The August 15th Board of Commissioners meeting was one of the most productive meetings I have attended since elected as your district Commissioner. We were wrapping up the last session of our County Improvements for Roads & Bridges Program (CIRB) and was finally presented with the actual numbers of how much funding we had available to the county for FY 2016-2017.
We were informed that our ODOT regional allocation was just over 6.1 million dollars for this next construction year. Once that number was made known our District 3 Commissioner, Monty Piercy, recommended that we use those funds to finish any “shovel-ready” projects that could be started this year and completed. I quickly agreed to that holistic change in focus.
It will come as no surprise to our residents that District 1 has more than 10 million dollars of shovel-ready projects ready today. I volunteered to put the 2 miles of Coltrane Road between Simmons and Simpson Roads, at a cost of 3.6 million dollars, on the fast track to completion this year. We now have assurances from ODOT that the “letting” for construction bids will take place in Feb-Mar 2017. Now we can complete this 2 mile stretch regardless of the possibility of receiving any federal grant funding.
At the end of the CIRB meeting our district was approved for around 4.4 million dollars in funded projects for this upcoming year including 1 million dollars for the Seward Road Bridge and 200 thousand dollars for the 1 ½ miles between Simpson Road between Ward Road and Coltrane. Again, this was one of the most productive meetings I have attended because it was focused on all the County projects ready to start.
In addition to the ongoing mowing and grading maintenance operations, this week we are finishing up the laying and compacting crushed asphalt on Forest Hills between Bryant and Coltrane. This will help prevent potholes and the dust issues for the folks on that stretch of road, it also ties the two miles of paved roadway together with a better driving surface. We are also finishing up the repair of the pavement road base failures on Simmons Road between Bryant and Coltrane. Those push-outs are dangerous and damaging to our local resident’s vehicles so they are a priority for our asphalt repair crews. We are also working to complete the same repairs on Bryant north of Waterloo to the dead end. Our plan is to complete the road base repairs this fall and completely overlay both of those roads road next spring using our “save-to-pave” road funds.
Since our last update we also completed repaving the worn out mile of Charter Oak between Penn and Western; and the mile of Forest Hills between Sooner and Coltrane Roads. We just received all the bridge boards, clips, and spikes ordered to replace the surface deck on the severely worn 11-ton bridge on Prairie Grove between Penn and Western; we should finish this project by the end of this week as well.
We have lots more going on with the county road maintenance, but I wanted to give a shout out to our OSU/4-H extension .22 cal youth rifle and pistol team. It seems we had a young member who took second place at the State Pistol Match and now advances to the Nationals! We also had a young lady place 3rd in the State Rifle Matches. Great job by this newly formed team and to coach Haley Rosson!
Until next time stay safe out there on our roads and bridges.
Marven Goodman
Commissioner
District 1, Logan County
Oklahoma
405 282 3581