ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Hot mix asphalt overlay projects were recently completed on some Seward County roads, and now, county officials are looking to stripe those roads.
That work will now be done by a Kansas contractor, Cillessen & Sons of Kechi, one of four contractors contacted by Road and Bridge Supervisor Marc Johnson after publishing bids in the Leader & Times.
At the Aug. 4 regular meeting, commissioners voted unanimously to approve the bid over Road Safe Traffic Systems of El Dorado, Heartland Traffic Services of Kansas City, Kan., and Straight Line Striping of Grand Island, Neb., none of whom submitted a bid for the project.
The winning bid came in at a price tag of $87,454.38. Johnson said he had contacted some other companies to get an estimate for the job per mile, and he said the Cillessen & Sons bid was lower than those prices.
Johnson said Cillessen & Sons is doing striping work at the Liberal Municipal Airport and surrounding communities in the area. The project will be paid for from funding the county had left over from its scheduled road projects for this year, and Administrator April Warden said that money is possible due to the removal of a project scheduled for Kismet’s Main Street.
“You have approximately $125,000 remaining from the bond you took out for the project,” she said. “$112,000 of that was due to the Kismet project being deducted. The city verified they’ve done their airport.”
Johnson said striping work will be done on Larrabee Road after patchwork is completed there. He added the work on all roads will be done with latex paint similar to the paint seen on many highways.
In a separate bid, Cillessen & Sons will also be striping Tucker Road from Western Avenue to Kansas Avenue in Liberal.
Warden said that portion of Tucker Road is owned by the county, with the road’s east end from Kansas Avenue to Country Estates Road being owned by the City of Liberal.
Warden said the need to stripe Tucker Road came after problems were brought to the attention of city officials. Johnson said county workers recently began mowing ditches on both side of the road.
Landfill Supervisor Brock Theiner, who is also formerly the supervisor of Road and Bridge, said the first mile of Tucker Road west of Western Avenue, a dirt road, has split ownership, with the city owning the south half and the county owning the north half.
Warden said responsibility for the stretch of Tucker Road between Western Ave. and Kansas Ave. has been done wrong for years, and now with the county handling striping and mowing, city leaders want to meet with county officials to fix the problem.
“We’ve been taking care of the whole dirt road portion, and they’ve agreed we need to get together and have a meeting and figure out who’s going to do what,” she said.
Johnson said the price of striping Tucker Road will vary based on whether a double yellow line is required or if striping for a passing lane is desired. As to when the work would be completed, he said bid specs call for work to begin as soon as possible and the project to be completed within 30 days.
The money to pay for striping the HMA projects will come from a recent bond sale made by the county. As for Tucker Road, Warden suggested paying for it separately from the county’s Special Highway Fund.
Commissioner Tammy Sutherland-Abbott said she liked the idea of splitting the payments. Chairman Scott Carr agreed as he made the motion to do so.
“I’ll make a motion we approve the bid from Cillessen & Sons for the amount of $87,454.38 for the striping of the new overlays and that’ll be paid out of the bond money,” he said. “The other part of the motion is to approve the striping of Tucker Road for the amount of $3,200.”
After commissioners unanimously approved that motion, discussion moved to recent bids received for maintenance work to the outside of the EMS building.
Commissioners would later approve a bid from local contractor Maestro Concrete in the amount of $10,000, and Warden said after money from the county’s funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act was obligated for the outside of the EMS building in 2024, several contractors examined the outside of the building.
Warden said for this reason, the county did not publish the bid based on those examinations.
“We did get three bids for the outside of the EMS building, one of which is at $10,000,” she said. “The two others you received, one was for $18,256, and the other one was for $18,600.”
Those bids also came from local contractors, B & G Services and M Builders, but Warden said Maestro is a permitted vendor the county uses.
“They’ve done other work at EMS and did a fine job,” she said.
Warden said Planning and Zoning Director Albert Gallegos and Building Inspector Kent Hamlin have been pleased with Maestro’s work in the past.
“It is our recommendation you approve the bid from Maestro concrete in the amount of $10,000,” Warden said. “That would be to prepare the railing and the stucco walls for the new finish prime, and paint the railing and install new base coat mesh and new stucco finish to the EMS building.”
EMS Director John Ralston said talks with officials at neighboring Southwest Medical Center have focused on getting paint to match the hospitals contour to some degree.
“We’re going to try to get that cover for it, and I think it’ll go really good with our stone walls,” he said. “With the railing, we’ll do a very similar color with it too. It’ll be really nice for the area.”
Commissioner Steve Helm made the motion to waive the purchasing policy and approve the bid from Maestro Concrete in the amount of $10,000 for the remodel of the exterior of the EMS building, with the funds will come from ARPA.
Elsewhere in the EMS building, Ralston said work was scheduled to begin last week on redoing bay floors. He said much of his equipment has been relocated in order for workers to complete their tasks.
“The trailer parked out by the building on the blue truck, it’s all parked out there because that’s where I put all the stock to get it out of the bays so we don’t get it covered in the soot when they grind those floors,” he said. “We’ll have to move stuff around as they’re doing that because we’ve got some stuff that won’t fit in the trailer, but we’re going to start on the fourth bay, get it ground down, and we’re going to move the stuff on the others over so we can ground the other three bays.”
Ralston said the oldest truck in his fleet, a Medic One Freightliner, has been put at the Seward County Fairgrounds where a county fire truck was formerly located.
“We put it out there to store it out there for now until we can get the floors done,” he said. “That saves one sitting outside. Once he starts and gets the paint down, we have to stay off of it for 72 hours, so it’ll be three days. A lot of times, the trucks will be sitting out unless it gets to where it’s going to hail, and then we’ll find a place to put them.”
Ralston said most of the work on the bays in the EMS building has been done.
“I’ve got all the shelving out we put in. I’ve got it all tore out, and it’s in the trailer too,” he said.
When are they going to expand Tucker Road from Kansas Avenue to Western Avenue to accommodate the current and growing traffic on this route? Same question for when lighting and sidewalks will be added for the added foot traffic, especially between Walmart and the apartment complex and the Conquistador subdivision, at least. All of Tucker Rd could use lighting.