Voters will be asked in August to fund an effort to four-lane Highway 67 south to the Arkansas state line.
Poplar Bluff City Council members voted Monday to put the item on the August ballot.
They are asking to change language relating to a one-half cent sales tax that currently pays for the four-laning of Highway 67 north to Fredericktown. This debt will be repaid in March 2020, according to officials.
“Certainly this is an important thing, as we’ve already acknowledged, to complete four lane all the way through,” said council member at-large Ron Black. “I applaud the citizens for allowing this first part. Now we’re just simply completing the original plan. And it’s something we’ll be needing to work on and promote together.”
Residents approved the tax in 2005 to fund the four-laning of a 50-mile stretch of Highway 67 north to Fredericktown. Construction work finished on that project in 2011.
The Poplar Bluff sales tax will have paid for more than $30 million of the approximately $180 million north effort by March.
The Missouri Department of Transportation has estimated the south construction would cost $50 million. No route has been selected at this time, officials have said.
The project would apply for a $25 million build grant from the federal transportation department and a $10 million cost share from MoDOT, city manager Mark Massingham said in April.
The sales tax would still end in 2035, or earlier, as expected when it was originally approved, according to the proposed language.
Money from collections could be used only for work on Highway 67.
All work from the Harviell exit to the Arkansas state line would be constructed to interstate standards, something which could help an effort to complete an Interstate 57 route that includes Poplar Bluff, Massingham has also said.
Members of the Highway 67 Corporation say the north project generated more than $300 million in economic growth for Poplar Bluff, as well as reducing accidents by 28 percent.