(WSBT) When Indiana leased the Toll Road, that deal included $40 million extra each to the counties the road runs through.

Stores are already open, and more are coming, which means more cars will also be coming. A large, new shopping complex added to the urgency to improve Gumwood Road in Granger. A decision later this month will impact greatly when the road will be worked on.

The St. Joseph County Council is considering two plans. Plan A would spend most of the Toll Road lease money over a ten year period. Plan B would only spend the interest. County commissioner Mark Dobson supports Plan A because he says right now 60 percent of county roads are failing.

“This plan was giving us the most bang for our buck,” Dobson said. “They put a cost per mile factor into all the various scenarios they had, and this gave us the lowest cost per mile.”

Commissioner Steve Ross, however, believes a different approach is warranted.

“My feeling is we can work off a million dollars a year in interest and never touch the principal,” he said.

Ross thinks more sealing and repairing needs to be done on roads, not rebuilding.

“There will be some more money for road maintenance, there's no question about that,” Ross told WSBT News. “But the majority of the money is going for projects, and I’m not prepared to do that.”

One of those projects is Gumwood, which Dobson argues could get pushed back for years without Toll Road money.

The County Council is scheduled to vote on this issue on May 15.

The $40 million St. Joseph County received is split between local governments, so the county has control over just over $20 million plus interest earned.