NEW PARIS — Representatives for the Village of New Paris will be meeting with the Ohio Department of Transportation on Thursday, Dec. 14, to discuss beginning the Spring Street Bridge project.

Susan Laux with Mote & Associates attended the council meeting on Monday, Dec. 4, to provide an update on the work in the village and funding available.

“We’ve submitted the scope of work form to ODOT for the Spring St. Bridge project. We will be having a meeting next week on Thursday at 12:30 p.m. We will be meeting at the bridge. There will be four people from ODOT, I will be there, and the engineer will be there,” she said.

“We will talk about what is going on and come back here to talk about the scope of the project and what we want to do. We will work on some scheduling and then have a discussion about kicking off the design part of the project. It is still not scheduled to be completed for another year and a half, but their process is kind of a long one.”

She added, they made two submittals to the Dayton Development Coalition with regard to the Capital Bill submission request, through Representative Jeff Rezabek.

The first submittal was for a splash pad development and demolition of the school building at the park.

“We put together information about New Paris, what happened at the park, and that type of thing. That is in their website, you can go online and look and see all the submitted projects,” she said.

The second submittal is under the Economic Development tab and is regarding water and sewer utility extension to U.S. 40.

Laux explained, “I know we have talked about that for years and this is just a way to get it out there and get some people looking at it. There is no guarantees there, but it is a way to move the project forward and get some notice. It is the same process to submit, but instead of being a quality of life thing, it is economic development.

“At this point I think the next thing we need to do is reach out to Senator Bill Beagle and let him know they are in there. We should also reach out to Representative Rezabek. This will probably be decided by May. All of the information was to be in by January.”