Commissioners vote to back TAP grant application

Mark Bellon, Vice President of Territorial Landworks Inc., was on hand at the Aug. 23 meeting of the Mineral County Commissioners to request the commission’s support for pursuing Transportation Alternative Program funds for Highway 135 in St. Regis.

TAP is a new program from the Montana Department of Transportation that was created to provide funding for a variety of alternative transportation projects including safe routes to school and transportation enhancements.

“Basically it’s a highway beautification project,” Bellon said of the efforts his company has made in partnership with the St. Regis Resort Board.

“But this particular (grant) application is for the highway bike and pedestrian safety project.”

According to Bellon, the “best” way to describe the project application is that the MDT will distribute $4 million to counties in need of making highway improvements that meet certain criteria. A focus of the grant distribution will be on making improvements that will increase pedestrian safety.

“St. Regis is in a really good position right now to apply for this,” Bellon said. “They have done a visioning study and identified needs for various pedestrian facilities and we have identified some pretty major public health and safety issues with the Highway 135 corridor. It fits very nicely with the requirements for TAP funding.”

One of the requirements for the grant application process is to have a “local entity” nominate the project area as well as sponsor it.

“Typically the local entity is the county,” Bellon said. “There’s also a 13 percent contribution but in this case since it’s a TAP grant there will be no contributions (required for the county). So there is really no allocation of resources or funding on the county’s behalf. The only real resources we will utilize, is I want to coordinate with Tim Read pretty extensively so that we have a design approval process ran through him and the community.”

Bellon said the application will request funds ranging from $450,000 to $500,000 and said that the primary focus of the improvements is providing a safe place for residents to cross the highway.

Further discussion and recommendations on focal points of the project were given and Bellon said he would be preparing several more presentations as the project progresses.

Commissioner Laurie Johnston made a motion to nominate and sponsor Highway 135 in St. Regis for Tap. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Duane Simons and passed unanimously.