A $4 million contract has been awarded by the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) to resurface a heavily traveled section of Martha Berry Highway/U.S. Highway 27 in Rome.

North of that planned work, a $3.5 million bridge replacement effort on GA Highway 100 in Chattooga County alsowill be performed. The structure crosses Clarks Creek just south of Silver Hill Road.

The two contracts were among the 30 awarded statewide from the GDOT's May letting, totaling $102,133,925.

The Rome News-Tribune reported that Northwest Georgia Paving in Cartersville will do the work on Martha Berry Highway/U.S. 27, a federally funded project.

Plans call for the contractor to mill down and resurface just over 8 mi. of the highway between Turner McCall Boulevard in Rome and New Rosedale Road in Armuchee. The project was selected by the GDOT district maintenance office from roads with low ratings in the state's Pavement Condition Evaluation System (PACES).

Northwest Georgia Paving received its official notice to proceed on June 24 and is contracted to finish the Floyd County job by April 30, 2022.

The Clarks Creek bridge on GA 100 will be replaced by Rossville's Talley Construction Co., the Rome news source reported. A start date on that project has not been set but the work is scheduled to be completed by May 31, 2022. Once the contractor does begin its job at the site, a traffic control subcontractor will be on hand when construction begins to affect the roadway.

The largest single contract from the GDOT's most recent letting, worth approximately $32.2 million, went to E. R. Snell Contractor Inc., to widen and reconstruct 6.47 mi. of U.S. 1 in Jefferson County. The nearby Big Creek Bridge also will be replaced as part of this project.

Rome, Floyd County Explore Funding Options

According to the News-Tribune, Jefferson County is in one of the four regions in Georgia that have passed 10-year, one-cent sales tax packages under the GDOT's Transportation Investment Act (TIA).

As a result, those counties have a funding edge since 75 percent of the revenue goes toward helping GDOT offset the cost of their regional projects. Under the law, those projects are not subject to Congressional District Balancing, which requires state road money to be evenly distributed across the districts.

Regions that passed TIA also need only provide a 10 percent match for annual Local Maintenance Improvement Grants, instead of a 30 percent local match, the newspaper reported.

Floyd County, however, is not among the regions benefiting from TIA funds.

In 2011, Floyd was one of 15 counties in the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission district that developed a list of projects to fund through a Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or T-SPLOST. Set for a vote in 2012 and projected to raise more than $1.4 billion, the move would have increased the local sales tax to eight percent, which led to the vote failing in every county except Dade.

Since then, Rome and Floyd County leaders have tentatively raised the idea of a newer funding mechanism that allows a single-county T-SPLOST, although nothing concrete has emerged, the News-Tribune reported.

Three other Georgia regions — River Valley, Central Savannah River Area and the Heart of Georgia Altamaha — approved a T-SPLOST in 2012, followed by the Southern Georgia region in 2018.

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