Special Road District A, County Ask Port Authority For Funding Help With Road Work

No one, it seems, has money to spend on maintaining the New Bourbon Port Road.

Special Road District A chairman Paul Arnold and First District County Commissioner Randy Bahr attended the March 27 New Bourbon Regional Port Authority board meeting and brought invoices for work done on the flood-prone road.

The Port Authority had been anticipating the meeting with county and Special Road District A officials for months, but scheduling conflicts and confusion over where a couple of the meetings were taking place had prevented it from happening sooner.

“We were just wondering if there was any financial assistance available from you guys,” Arnold asked the board.

“We don’t have any money,” Port Authority board chair Ron Inman said. “Every bit of money we get from either the state or the feds is just for that problem [specified in the allocation]. We had some excess money that we did the rip-rap from, but it’s kind of a tough thing.”

He then suggested New Bourbon Port Road, which connects to Cottonwood Road, would have been needed for farmers to reach their crops in the Big Field even if the port hadn’t come into existence.

“You may all get mad at me, but if we hadn’t been there, you’d have had to have built that road, anyway, for the farmers,” Inman said, “or you wouldn’t still be in Ste. Gen. County. We’re not trying to get out of anything. I’m not trying to start an argument. There’s no money.”

“I’m not trying to make you guys mad,” Arnold answered, “but that’s the only reason why we built it. We did it for the farmers to get their crops in.”

See complete story in the April 3 edition.