Knox City Council Approves Changes to Motor Vehicle Highway Fund

More state road funding will mean more paperwork for the City of Knox.

Clerk-Treasurer Jeff Houston told the city council Tuesday the Indiana General Assembly recently increased the amount of road funding that cities get, “But they wanted to make sure that any additional money was going to resurfacing, rebuilding, and maintaining the roads. And so there’s quite a few forms they want us to follow, and quite a bit of paperwork because they want to track every item that comes in and every expenditure that goes out, much more closely than what we had to before.”

To do that, the city council passed an ordinance creating a separate fund. In addition to the current motor vehicle highway fund, there will now be an allocated motor vehicle highway fund. “So when the money comes in, any money that’s in the regular distribution will be split in half, 50-percent allocated, 50-percent unallocated,” Houston explained. “Then in the allocated [fund], that can only be spent on the construction, reconstruction, or maintenance of the highways, and it has to be all tracked.”

Council members voted to suspend the rules and pass the ordinance on all readings Tuesday.