G Road bridge on track for replacement
Several dozen upcoming county highway projects were the subject of discussion Monday at the weekly Hamilton County Board of Commissioners meeting. The board held its annual hearing to consider the Highway Department’s state-mandated One and Six-Year Highway Improvement Program which was presented by Highway Supt. Jeremy Brandt.
Noting that the document is something Nebraska villages, cities and counties are required to have by the state Department of Transportation, Brandt said one-year projects are those the county expects to complete this year and 2-6-year projects may be completed in the next two to six years whenever funding becomes available.
“We always want to make sure we have enough plans that if we have funding we can proceed,” Brandt said.
One of the pressing projects Brandt said the department hopes to accomplish this year is the replacing of a bridge on G Road near Giltner which washed out some time back.
District 5 Commissioner Francis McDonald of Phillips said he regularly gets calls from constituents about the bridge and Brandt said he does as well.
Brandt said the plan is to replace the bridge with a 40-foot long steel structure, noting that Speece Lewis Engineering has completed the design work. He said he hopes the $385,000 project can be let out for bids this fall.
Other projects listed by Brandt to be completed this year include the armor coating of Roads 6 and 22 (which have been bid out and are to be completed this spring) and two bridge replacements on Road 1 where the county shares responsibility with Clay County. He said the cost of replacing the aging bridges with culverts will be shared 50/50 with Clay County.
Brandt said he also hopes this year to resurface G Road between Highway 14 and W, taking it from the current gravel to blacktop. He said he was working on getting a grant to do that project because the cost is estimated at $6 million.
“There’s a lot of traffic on that road,” Brandt stated.
In the listing of some of the other more than 50 projects on the one-year list, Brant noted that the county has 230 wooden bridges that will eventually need to be replaced. (There are more than 400 bridges in the county that are either on the county or state inventory.)
After the close of the hearing, at which there was no public testimony given, the board voted to adopt Resolution 1178 accepting the program.
In another highway department matter and to correct an oversight at the previous meeting, the board voted to formally adopt Resolution 1179 establishing an interlocal agreement between Hamilton and Merrick Counties for the repair of the Bader Bridge to be completed this summer. Chairman Rich Nelson noted that while the agreement had been voted on the previous week, a formal resolution should have been drawn up and signed before sending it on to Merrick County for approval.
In other business at Monday’s meeting, the board:
*heard the annual report of the South Central Economic Development District (SCEDD) brought by SCEDD Executive Director Sharon Hueftle. SCEDD is an organization that works with Hamilton and 12 other counties in the area on economic development issues and is currently facilitating the Downtown Revitalization Project going on in Aurora, and;
*approved the placement of Go Big GIVE signs on the courthouse lawn by the Hamilton Community Foundation in advance of the upcoming annual fundraising campaign put on by United Way.