BATON ROUGE &045;&045; Concordia Parish Police Jury Secretary Russell Wagoner said he hopes new money allocated to rural roads in Louisiana will help the parish.

The state transportation department plans to spend an extra $12 million on repair and paving work for mainly rural roads to nearly double the maintenance dollars for those roads this year.

While none of the 226 miles of parish-maintained roads would likely qualify for state money, Concordia does have a number of state-maintained roads, Wagoner said.

&uot;Hopefully that (money) will help us some,&uot; he said.

Some parish residents have complained about the state of roads in Concordia and the amount of money allocated to help maintain or improve them.

The joint legislative budget committee approved the shifting of dollars within the Department of Transportation and Development for the work, boosting the total allocated for rural roads to $29 million in the fiscal year that ends June 30.

Louisiana has more than 16,000 miles of state highways, but only 10,000 miles qualify for federal assistance.

Lawmakers have complained that the bulk of road maintenance money has been directed to those 10,000 miles of roads in order to get the federal match dollars, leaving 6,000 miles of primarily rural roads left without maintenance cash.

The extra $12 million for rural roadways is coming from the postponement of computer purchases, savings from a hiring freeze and a change in the way the department is financing some other transportation projects.

DOTD also hopes to add another $5 million to the road work but is still working on the details, according to Jerry Jones, director of the Office of Facility Planning and Control, which presented the DOTD plan to the budget committee.