ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
The Seward County Commission hosted its most recent town hall meeting Tuesday evening in Kismet, and as with some prior town halls, roads were a big topic of conversation.
Administrator April Warden did bring some good news for the county’s thoroughfares, though.
“Gov. Laura Kelly announced $6.65 million for rural roads safety improvements,” she said. “Seward County was just awarded a High Risk Rural Road grant.”
Warden said one road identified as a priority was the Satanta cutoff.
“This grant allows us to extend four culverts and install a one-and-a-half inch shoulder on Road I north of Road 16, and that will be the beginning phase of being able to go in and overlay that road,” she said.
Warden said culverts on the cutoff had to be done first when utilizing the money.
“We were awarded a grant,” she said. “The state paid $775,000 for that project, and the county has matched a total of $202,000 for that project.”
Warden said the county has applied for other grants, and Gov. Kelly is scheduled to announce Cost Share grant awards June 27.
“One of the Cost Share grants we put in for was to redo Meade Lake Road,” she said. “We’re crossing our fingers we can receive a Cost Share grant for that as well.”
Commissioner C.J. Wettstein said talks are still ongoing with Union Pacific Railroad concerning updates to the Masoni Bridge near Kismet.
“We’re still battling with the railroad trying to get permission,” he said. “They asked me if they could do ground studies on both sides of the bridge.”
Wettstein said those studies had to be done before the railroad will work on the project.
“We’ve set back half a million for the bridge,” he said.
Wettstein said the county does have some help from the office of U.S. Senator Jerry Moran, as well as Kansas 125th House District Representative Shannon Francis.
“He does understand we’re not having real good luck talking to the railroad,” Wettstein said of Moran. “We’re hoping with Moran’s help and with Shannon Francis’s help, we get the ball rolling a little better and get the Masoni Bridge put in.”
Commission Chairman Scott Carr said a representative from Moran’s Garden City office visited the bridge site when a train came through, and he said the senator can help get money earmarked for the project.
Wettstein said a plan needs to be in place, and county officials need to be certain of the work before the project moves forward.
“If we don’t get something fairly solid, we’re going to lose that $500,000 to go on the bridge,” he said. “By November, if we haven’t heard something to think we’re fairly solid, we have until 2026 to use the money, but if we haven’t got a strong answer, we may have to pull out. If we don’t use it on the bridge, we lose it.”
Warden did say UP approved the county’s preliminary plan.
“That allowed us to move on and get the final plan, which we’re hoping will be done by the time we hear from Senator Moran’s office if we receive the appropriated funds for the bridge,” she said.
In some of last year’s town hall meetings, constituents brought up issues with Road O and Road P. Carr said the main problems on the roads are from U.S. Highway 54 to Heifer Source on Bluebell Road.
“It’s always been a complaint with the amount of silage trucks and the amount of dust,” he said. “We’re going to try a new product. It’s called Gorilla Snot.”
Carr said the product is quite reliable in treating similar problems elsewhere.
“They said where they’ve used it in other places, that haven’t had to touch the road in a year,” he said.
Wettstein said as many as 75 to 100 silage trucks run across the roads in a day’s time, causing much wear and tear.
“I’ve followed the silage trucks out there,” he said. “They really aren’t running that fast. I think they’re running overweight and messed them up.”
Wettstein estimated the cost of the Gorilla Snot treatment as high as $50,000 a mile, and for four miles, that cost could be as high as $200,000.
“If we try it out on Road O and it works on Road O, it will probably work anywhere,” he said. “I think all the commissioners are in favor of giving it a shot on those four miles and seeing how it stands up. If it stands up, we’ve got Road P we may have to also do it on.”
Road and Bridge Supervisor Bobby Wright said crack sealing projects should take place this fall on some county roads at a cost of about $5,000 a mile.
“When we get the cracks sealed up, we’re going to do some chip sealing,” he said. “It’s not asphalt. It’s a treatment. It’s close to $45,000 a mile.”
Wright said it is difficult to work on roads during harvest time, and the ideal time to work is when the harvest is over n the spring when the traffic counts are down. He added Gorilla Snot is basically a hardening solution and will not need much in the way of maintenance.
“We’ll keep an eye on it,” he said. “We’ll watch it and see how it does.”
Commission District One candidate Todd Stanton asked about mowing on county roads, particularly why some had not been mowed. Audience member Rick Rice, a Road and Bridge employee said with above average moisture hitting the area recently, it is difficult to get equipment out in ditches on county roads.
“We’ve had three inches of rain, and the ditches are full,” he said. “You want me to put equipment in the ditch and tear equipment up to mow a strip that big?”
Wright said his workers try to mow on blacktop roads during summer holidays such as Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day, and gravel roads are mowed on other days.
Warden said though Road and Bridge is now fully staffed, the department does not have many qualified blade operators at this time, and she said increasing equipment costs are a factor as well.
“Can we put them out on the blade right now? We can’t,” she said. “Two years ago, we paid $264,000 for a blade, which is now $434,000. You want these people trained before you put them on an expensive piece of equipment like that and to know what they’re doing. We do have resources we can use to train these people.”
Warden said every constituent has a different idea of how they want roads worked, and with some roads wider than others, a blade cannot cover an entire ditch, creating a false ditch. Wright said this sometimes causes workers to have to make two to three more passes to mow a ditch.
Warden said county workers are listening to constituents’ concerns about roads.
“The commissioners are working on a five to 10-year plan,” she said. “They did hire Kirkham Michael. I ask for a little bit of grace. These guys are really trying hard, and they’re very passionate about what they do. They take pride in what they do, and it’s hard for them when we hear you feel they’re not doing a good job.”
Carr said the first round of projects should include about 10 miles of road, and bids should be back by July.
“We’ll find out what our costs are going to be,” he said. “It’s probably going to be $1.5 up to $2 million to do a 10-mile stretch.”
Looking into the future, the county will work on asphalt roads to get them back to their needed condition.
“We have some problems,” Carr said. “The funding is not through the state. It’s not through the federal government. We can get some grants, but for the most part, it’s going to be Seward County. There’s two ways to do it. We can increase the mill levy, or we can do it with an additional quarter-cent sales tax. You need to tell this. Work on the roads, fix them, or let them go.”
Carr said Kirkham Michael was hired to take favoritism out of the equation.
“We got Kirkham Michael involved to take the favoritism out of where we work first,” he said.
One audience member asked if the county could help with streets in Kismet. Warden said in the past, the county has cost shared with the City of Kismet to make sure that town’s Main Street has the care it needs.
“When we have people here to do chip seals or crack seals, we try to do it at the same time,” she said. “We get a discount to do it.”
Warden said county officials try to coordinate with leaders at the City of Liberal and City of Kismet to keep sealing costs low.
“When those crews are here, we’re not paying to bring those crews out,” she said. “They already have hot mix available. They already have an asphalt plant up and running.”
Wettstein said the commission is doing its best to help with the needs of the county and its constituents.
We don’t have all the answers, but we’ll work on it,” he said. “We’ll try to get the answers. We’ll try to solve what problems we have.”
