Highland Township to Participate in Tri-Party Program for Road Improvements
The list of potential improvements includes Duck Lake Road, Harvey Lake Road and Hickory Ridge Road.
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The Highland Township Board of Trustees unanimously approved participation in the 2013 Tri-Party Program for road improvements during its meeting last week.
The annual Tri-Party Program involves one-third funding from Oakland County general government, one third from the Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC) and one third from the community. Projects are selected by the communities on RCOC roads with the approval of the Road Commission.
Each community is entitled to a share of the annual Tri-Party Program funding based on several factors. For cities and villages these factors include miles of county roads and the number of accidents on those roads. For townships, a third factor, population, is added.
This year, Highland Township's allotment is $58,728. The township will pay $19,576 of the amount.
"It's really a great program," Township Clerk Mary McDonell said. "We're getting three times the money at a third of the cost."
Supervisor Rick Hamill said that $58,000 is usually just a project manager's fee for a road improvement project, to give people an idea of the cost.
Potential projects include improving curves on Duck Lake Road, north of M-59, and on Harvey Lake Road, north of M-59; extending Duck Lake Road, north to White Lake Road and paving gravel section of Jackson Boulevard, east of Duck Lake Road to Eagle Road.
Projects must be submitted along with a board resolution by May 2013.
Which RCOC-maintained road would you like to see fixed? Tell us in the comments.
Erica Sikma
12:00 pm on Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Really? Duck Lake *and* Jackson will be paved!? I've lived in this area for 25+ years, and I cannot tell you how excited this makes me. Those two dirt stretches get so bad that we always have to go the long way around to get from our house on Ormond to the grandparents' houses on Duck Lake Rd.
Although, I thought that Duck Lake couldn't be paved the rest of the way to White Lake Rd because of the guy who owns the property? The one that used the blockade the road to stop traffic? I'm not complaining though :D
Laura Vogel
12:24 pm on Tuesday, March 19, 2013
If you've never traveled much outside of Michigan, you might be surprised to know that folks from elsewhere find our predominance of dirt roads to be puzzling. Even out in "farm country" in Iowa and Nebraska, the roads are all paved. Not just the "main" roads, all of the roads. Here, heck, even our "main" roads aren't always paved. Cooley Lake Road west of Bogie Lake is basically impassible. Duck Lake and White Lake Roads, similarly, were basically impassible half of the year.