Maricopa City Councilmember Vincent Manfredi today joined other members of the Arizona Rural Transportation Advocacy Council to advocate for much needed road projects to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Manfredi had to make his case in just two minutes. After the meeting, he said Maricopans must speak about State Route 347 “every chance we get.” At the Capitol today, he alluded to the many, many emails representatives have received about the embattled highway in recent months.

“Apologies for the emails. It’s pretty simple to fix this problem: Fund the 347 and the emails will stop. I know it sounds like extortion, and it might be,” he quipped. “Maybe it’s not extortion, maybe it’s just negotiation. That’s what lawyers say.”

Joking aside, Manfredi rehashed a report from the state about SR 347’s dire statistics — 967 crashes in five years with 15 fatalities, 21 serious injuries and a majority of all collisions resulting from rear ends.

He said the city council wasn’t seeking a bailout, though.

“The city of Maricopa, which has no jurisdiction on the road, is looking to fund a huge amount of the money to get this done. We just need help,” Manfredi said.

How much that allocution will help to secure more funding from the state is yet to the seen. However, Manfredi said that if given more speaking time, he would have pointed out how rising inflation makes expanding the highway more difficult with each passing year.

“Way back when Christian Price and I used to do presentations about SR 347 and talking about the expansion, we needed a little under $200 million,” he said. “That cost is well over a half-billion dollars today.”

Vincent Manfredi owns InMaricopa.