GREENFIELD — About every ten years city's make a thoroughfare plan. It's a transportation plan engineers write up so they can support the community's future needs as it grows.
But in Hancock County, some residents have a big concern when it comes to what the city has proposed. The plan calls for a thoroughfare running right through their neighborhood.
"We love living here. We can sit on our back decks, we can see Brandywine Creek flow through our backyards," said Sandy Miller. She's lived in the Walnut Ridge neighborhood for 27 years.
Now, she and her neighbors are concerned about a proposed road extension on the city's 2020 thoroughfare plan.
The 84th item on the plan is calling for the potential of extending McClarnon Drive, which would mean a four-lane road would run through their neighborhood and then over Brandywine Creek.
"This house, that house, and that house would be completely cut out from the neighborhood, and the beautiful neighborhood that we've built over the last 30 years is, we think, essentially destroyed. And we completely object to that," said Miller.
But this isn't the first time these neighbors have fought this fight; this road extension was on the last thoroughfare plan.
"Twelve years ago, 2008, many of us here were part of that met with the planning commission we met with the city council, and after due consideration for all of the same issues that going to talk about today they took it out of the plan honestly we thought it was out of the plan forever so we were quite surprised last month to learn that we were going to fight this fight again," said Miller.
"It's a viable project, we think it's needed, so we put it back on," said Jason Koch, Greenfield City Engineer.
He said there are more than 160 items on the plan and no immediate plans to put this road in.
"There is no funding for this at this point there's no studies that have been done for the environmental impacts really it's just a line on a paper right now," said Koch.
But Miller said they think there are other, better, options and they want to see this extension off the plan for good.
"For whatever benefit the city might get from that, the cost is simply too high not just in terms of money but in terms of safety in terms of our neighborhood in terms of drainage and flooding," said Miller.
Koch said they only really have the budget for the first 20 items on the plan over the next ten years, but the residents don't want to see it on the project at all.
The city council will vote on this plan next month.
