Special to Iredell Free News

RALEIGH — NCDOT Division 12 Engineer Mark Stafford and NCDOT staff members will host a meeting on Thursday, December 16, in Mooresville to discuss the N.C. Highway 150 road-widening project.

The meeting, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the Charles Mack Citizen Center, comes at the request of Sen. Vickie Sawyer, who continues to engage with NCDOT on the details and status of the project.

NCDOT will plan to answer questions from the community regarding timeline, delays, and updates to the project. This is an open meeting and members of the public are encouraged to attend.

“As a resident of Mooresville who lives and works off Highway 150, I empathize with the constituents who contact my office daily to voice their frustrations over the delays and disruptions to this project,” Sawyer said. “Our community deserves to hear directly from NCDOT staff on a realistic timeline for the project and why delays have occurred in the past. As the elected state senator representing this area, I will continue to engage with NCDOT staff to ensure our community isn’t kept in the dark on updates to this project and am committed to keeping this project on track as currently scheduled.”

In May 2020 findings from an audit issued by the State Auditor’s office revealed that the N.C. Department of Transportation planned to spend approximately $5.94 billion in fiscal year 2019, but exceeded that amount by $742 million (12.5%). This overspend was revealed during the
same time the NCDOT announced it was experiencing an additional $300 million shortfall in revenue due to COVID-19.

As a chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, Sawyer said she remains diligent in her work to instill systematic changes to the NCDOT so this type of overspend will never happen again. The state budget recently signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper includes auditing capabilities to better monitor agency accounting practices.

LEARN MORE

To learn more about this prject, visithttps://www.ncdot.gov/projects/nc-150/pages/default.aspx