PROCTORVILLE— At a time where villages in the county and the county itself are applying for Community Development Block Grants for various projects, the village of Proctorville has applied in order to replace the village’s sidewalks.

“The grant I’ve applied for will replace several sidewalks here in town that have been down for up to 70 years,” Proctorville Mayor Rick Dunfee said. “Many of which are cracked and unlevel due to old tree roots. This will also allow them to be handicap accessible.”

Assistant executive director of the Ironton-Lawrence County Community Action Organization, Ralph Kline, said that every year the county commissioners are given an amount for every project that will go under the Community Development Block Grant program.

“Each year we send out the information to the commissioners to go over and decide which projects they will go through with,” Kline said. “We’ve worked with Proctorville in the past, so I think that it would be a practical project in the mix to be considered. But the commissioners make the final decisions as to what will go into the final application.”

The final budget for total county projects through the grant program is usually between $140,000 and $150,000, Kline said.

Dunfee said that the grant applied for is worth $50,000, but would also require an $8,000 engineering fee for a total project of $58,000.

“It’s all going to be replacement,” Dunfee said. “Whatever we can get done with that much is what we will do. We want to replace the worst ones.”

Kline said that the final application will come out around October, with the projects starting the following year.