The St. Joseph County Redevelopment Commission on Tuesday approved $80,000 for more traffic enforcement around the Amazon data center construction site. The county has spent money it received from Amazon for the extra patrols much faster than expected.
Amazon had given the county $120,000 for sheriff department officers to do extra patrols. They’ve been patrolling the area mostly during rush hour, when people have complained most about the difficulty making left turns and about semi-truck drivers illegally taking shortcuts down narrow two-lane country roads.
County economic development executive director Bill Schalliol told the commission the Amazon money has already been spent, even though it was originally supposed to last two years.
“And everybody at the time thought, hey this is pretty realistic," Schalliol said. "I think once we got out there and you add 5,000 construction workers, and all the existing workers, and then you’ve got a construction project on State Road 2, so I think we way underestimated the amount of different areas.”
Schalliol said he hopes Amazon will give the county more money for road patrols in a road funding agreement they’re negotiating.
“We’ve had some preliminary conversations with them. They’ve not committed to an amount. We have not asked for a final amount. We didn’t want to ask for commission funds to have to do that, but it has to be done.”
