photo by: Gage Vota

A portion of Belmont County Road 56 in Maynard will be paved by Shelly & Sands inc.

Bids were officially opened for a major paving project in Belmont County.

The project will be the paving of seven roads in the county stretching 17.3 miles in total. The project is being funded with a U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration grant. Belmont County Engineer Terry Lively applied for the grant.

“Back in 2020 I applied for this grant through federal highways and it’s an 80/20 split up to a maximum of $2 million on the grant and we’re maxing out the grant,” Lively said. “Federal highways offers money for various funds for various projects through our county engineers association. If we are awarded it, then the money is administrated through ODOT District 11 up in New Philidelphia (which) makes sure we follow all of the proper procedures.”

The seven roads to be repaired are County Road 10 in Fairpoint and Maynard, County Road 10 in Crescent and Barton, County Road 24 in Boydsville, County Road 30 at Dixon Hill, County Road 56 in Maynard off Ohio 9, County Road 56 in Maynard off U.S. 250 to the Harrison County line and County Road 72 in Mount Hope. The estimated time frame for the major paving project includes a start date of late August and a completion date of Oct. 25.

Lively recommended that the Belmont County Board of Commissioners accept the bid of $2,884,438 by Shelly & Sands Inc. of Rayland.

“This is just another example of Belmont County’s effort to close the infrastructure gap and bring state and federal funding into the community.” Belmont County Commissioner J.P. Dutton said.

“This is mostly going to be an overlay project. There will be some grinding of the old asphalt off of existing bridges. We don’t want to build them up thicker than what they already are and add weight to the bridge,” Lively said.

He added that the vast majority of the project is asphalt and then striping on top of the new pavement. Although the main objective of the project is paving, there will also be some incidental work on the grinding of manhole adjustments.

“We’ve been preparing for this project for a while. We’re just wrapping up today a culvert replacement job,” Lively said last week. “We went out on all of these roads we’re going to pave and identified all the culverts underneath them that need to be replaced.”