News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Putnam County began the process Thursday of setting new priorities for roads and highways.
Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter reconvened the Putnam County Transportation Committee for the first time since 2018. The committee reviewed a list of project priorities within the county and the four municipalities. Porter said it was time to update the list of projects.
“Of course, seven years and I’m sure some things have changed,” Porter said. “And I would like for us to come back together for one or two meetings depending on what it takes for us to update the spreadsheet and come up with a new list of our top ten projects.”
Porter said once a new list is formed he would like to meet with T-DOT and propose the new list to hopefully put the projects on T-DOT’s radar. Cookeville Community Development Director Jon Ward said the last time the committee formed a list of projects and presented it to T-DOT it helped get the top projects to be either completed or secured funding for.
“I think our efforts pay off because I mean to get that many things off the top ten list in a few years that’s a pretty decent accomplishment I would say,” Ward said.
Ward said the committee is basically acting as a T-DOT Metropolitan Planning Organization. Ward said unfortunately since the county does not meet the requirements of having 50,000 or greater population they do not get the benefits that such an organization would receive.
“You know everybody that would’ve been involved with that which would have been Putnam County, Algood, Monterey, Baxter, and Cookeville would have all got together and you know you would have had a transportation plan and we would’ve had funding to do those projects but we were 989 people short of that number,” Ward said.
UCDD Deputy Director Tommy Lee said from what he has heard that T-DOT will likely release its updated ten-year plan sometime in April. Porter said if the plan comes out before the committee completes the list they can readjust and meet with TDOT about the projects that are not in the ten-year plan.
One of the items announced last year by T-DOT had been a priority for the Committee in 2018, the widening of I-40 between Cookeville and Monterey. State officials have not announced more specific plans for that project, but it was funded last year.
