LaGRANGE – Everywhere you turn right now there seems to be fresh asphalt on roads in Troup County, and it’s all thanks to a series of Georgia Department of Transportation projects.

Local officials are always fans of state funded infrastructure improvements within the county, and they are quick to give the credit for the massive paving project to the state.

“Troup County Road Department has not done any paving this year, so all of the paving that you are seeing is state highway under contract,” County Engineer James Emery said. “There are multiple state highway projects that are underway right now – all of them with the same contractor that won the bid on those, C.W. Matthews (Contracting Company) – and so there is a lot of paving work going on right now, but none of that is Troup County Road Department paving.”

Most of the paving projects have taken place in high traffic areas, so officials were thankful for the measures that GDOT has taken to minimize the disruption caused by the paving projects.

“I’ve been very appreciative that they’ve been doing a lot of this paving at night instead of during the day,” Commissioner Morris Jones said. “It surprises me when I’m coming in from (Highway) 27 coming in or (State Route) 109 west coming in. There is still a lot of traffic out there at night.”

The night paving is a GDOT requirement due to the heavy traffic in some of the areas being paved.

“GDOT did not want to allow big traffic disruptions right in the middle of our rush hour and peak traffic hours,” Emery said.

The road projects currently underway within the county have different mandatory completion dates. Sections of State Route 109, which includes LaFayette Parkway, are expected to be completed by the end of June. State Route 1, which includes New Franklin is expected to be completed by the end of July.  Another GDOT project on Vernon Road had a completion date listed for the end of May but had high traffic areas complete in April and is finished now.

The construction on State Route 1 has an estimated cost of $2,950,745, and the construction on State Route 109 is estimated to cost $4,585,767.

The Troup County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to meet again Tuesday at 9 a.m. for its regular meeting. An additional meeting will be held at 6 p.m. that same day for public comment on the millage rate, which is expected to remain at the same level going into the next fiscal year.