ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Locally, roads have been a huge topic of discussion for some time, and Monday, C.W. Harper with the consulting firm Kirkham Michael brought news of some progress on a county road to the Seward County Commission.
Harper announced dirt work was scheduled to start Tuesday on County Road O, one of the higher priority roads in the county.
“The plan is to basically start with the ditches on the north side, transferring the dirt from the ditches on the north side down, stockpiling it on the south end and use that to build up the road on the south end to try and minimize impacts to the traveling public,” he said. “That way, they’re not hauling and placing, and it should go faster if we haul it first and then place it.”
Harper said workers collected a count for the number of culverts needed for the project, and he said most of them have either been obtained or ordered.
“We had almost enough of the 40-foot culverts,” he said. “We needed one additional 40-foot, and we needed a bunch of 30-foot ones for all the driveways. They’re getting those ordered, but those will be the last thing needed for the project.”
Seward County is also required to have a biennial routine bridge inspection to comply with Federal Highway Administration and Kansas Department of Transportation requirements. Harper said the inspection needed to be done soon.
“We need to get this done fairly quickly,” he said. “We held off getting you the contract because KDOT changed softwares, and they’re requiring us to use this Inspect Deck software. We’re trying to figure out how screwy it was before we committed to it. They say it’s supposed to improve our efficiency. We’re not finding it’s doing it. We’re hoping in the next go round, the efficiency will come along with it.”
For the first round, though, Harper said the KDOT software has a lot of extra software, but the cost of getting the bridges inspected is $300 a bridge, and with only six bridges in the county, the final cost came in at $1,800.
“It’s not really that big of a deal,” he said. “We will get our inspector down here as soon as possible.”
Harper said an inventory inspection is not required at this time.
“That’ll be when we get the railroad bridge in,” he said. “You’ll have an inventory inspection for that one, which could also be done as part of the construction engineering agreement. We’ll make sure we get that included. Usually, it’s about as easy as when we have somebody down there or this time, when they’re already down here doing inspections.”
Commissioners unanimously approved the bridge inspection agreement for $1,800 presented to Harper.
With the Road O project, Administrator April Warden estimated about six to eight workers would be needed.
“We went through the equipment we’re going to be placing out there,” she said. “There’s going to be two road graders, two tractors if our other tractor is up and running. If not, we will have the loader out there.”
Warden said initially, it was thought the county would have to lease a self-propelled packer.
“However, the landfill has a self-propelled packer,” she said. “They were going to get it in the shop today. He said it was no problem with them giving it up for four to six to weeks, as they use it when they are doing cap projects, so it will not interfere with him.”
The landfill also is providing a water truck for the project.
“There’ll be one scraper and four semis with trailers that’ll be working on the project,” she said. “We need to do some follow up on the caliche contract. I’m going to try to take the lead on that.”
Warden said county leaders want Road O to be as closed to through traffic as possible during the construction phase.
“We know that won’t stop everything, but we’re going to do our best to try to reroute that,” she said.
Part of the work on Road O will involve temporarily removing mailboxes along the road. Warden said local post offices have been contacted about that portion of the project.
“C.W. went out Monday and supplied me with the addresses of all of the mailboxes we are going to have to pull,” she said. “I think there’s 14 of them that going to have be pulled. The post office is going to help us. I’m going to draft a letter tomorrow, and they’re going to help getting that letter. I will need to do it in English and Spanish, and they’re going to help me get it to those residents to let them know we’re going to pull the mailboxes.”
Warden said county officials would like to keep the mailboxes in the possession of their owners, and they would be reinstalled once the project is done.
“The post office is going to work out the details with those individuals on how they can pick up their mail,” she said. “We are contacting the school district to let them know about the bus situation. We’ve notified the landfill because it will affect waste haul as well to those individuals out there.”
Warden said Heifer Source will likewise be notified about rerouting truck traffic to nearby Road P, and she would be contacting Conestoga Energy about water matters.
“We do have arrangements with them for water,” she said. “They were wanting a number on how many gallons we thought we would use a day.”
Warden said plans call for the project to be done in four to six weeks, weather permitting, adding the soil stabilizer Perma-Zyme would need to be used with caution.
“There’s a lot of construction that needs to be done prior to placing the Perma-Zyme on there,” she said.
Later in the meeting, Fire Chief Andrew Barkley requested approval of replacing self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) used by firefighters in the Rural Fire District.
“There’s two vendors for MSA in the state of Kansas,” he said. “We reached out to two local banks and received one local bank’s reply on that, and we have one from Manhattan. We have another bank from out of state. The Manhattan bank and the out of state bank both deal with public safety equipment. We’re asking for permission to purchase from Conrad Fire Equipment in the amount of $214,934.46 and use Republic First National Bank for lease purchase on seven years with an annual payment of $372,170.82.”
Barkley said the SCBA units the fire department currently has are 20 years out of date, and he does not believe they can be sold.
“I think they will just need to be destroyed,” he said. “Currently, we have 22 serviceable packs we’re using, and out of 56 bottles, we only have four bottles in date that can be used. The rest of the bottles will not pass hydrostat. They’re beyond their lifespan of 15 years. At this point, I would say they would need to be disposed of.”
National Fire Protection Association standards are updated every five years, and with standards being updated this year, Barkley said his SCBA equipment is 20 years behind the ball on those standards.
“What we’re finding is we can’t get replacement parts anymore for them because when they update a standard, part of that is to push into the new standard,” he said. “They stop replacing the replacement parts on those. We bought these used in 2016 to band-aid us over.”
Barkley said earlier that year, plans had called for a full cash purchase of SCBA equipment, but an incident with a fire truck and subsequent replacement of that truck put those plans on hold.
Next, a request was made in 2021 to obtain funding through money the county received from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, with a request made in 2023 to include SCBA replacement in the RFD’s 2024 budget.
“That was tabled with the understanding we’d revisit in June of this year,” Barkley said. “We went for a full replacement, and we received our denial letter that we didn’t score high enough in the first round to be accepted. We scored high enough for the second round. However, they ran out of funding.”
Barkley said the presented purchase would be for 30 packs, with 14 each going to the Liberal and Kismet fire station, with two left over for spare packs.
“We’re getting 50 bottles, but 25 of those are free in the sale, and we’re slowly getting upgraded with some other stuff with the mass that is free as well,” he said. “Really, we’re only paying for 25 bottles out of the 50.”
Warden said if approved, lease information would have be drawn up similar to those with the landfill through the finance law firm Gilmore & Bell.
“Gilmore & Bell will be handling that, but we do need your approval on this before we move forward with Gilmore & Bell,” she said.
Commissioners unanimously approved purchasing the SCBA units from Conrad Fire Equipment in the amount of $214,934.46 and selecting Republic First National as the lease purchaser based on the annual APR amount and annual payment amount of $372,170.82.
Later in the meeting during her administrator’s report, Warden brought some more good news regarding another priority, this time, the Masoni Bridge near Kismet.
“The railroad’s been reaching out to Kirkham Michael,” she said. “We’re looking at submitting the plans for the next review in November. Likely in the next four to six weeks, we have the bridge plans approximately 90 percent complete, and road plans are approximately 80 percent complete.”
Warden said initial comments called for providing protective fencing with barrier rails to the limits of the Union Pacific Railroad right of way on the project.
“The bridge does not run the entire length of the railroad right of way,” she said. “We will have approached guard rail on each corner of the bridge to protect traffic from the barrier rail on the bridge.”
At that point, Warden said the rail would be transitioned to a height of two feet, eight inches to connect to and match the height of the guard rail.
“We were able to get this approved on a similar project with BNSF, and he did send them a sheet of what he was proposing,” she said. “Now we’ll wait to her back from the railroad on that, but I just wanted to let you guys know we’re making some traction.”
