Possible delay in improvements to Brown County GV

Anyone who travels Brown County highway GV south of highway 172 (including me) can tell you it is need of repair and expansion. Unfortunately, this may not happen in 2010. The Press Gazette reports:

A lengthy delay in widening Brown County GV has done little to clarify the future of a road improvement planned for many years in Bellevue and Ledgeview.

County officials have budgeted $2.3 million next year for the project — which includes a roundabout — to accommodate increasingly heavy traffic.

But the county has not decided whether to designate the road project as part of a long-discussed corridor leading to a new Fox River bridge in the county's southern sector. Adding to questions about the project, officials in Bellevue and Ledgeview do not unanimously favor starting work next year....

[Bellevue] Village Administrator Aaron Oppenheimer said he hopes the county will focus instead on the planned widening of Brown County EA, or Huron Road, another north-south road where Bellevue has seen growth.

While Oppenheimer agreed that GV needs repairs, he said EA is a higher priority because of the level of development there....

County Board members have approved a 2010 budget that includes $2.3 million for GV and $1.5 million for EA. Whether either project moves ahead, however, will depend on whether the county issues bonds to raise the money — a process that generally takes place in the spring.

Bellevue would be wise to hang on to Oppenheimer, he's obviously going to go to bat for them regardless of the facts. I doubt that any dispassionate observer could travel GV and Huron and then conclude that conclude that Huron was a higher priority.

I understand the uncertainty around the route related to a future southern bridge, but some level of improvement to GV cannot wait.