Support sought from Donnelly
Editor's Note: The following letter

to Congressman Joe Donnelly was

penned by Carroll County Commissioner

George Mears on behalf of the

commissioners. It was dated Jan. 30,

2008. Mears read the letter at the

Monday night commissioners' meeting.

"Re: Federal funding appropriation for new CR75 from intersection of SR75 and SR218 in Camden, IN to new intersection with Hoosier Heartland Highway (SR25) in Carroll County, IN.

"As you know, the new Hoosier Heartland Highway (SR25) project will be built through Carroll County starting in 2009. This project, when completed in 2012, will provide a four-lane truck-ready highway through the center of north central Indiana from Lafayette to Ft. Wayne and finally to the Lake Erie port of Toledo, Ohio.

"This tremendous project will for the first time ever, provide Carroll County with direct high speed, high level of service access to the Interstate highway system at I-65 in Lafayette, the US31 freeway highway at Peru, and the I-69 highway at Ft. Wayne.

"We write to your office today to request your assistance in helping our County and our communities improve our opportunity to secure better access to this economic corridor so that we are able to better help ourselves to further develop our economic situation. Our community has completed several research efforts to determine how we can attract industry and jobs to provide us with the resources to support improvements for our whole community; better schools, better healthcare and better public services. That research identified a common obstacle to industry and job development in our county: lack of direct interstate highway access. Without it, we will always be severely challenged in the competition for industry and jobs with communities that have highway access.

"The Hoosier Heartland Highway will provide us the opportunity to compete, and a new CR75 extension from Camden to the Hoosier Heartland Highway project will allow us to compete successfully.

"With this letter, we are forwarding a map of the project site and testimony showing the strength of our communities support for this new road to access the Hoosier Heartland Highway.

"There currently exists an opportunity to coordinate with the design of the Hoosier Heartland to relocate a planned overpass bridge to the proposed extension location. This coordination with INDOT would save a significant amount of money for the extension project while not impacting the overall cost of the Hoosier Heartland project - a win-win situation for the county and the state. However, this window of opportunity is narrow. The design of the Hoosier Heartland will be set in stone by year's end; because of this, we need to prove to the state our ability to fund, at least partially, the extension before the end of 2008.

"We are preparing a formal application with all of the appropriate project information that we will forward to your office in the next few weeks.

"We look forward to sending you the additional project information and discussing the merits of this improvement with your office."