City of Tiffin receives more than $1 million for road improvements

The City of Tiffin announced Tuesday that it has received $1,210,793 in federal funding through the Ohio Department of Transportation administered Small City Program and Toll Revenue Credit to reconstruct East Perry Street (SR 18) between Jefferson Street and just east of the intersection with Circular Street/Clinton Avenue, which are the limits of the former Greenfield Street Project.

The Small City Program will fund 80 percent and the Toll Revenue Credit will fund 15 percent, for a total of 95 percent of all construction and construction administration & inspection costs related to the project.

The total estimated project cost, including design, construction and administration and inspection, is $1,424,518.45, of which, the local share is estimated at $213,725.45.

Funds are to be available state fiscal year 2024 (July 2023), and the city engineer will begin design in 2021 with hopes to start construction in late summer 2023.

The project includes the complete reconstruction of the roadway base and pavement surface, curb improvements east of the Rock Creek Bridge that were not previously replaced as part of the of the recently federally funded Transportation Alternatives Program Project and installation of Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant sidewalk ramps, signs and striping.

The city says this project is important because the section of East Perry Street west of the Rock Creek Bridge was paved as recently as 2012, but has not been able to withstand the demand of the average 5,722 vehicles (including 5 percent truck traffic) that travel this roadway on a daily basis.

Many utility trenches also have compromised the original brick base and ODOT was fully supportive of the City of Tiffin Engineer’s stance that it would not be a fiscally responsible use of either local, state or federal tax dollars to resurface the roadway when data proves the pavement surface will not survive the Service Life-Life Expectancy standards of an asphalt roadway.

The Small Cities Program provides federal funds to small cities with populations ranging from 5,000 to 24,999 that are not located within a Metropolitan Planning Organizations’ boundaries.

This program may be used for any road, safety or signal project on the Federal-aid system. A funding limit of $2 million per project is set, and the program provided a total of $12,913,850 for 10 projects in the state.

“This project would not have been possible without the passage of the City of Tiffin’s additional 0.25 percent income tax Road & Bridge Levy. I cannot thank the citizens of the City of Tiffin and ODOT enough for their support and continued partnership in the investment in the city’s infrastructure. We have now successfully been able to leverage the local tax dollars with over $3.2 million in federal funding along with nearly an additional $350,000 in state funding since the passage of the levy 2 years ago,” City Engineer Matt Watson said. “As promised to the citizens of Tiffin we will continue to be proactive in leveraging our local funds with as many state and federal funding sources available and upon completion of the first five years implementing the levy, I believe we will have turned $6.0 million in local funds into over $10 million in local infrastructure investment.”

“A huge thank you goes out to City Engineer Matt Watson for his diligence in obtaining this funding for the City of Tiffin and stretching the tax dollars from the Road & Bridge Levy,” Tiffin Mayor Aaron Montz said. “This very needed road improvement would not have been possible without the citizens of Tiffin approving the levy and providing the matching funds needed to go after these grants. Thank you also to ODOT for continuing to support the City of Tiffin in our effort to provide quality infrastructure for our residents.”