Shelby County Highway Engineer Alan Spesard is certainly on a roll. For the second month in a row Spesard has hustled area politicians into courtroom B of the courthouse to announce huge road grants for the county.

In September, State Senator Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon) and State Representative Robert :”Bob” Flider (D-Mt. Zion) attended the county board meeting to announce a $450,000 road grant.

Then on Thursday, October 22, State Senator Dale Righter (R-Mattoon) and State Representative Roger Eddy (R-Hutsonville) stopped in Shelbyville to announce a $470,000 grant.

“You know someone is a tremendous advocate on your behalf and has obtained that reputation when my district aid or my Springfield aid says it is Alan on the phone, and I have more than one Alan in my district but there is only one Alan in my district that calls me as much as this one,” said Righter. “But that is great, that is what you have to have these days.”

Now the fruits of Spesard’s tenacity and labor are paying off. These two major grants have meant that over $900,000 has flowed into the county highway department within a month and these grants are one hundred percent, or in other words there is no matching requirement.

Spesard said this grant will be used on the Stewardson county highway which goes between Stewardson and Cowden.

“We will redo the intersection at Illinois Route 32 where the Stewardson county highway intersects Highway 32 because that intersection gets rudded up a lot,” said Spesard. Then we will improve the base of that road for approximately four miles.”

Spesard went on to say two businesses, Brush Creek Quarry and Yakey Grain Elevator, have a lot of heavy truck traffic on that road.

He also said both of those businesses wrote letters of support for these improvements.