Commissioners reject plan for Prairie City Road
Perkins County Commissioners heard yet another plan last Tuesday morning for fixing Prairie City Road. Tom Mertz, representing the East River company Loiseau Construction, offered a plan to de-pave the first 10 miles of that road. The road would revert to gravel but his plan would be to use a chemical that would better hold gravel in place, whereby increasing road-bearing capacity.
The end result would be a gravel road. “A maintained gravel road would be a hell of a lot better than what you’ve got right now,” Mertz said.
What he offered doesn’t come cheap. An estimate to complete that project was $651,500.
Although the commissioners listened politely to the presentation, they didn’t commit to it.
Instead, the project is going to proceed as scheduled in the recently adopted five-year plan.
The county will grind four inches of asphalt off the Prairie City Road in 2022, re-lay it and re-shape the road. Three additional inches of gravel will top that off. The gravel will come from a pit at Sam Marty’s. The maximum amount of gravel required, according to Highway Superintendent Cody Green will be 35,000 ton. He has decided to do an additional seven miles to Antelope Road. The end result is that the entire 17 miles will be gravel.
The state turned down Green’s application for a Big Improvement Grant (BIG) for bridges over Rabbit Creek on the Bixby Road and Lodgepole Creek on the White Butte Road. The state maintains that those bridges need to be replaced instead of rehabilitated.
Brosz Engineering will soon be working on the culvert signage project. Only those culverts that are over 36 ft. will be marked under the grant program. To mark the smaller culverts would be at county expense, estimated at $125,000. According to Green, “Nobody knows how many culverts we have in this county.” It would be beneficial to have them all marked or at least to have them be part of Brosz’s study.
As a result of the recent 2020 US Census, there is a slight change that needs to be made in county commissioner districts. There was a public hearing during last week’s meeting but very little public comment. Currently, the plan is to move Bixby and Martin townships from District 3 (Wayne Henderson) to District 4 (Kyle Carmichael). The official change will take place in February.
The county’s population, as a result of the last year’s census, is 2,835 people.
Another scheduled event on Tuesday’s agenda was the advertised surplus property public auction at 11:30 a.m.
There were three bidders for a church on 1.16 acres with Robert Carr prevailing with his $700 bid.
For six contiguous lots in the City of Lemmon, Scott Reede was the only bidder and the property sold to him under “Base Camp RV Park LLC” for $1,000.
Two new county employees were hired last week. Bison native Lynn Green is new to the highway crew at the starting base wage of $18.49/hr. Eric Jackson, who will be moving to the area soon from Indiana, is being hired by Director of Equalization Corina Molnar to be her deputy and second in command. He will begin in January at the current deputy base wage of $16.68/hr. He’ll have one year to certify with the opportunity for a pay raise when he’s completed his testing. Although he has no experience in assessing property, Molnar said, “He’s not afraid to tackle a certification.”
The commission will meet one more time this year, on December 29 at 10:00 a.m., to close out the books and to take care of any last minute business.
