Five concepts for the project, which will require land and rights-of-way acquisitions, will be presented at the meeting from 4 to 7 p.m. at Julian Smith Casino, 2200 Broad St.
A public meeting is scheduled today for the proposed widening of Berckmans Road and its realignment with Alexander Drive. The $20.3 million proposal is one of many local projects that await funding from the transportation tax.
Five concepts for the project, which will require land and rights-of-way acquisitions, will be presented at the meeting from 4 to 7 p.m. at Julian Smith Casino, 2200 Broad St.
That's a lot of money and to do what?
To put this in perspective, you could build an entire school for that amount of money.
That's okay, Insider. We all know that sales tax money is not real money. It's like Monopoly money. Nobody misses it when they pay it.
LL, amen to that.
I'm sure it is pure coincidence that this project is outside the gates of the Big Green Monster, also know as our dear Masters.
By the way, any guesses on how long it take from the announcement of this project until the National requests to close Berckmans Road?
Considering that the Masters typically injects $150 MILLION (source, gob.org) to the local economy, "dear" is exactly right. Whether or not this is necessary is the pertinent issue. But if we have grown so anti tax that we don't even want to pay for roads, then we've got a serious problem. Do we really want a for-profit network of toll roads everywhere?
That should be gpb.org, not gob. Darn autocorrect.
Hmmmm... Drop a mere $20 million to keep our Masters happy or put it toward fixing the deadliest stretch of road in all of Richmond County.
That's an easy one... People die all the time, but the Masters only rolls around once a year, so let's be sure to do all we can to keep the Big Green Monster well fed.
The Hwy 56/Mike Padgett plan is much further ahead of Berckman rd, and should break ground in 2013... Even the Wrightsboro rd widening(I-520 to Jimmie Dyess), and Windsor Spring rd(Tobacco rd to Hephzibah) will start before Berckman rd..
If the Berckmans Rd. re-routing and widening is contingent on passage of the T-SPLOST, then we can hope that the project never starts.
My guess is that the Berckmans Road project will progress just as fast as the Augusta National wants it to progress.
And as for "if we have grown so anti tax that we don't even want to pay for roads"...........EXCUSE ME but I do believe we ALREADY PAY lots of direct, dedicated taxes for road building and maintenance. Just because all of the money seems to get spent in the metro Atlanta area does not mean we need to roll over and voluntarily give them more of our hard earned money. You want me to pay more taxes for roads? First you prove to me that we are getting OUR FAIR SHARE of the taxes we are already paying for roads.
You are correct, dichotomy. The T-SPLOST is a new tax. They need to to spend existing taxes more efficiently and wisely before we think about giving them even more money to spend wastefully and foolishly.
I think the National should be required to chip in some major change to make this giant project happen - like half of it. Lord knows they have put up some real serious money to purchase the land that they want us to avoid.
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