Town gets grant for Silver Beach Road

The longtime debate over when to pave Silver Beach Road is at least partly over.

The Belgium Town Board on Monday announced it had received a Town Road Improvement grant to pave its portion of the road.

The Town Board last December agreed to apply for the grant that could pay as much as 90% of the cost.

It turned out that the funding will only pay for 70% of the project, but the town was still happy it got the grant. It will receive $694,000 toward the project in 2023, leaving about $300,000 to pay.

“Just very exciting news,” Town Chairman Tom Winker said. “I’m pretty proud we got that through. You don’t find free money every day.”

Winker cited letters of support from the Village of Belgium, businesses and Mike Ansay, the original developer of the Belgium industrial park.

The village has discussed paving the road for decades, even considering annexing the town’s portion, since it leads into the village’s industrial park. Existing businesses have said they would expand and other businesses said they would come to Belgium if the road was paved.

The Belgium Area Chamber of Commerce  strongly encouraged the village to apply for a grant to do the work in 2020, but the town, which was applying for a grant for a different project, didn’t go along with the idea.

The Silver Beach Road Committee was formed and it determined, after months of study, that the village wasn’t in a financial position to pay for the project since it would approach its debt limit.

The town’s portion of the road to be paved is about one mile long, from Highway LL to the railroad tracks.

Work includes clear cutting trees, mowing and grading ditches, doing road base work and putting in new culverts. The 24-foot wide road will be paved with asphalt and have three-foot gravel shoulders.

The town wasn’t certain of the deadline to complete the project, but Winker, who chaired the grant committee two years ago and was a member this year, said projects from 2020 haven’t been completed and nobody has complained.

The village applied for a grant to pave its portion of the road. Public Works Director Dan Birenbaum said he has not heard if the grant was approved.

Roadwork in the village won’t be as extensive as in the town, according to Winker.

“Our road was a lot more deteriorated than theirs,” he said.