For Cherry Valley, with a population of about 60, receiving tens of thousands of dollars makes all the difference for the future of its infrastructure.

“For a community like Cranberry, that’s basically a drop in their bucket. But for us? It’s a major deal now and down the road,” Mayor Michael Bagdes-Canning said.

In May, Butler County officials unveiled plans to provide $50,000 to Cherry Valley and Concord and Mercer townships for road rehabilitation projects. An estimated 20 roads will be updated.

Bagdes-Canning said he has lived in Cherry Valley since 1982. With 45 registered voters and only a few families with children living in the borough, not much has changed there over the years, he said — including the number of roads.

Bagdes-Canning said the borough has three main roads it fixes up somewhat regularly, which roughly turns out to one every three years. He said in total, the borough’s expenses for this year are about $23,000. This includes roughly $15,000 going toward road repair, though he said last year the borough needed to make slightly bigger repairs than normal.

“Three miles of roads, we usually devote every third year to go back and fix one of those roadways, this allows us to get the roads in good shape, fix all 3 miles every year unless something catastrophic happen,” he said.

Road maintenance is critical, Bagdes-Canning said, because the borough can’t prep roads every day. He said Cherry Valley contracts with Venango Township for things like snow removal.

“In Cherry Valley, that means patching the roads all the time,” Bagdes-Canning said. “This grant allows us to actually stabilize roads, make them maintain for longer periods of time, now we can go back and make patches to roads that are more stable.”

Bagdes-Canning said a ditch along one of the roads needs work so that it keeps water from flowing onto Borchert Road from East Unity Road.

“I love that the county has decided instead of this money going into the general budget, it goes to municipalities, which is important for a place like Cherry Valley,” Bagdes-Canning said.

County Commissioner Kevin Boozel said the county has tried to put a lot of focus on repairing roads and other infrastructure around the county. He pointed to the $5 fee the county has imposed on vehicle registrations to fund these grants, as well as loans received through the Butler County Infrastructure Bank, as evidence the county wants to fix roads.

“There’s been a lot of focus on roads and bridges and that includes those smaller municipalities in the northern tier of the county,” Boozel said.