Sparta Three Year Plan To Focus On Infrastructure

The city of Sparta is expecting its three-year development plan to be completed early next year.

Over the past year, Sparta has undertaken major water and sewer line projects and a new eight year paving plan. City Administrator Brad Hennessee said the three-year plan will continue these infrastructure upgrades for the highest priority areas.

“Once we develop and start implementation of the three year plan, then the five year plan will be developed shortly after,” Hennessee said. “And then the 10 year plan after that.”

Hennessee said the three- and five-year plans will be reevaluated yearly while the ten-year plan will serve more as a city wish list. For its five year plan, Sparta wants to focus on sidewalk upgrades to Bockman Way to tie the city together.

“The close proximity to the business district, the courthouse, city hall, the businesses around Bockman Way, we want to hit that pretty hard over the next few years,” Hennessee said. “The first thing we have to do on that is tie everything together, and once that is done, we will be able to expand past the downtown area.”

Sparta is on schedule to complete six miles worth of paving this year while a Community Development Block Grant and in house projects improved the water and sewer lines. Sparta has also applied for a Multimodal Access Grant to help facilitate the sidewalk upgrades.

Hennessee said long term planning is new to Sparta, but past and current leadership has put the city in a position to make improvements for many years to come.

“One of the things that I asked the board and the city departments to buy into was let’s go about our infrastructure improvements in a coordinated and prioritized way,” Hennessee said. “It is new to Sparta to do it that way.”