete.
