Warm weather brings good news for county roads

By STEPH TAHTINEN

Mt. Pleasant News

The warmer weather has meant good things for Henry County?s roads.

?It?s just about right,? County Engineer Bill Belzer told the board of supervisors on Tuesday morning. He noted that temperatures below freezing at night and above freezing during the day are good conditions for the gravel roads.

The good weather has also allowed crews to accomplish a lot of road maintenance, including patching potholes and graveling roads.

?The only problem we?re getting is the fog,? said Belzer. ?You don?t want to be dropping rock on a gravel road when a truck?s coming at you that you can?t see.?

The supervisors also accepted a letter from Belzer that gives an explanation of the need for additional money for his department. This additional money would come from debt services, and restrictions on this funding means it could only be used for capital improvements for roads, such as gravel or the replacement of the bridge that collapsed over Fish Creek last summer.

This letter came at the request of Jeff Hile of Northland Security Financial, who met with the supervisors on Jan. 19 to discuss using debt service funding for the road department construction costs as well as funding for the water detention basin at Crossroads Business Park and to purchase new election equipment.

It was estimated that adding these expenses would raise the debt service levy only a few cents. The current levy rate for fiscal year 2013 is 19 cents.

Taking action on the debt service funding will require a public hearing to give the county the authority to raise the levy.

In other business, the supervisors and County Attorney Darin Stater reviewed the contract with Mike Prottsman Sanitation for the county?s solid waste service.

The contract being reviewed was a one-page document that essentially used the information from the request for proposals (RFP).

?What I?d prefer to do is take one of our old contracts and plug this into that,? said Stater.

County Auditor Shelly Barber will be providing Stater with a copy of the RFP and the old contract with Waste Connections, and Stater will be putting the information from the new contract into the format of the previous contract.

?I?d like it to be as uniform as possible,? said Stater.

Once this is done, the supervisors will get the new contract to Prottsman for his approval.