Brian Meyer - Comments

Any need for the Mid-States Corridor is negated by community impact. These impacts include the enormous cost per mile where the funds are needed to maintain or improve existing roads. I feel budgeted funds are not being utilized effectively such as with new bridge construction not including passing lanes. The bridges are not being built wide enough. Additional property tax will be required to pay for maintenance of existing highways which will be turned over to cities and counties for maintenance. Due to the increased cost of road maintenance, the cities and counties will then increase the already inflated property taxes. We have been personally affected by these inflated property taxes and have great difficulty paying for the existing taxes and are having to appeal Additionally we are considering selling property because we can't afford more taxes. The need for building a new highway has changed since the inception 15 years ago. Several large corporations have pushed for this road to be built. Local governments originally were in favor, but since finding out the need for local governments to pay for maitenance of the existing roads, the local governments are not longer pushing for the new highway to be built. The massive cost of road construction of the new highway will benefit the big business who are pushing strongly for the new road. The cost vs benefits for the citizens is very little. The Mid States corridor running close to our home will make it difficult to sell. When the road goes through the county road will dead end which will limit the ingress and egress. This is a great problem when our county roads flood, which they do nearly every spring and with limited roads we will be trapped with no way in or out. In consideration of previous upgrades and new truck traffic routes were withdrawn from possible consideration by state and local authorities as it would required dislocating too many families, but this was unsubstantiated with lack of data. The past engineering studies did not consider road improvement only a new road. As one who travels from Jasper, IN to Indianapolis and back nearly weekly, the new road is not needed. The current road is good. There maybe some improvements that could be made, but a Whole new expensive road is not needed. The new road would take much needed farm ground and we need to keep our farm ground to grow food. Roads of this type of construction have isolated communities which leads to economic decline of those communities. Public input for the road construction has fallen on deaf ears. The vast majority of the people are against this construction and it is still being driven forward by big business.