Harrisburg releases Q2 report and presses ahead with $20M-plus transportation slate, recommends Highway 49 fix

Harrisburg — Town Manager Rob Donham presented the council with a 34-page Q2 report on municipal performance and a slate of transportation projects the town hopes to advance with state and federal grant funds.

Donham told the council the quarterly report, which will be published on the town website, is intended to provide ongoing trend analysis rather than only annual budget checks. “This really helps us meet our goals of communicating our successes,” he said, adding that staff had already completed seven of 11 strategic objectives adopted three years earlier.

The report bundles operational metrics — customer-service response times, service-call volumes and benchmarking results — with project updates. Finance Director Brian Lee said the general fund had collected about 77% of anticipated revenue and most departmental expenditures were on track.

Transportation staff then outlined finished, in-construction and design-phase projects and a set of corridor options to address heavy congestion at the Roberts/Highway 49 intersection. The town has four federal grant projects in design with an estimated total project cost of roughly $20 million and a town match of about $4 million.

Traffic-modeling work presented by staff showed three alternatives for Roberts/Highway 49: adding turn lanes (design ~$1 million; construction just under $7 million), creating a quadrant road to bypass the intersection (design about $1.1 million; construction roughly $8 million) and adding through lanes on Highway 49 (similar costs). Staff recommended Alternative 2 — the quadrant road — for near-term design funding in FY27 and possible construction in FY28.

Devin Houston and Jonathan Young, transportation staff, emphasized the scale of the problem and the tradeoffs. “If you apply all three alternatives,” Young said of a combined plan, “you start to see your major improvements here,” shifting the intersection from poor future levels of service to a more manageable grade.

Council members and staff stressed the town’s role in producing shovel-ready designs to leverage DOT or federal funds; the mayor reminded residents that the March 5 public meeting will focus on Highway 49 phase two design and provide an opportunity to view the proposals.

What happens next: staff will present budget requests and a design scope for FY27 and continue public outreach; the Highway 49 public meeting is scheduled for March 5 and the town’s next budget workshop is February 18.