Committee approves engineering contract and MFT resolution for Shirley Road reconstruction

McLean County’s Land Use and Transportation Committee on a May 2025 meeting approved an engineering services agreement with Thavanaught, Wade & Merkin, Inc., and passed a Motor Fuel Tax (MFT) resolution to fund design and preliminary right-of-way work for the Shirley Road reconstruction project.

The action covers design work for about a 3-mile stretch of Shirley Road between Route 51 and Interstate 55 and targets reconstruction of the oil-and-chip sections; one mile on the project’s east side already exists as hot-mix pavement. County Highway Department staff described a plan to use TWM for engineering, perform some drainage and earthwork with in-house day labor, then pursue a state letting for construction to leverage federal urban (MPO) funds.

Jerry Sokes of the McLean County Highway Department said the project is within the county’s MPO (Bloomington–Normal) area and that “we were gonna use some of the, so the urbanized area gets, gets, 2 and a half million dollars per year. And so we were gonna use, some of this money…for the construction of this project.” The county intends an approximately 80/20 split between federal MPO funds (80 percent) and local matching funds (20 percent), with the 20 percent to come from matching funds or Motor Fuel Tax funds.

Committee members asked whether federal funds would cover right-of-way purchases; Sokes said acquiring right-of-way with federal funds has “a lot of requirements” and that the county would likely use Motor Fuel Tax funds for those purchases. The committee approved the engineering agreement (motion by Member Loeffler, second by Member Duffy) and the MFT resolution for $500,000 (motion by Member Duffy, second by Member Fagan); both votes were recorded as unanimous.

The highway department estimated 6–12 months for design and described the overall schedule as a multi-year effort to allow design, right-of-way, and a state letting before construction. No construction contract was awarded at the meeting; the approvals were limited to design contracting and the MFT resolution to enable payment for engineering and related preliminary costs.

The committee packet included references to coordination with IDOT and the county’s five-year plan; staff emphasized the use of in-house crews for culvert and drainage work to lower costs and preserve grant/contract dollars for construction.

The committee did not set final construction dates but indicated design would start promptly and the project would be sequenced to allow a state letting once plans and right-of-way are in place.