Feb. 10—Representatives from across Wilson County gathered Tuesday at the Farm Bureau Expo Center in Lebanon to share updates on infrastructure.

The talk on infrastructure is one of three mayor’s sessions across Wilson County that’ll be held this year. Focus in the April session will be on utilities and broadband and a session in the fall will focus on planning and growth.

“What we’re trying to get across today is where we are and where we’re going,” Wilson County Mayor Randall Hutto said. “A lot of times people will talk out in the public and what I hear the most is ‘well you’re just not prepared infrastructure wise or you’re not doing anything.’ “

Recently completed county road projects included the State Route 141 project from Wilson County to Trousdale County, the I-40 project from Highway 109 to Interstate 840 and the Highway 109 project, which included 7.1 miles of roadway.

“Lebanon Road widening is in the works as you can see,” Hutto said. “That’s a $55 million cost. That’s going from Park Glenn (Drive) to Benders Ferry.”

The project will widen 0.7 miles of Lebanon Road to 4-5 lanes and is currently in the engineering phase.

“Golden Bear Gateway is another one that’s underway that we’ve talked about,” Hutto said. “The cost is $15 million and preliminary engineering is the phase on that.”

The widening of South Mt. Juliet Road is also underway, which will take it from two lanes to five with an estimated cost of $56.9 million. The Central Pike widening project has not started, but the preliminary engineering phase has is being requested. The widening of two to four lanes from Old Hickory Boulevard to Mt. Juliet Road requires $92.8 million in remaining funding.

“We are doing a road study to identify county roads (that the county needs) traffic-wise and accident-wise to make improvements,” Hutto said. “We work with a company called Collier to assess those roads and give us a chance to bring that to our county commission to start addressing those roads as needed.”

Hutto said that a multi-level court system will come before the Wilson County Commission for funding.

Lebanon Mayor Rick Bell told attendees that the city is expanding its infrastructure while taking care of the infrastructure it already has.

One example of this was the partnership with developers for the new Publix on Highway 109 last year.

“When developers came here to do that, obviously they needed to run sewer and water to their development and to that store, but we wanted more than that,” Bell said. “We worked with them to build a larger sewer system, a larger water system so that the area would grow more commercially, and we’d be preparing for the future.”

Infrastructure projects in Lebanon include grant projects for transportation system improvements, totaling in over $26 million.

“We had 15 new traffic signals completed or in construction,” Bell said. “Five new signals are in design and two existing signals are going to be rebuilt. Let me say this about traffic signals for a second. Whenever you see the traffic signal go up, it’s obviously for safety purposes.”

The city has 17 projects for new sidewalks or sidewalk replacements. There are also 24 road extension, road widening and turn lane projects in the city.

Two of the major projects for the city are the Hartsville Pike project and the I-40 widening.

“The Hartsville Pike project, TDOT’s been working on for a long time,” Bell said. “They expanded the middle and now they’re getting to our end of it. It’s going to totally reroute that road and it’s also going to really help with traffic congestion for that part of town.”

Watertown Mayor Mike Jennings said that issues in Watertown don’t deal as much with growth, but instead focus on maintenance. He identified areas where the city faces challenges, the first of which is maintaining the streets.

“We have between 11-12 miles of streets in Watertown,” Jennings said. “We paved them all in 1997 for $300,000. The estimate I got in December for Collier Engineering for us to pave all of them this year is $9,776,000. That didn’t include the public square, and it didn’t include the administrative costs, so we’re probably looking at $12 million.”

The second issue is water.

“We’re going to work on our water tank, do some refurbishing and put in some better equipment,” Jennings said.

A sewer project is in the works to deal with inflow and infiltration issues that Watertown faces with its sewer system.

“This project we just opened the bids on last Tuesday will move the sewer line up to dry ground,” Jennings said. “We think that will be a tremendous help. The low bid was $5,419,580.”

One of the things highlighted by Mt. Juliet representatives during the session was the new police headquarters coming to Mt. Juliet.

“If you’ve been to our police headquarters, you’ve probably seen some construction happening out front,” Mt. Juliet Public Information Officer Sami Kincaid said. “We’re really excited that is underway, and in about 16 to 20 months there will be a new police headquarters.”

Another project highlighted by Mt. Juliet Public Works Director Matt White was the Mt. Juliet Road bridge over I-40.

“About a year and a half or two years ago, we worked with TDOT on widening the bridge to create an additional northbound lane over the interstate,” White said. “This is making significant improvement of traffic flow in this area.”

The project also added bike lanes and sidewalks through the interchange area.

Recently, Wilson County invested $1.5 million to expand broadband internet access, which is powered by Middle Tennessee Electric and United Communications. Areas focused on are Tuckers Crossroads and out toward Trousdale Ferry. The expansion will be featured in the April session on utilities and broadband.