may-2017

190-191 / 204

190 191
force we have about ten members; they come
from the school district, the police department,
the health department, the engineering depart-
ment; we have representation from Share the
Road; and we have two alderpersons that sit on
the committee, one of whom is also a county
commissioner. In the short year that we’ve been
around, we’ve been able to stripe between two
and three miles of roadway.”
Staff Engineer, Andrew Beyer, elaborates:
“We’ve prioritized our low and high value
streets; short-term and long-term goals,” he
states. “Short-term being a simple striping;
long-term being shared use paths or capital
outlay projects that we need to budget for.
This year, we’re going to be soliciting a grant
from our hospital foundation, the Greater Wa-
tertown Community Health Foundation, for a
shared-use path along Carriage Hill Drive that
connects West Main Street to our largest city
park, Brandt-Quirk Park. It would serve the high
school, Maranatha Baptist University, and sever-
al subdivisions, as well.”
“And we’re going to be looking to go back in
for that TAP grant,” says Holloway. “That will be-
come available again this coming October with
the grant due in January 2018. One entity can
submit multiple applications and we’re looking
at submitting at least three. Two would be to
expand some shared-use paths in and around
our city hospital and the neighborhoods around
there. Part of that project will also connect
some of those subdivisions with a new conve-
nience store/gas station, Kwik Trip. That area is
Watertown, Wisconsin
currently underserved by that type of business,
so now that it’s been built, everyone’s clamoring
to have ways to safely get there.”
“There’s another one that we’ll be putting in,”
adds Holloway. “The state came to town, maybe
15 years ago, and redid a highway through town.
The old highway was turned over to the city. Just to
the south end of that,we had a Wal-Mart that was
built and,where there are sidewalks and bicycle
lanes to the north of that street, there are no side-
walks or bicycle lanes directly to the Wal-Mart. So,
one of our grants would be to put a shared-use
path on that missing section, so that the college
and preparatory high school students, and resi-
dents can use that to safely get to the Wal-Mart.”
Watertown is also working to preserve the
cleanliness of its river. “We’re in the Rock River
Watershed,” says Holloway, “which is an ‘occlud-