Governor Justice surrounded by highway workers celebrating the seventh anniversary of the "Roads to Prosperity"
CHARLESTON The West Virginia Department of Transportation this week celebrated seven years of the Roads to Prosperity program.
The Roads to Prosperity program started seven years ago after West Virginians voted in favor of Governor Jim Justice’s road bond referendum to allocate state funds towards the project. Speaking to more than a thousand Division of Highways workers on Monday at the state Capitol complex, Justice said there’s no better holiday in the Mountain State than October seventh, when the program received an overwhelming statewide vote of seventy-three percent in favor in a 2017 special election.
“On this day, we shook up the blooming world. That’s all there is to it,” the governor said.
“On this day is when it all started. Nobody would have ever – and if I could use West Virginia slang – nobody could have ever thunk it. How in the world would you think that all the things that are happening all across the land, whether it be tourism or parks – everything over and over and over? It all started with today.”
Each of the one thousand, three hundred and twenty road workers in attendance represented a project under the Roads to Prosperity program. The governor said all but ten of those projects have been started. Moreover, according to a release from Justice’s office following the celebration, one thousand, two hundred and thirty-one of those projects, around ninety-three percent, have been completed.
Secretary of Transportation Jimmy Wriston said the progress through the program has opened a lot of doors for the state’s economy and for its people.
“Not only did it revitalize our Department of Transportation,” Wriston said, “and you’ve all reaped the rewards of that, you’ve all seen the return on your investment for that, but it has benefited the entire state by touching every life, every WestVirginia citizen in this state.”
Governor Justice said the final ten projects are prepared to start and are expected to start soon.
PHOTO | Still image from Governor's social media stream
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