ARKANSAS, USA — It’s expected that Arkansas will receive $3.9 billion over five years starting in 2022.
“Anyway, you cut it, great news for Arkansas. Fantastic news when it comes to strengthening our infrastructure, we all know that has been a hot button issue and here in Arkansas we are certainly happy to be finding out that these federal funds will be available,” Dave Parker said.
Approximately $278 million of these funds are for bridge replacement, rehabilitation and preservation. The $3.6 billion is the Federal-aid Highway Apportioned Programs which the Arkansas Department of Transportation spokesman Dave Parker says the funds will be later this week before they learn how these funds will be divided. He says the state of Arkansas will not be given a check from the federal government.
“We will decide on the projects, we spend the money and we, in essence, ask the federal government for reimbursement, provided we meet certain requirements to the program which we are good at,” he said.
Parker says our state will roughly get back 80% of what we spend on these projects. He says our state is in good shape as far as road funding thanks to voters approving making the half-cent sales tax permanent.
Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse says he’s hopeful these funds will make projects already on the books happen faster like the Springdale northern bypass or highway 612. He knows there are a lot of big projects out there and knows the state will put these funds to good use.
“I’m not sure how this money gets to local projects if it does, but we’ve always been good partners with ArDOT as a city and we’ll continue to look for ways to partner to help make connections that need to be made," said Sprouse.