Keep Building

I'll be visiting here today to talk about potential progress on the proposed Cherry Valley Interchange in Newark and Granville.

My message is to keep building.

We were quite distraught in early 2009 when the Stimulus (aka ARRA) was announced with over a billion dollars worth of projects and $30 million couldn't be found for the project to be a design-build interchange.

Two days later the second-largest project, it was found, would not be completed in time to consume the entire $150 million in stimulus dollars set aside.  The news likely freed up over $30 million, but still no interchange.

Then, not long after, the largest project, in Cleveland, got scaled back from $200 million to $85 million.  My math shows enough funding freed up to pay for three or four Cherry Valley-like projects.  Still, no interchange.

Numerous other projects came in under budget.  Other projects fell off.  Still, no interchange.

Something tells me we'll hear there's no money to build it at least one or two times today. 

Yeah, right.  This project should still be done as a stimulus project.