Story by Cary Griffin, Forney Messenger

Precinct 2 Kaufman County Commissioner Ray Clark and Forney City Manager Brian Brooks attended a meeting with TxDOT and NCTCOG officials at the TxDOT offices in Arlington June 10 regarding the funding of county road and bridge projects with $20 million that has recently become available through RTC.

Other officials present for the meeting included State Rep. Betty Brown; two representatives from the office of State Sen. Bob Deuell; Kaufman City Manager Curtis Snow; and several representatives from the city of Terrell.

“Basically, I went over the same things I went over at the last Commissioners Court meeting,” Clark said.

Earlier this month, Commissioners voted to allocate $10 million of the available funding to the City of Forney to fund the Forney Parkway bridge project. However, Clark cautioned that there are “a few more steps” that have to be taken before the city can actually get the money. One of the requirements is to put up a match of 20 per cent of the total funding.

“(Forney) will have to put up $2 million,” Clark said. But he added that the city has already committed that amount.

Clark said one of the main purposes of the June 10 meeting was to locate additional funding for Terrell’s Highway 34 project.

The next step in the general process will be to form a countywide planning committee to set short-range priorities and future priorities for the county. Clark said he will be forming the committee within the next four to six weeks.

“I had a conversation with TxDOT about how to select the membership of the committee,” Clark related.

Any projects that are done in Kaufman County using the RTC funding will have to meet certain technical criteria, Clark said. Criteria include, but aren’t limited to: population growth, the results of traffic studies, and economic development.

This story and any accompanying photo(s) were originally published in the Forney Messenger and are Copyright © 2009, Forney Messenger, Inc. and have been used by permission. The Forney Messenger is the publisher of Kaufman County’s oldest newspaper and may be found online at www.ForneyMessengerInc.com

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