Henry County Board of Supervisors approve IDOT agreement

MT. PLEASANT — The Henry County Board of Supervisors approved an agreement with the Iowa Department of Transportation (IDOT) during its Feb. 27 meeting, allocating funding for new traffic control signs in Salem.

“This just allocates the funds for us, and after we get the agreement signed back, I can actually purchase it,” Henry County Engineer Jake Hotchkiss said. “I don’t think I’ll get reimbursed until after July 1.”

The project includes flashing feedback signs that will alert drivers to their speed as they enter Salem, as well as LED stop signs with manual shut-off features.

“That will be a sign that as you come into Salem that will flash and tell you if you’re speeding or you’re not,” Hotchkiss said. “And then there’ll be one as you’re going toward the school from the west. There’ll be one there that will flash as well.”

He noted that the agreement does not cover the full cost but funds the majority of the project. The signs themselves will cost approximately $9,000 and the whole project will likely come in just over $10,000. Additional funding for this project came from grants and Hotchkiss says the project is more than 80% funded.

“We submitted two grants and got approved for two grants this year on that program,” he said. “So I think that’s kudos to my staff that, yeah, it worked out pretty well.”

Hotchkiss emphasized the importance of maintaining the signs over time.

“The big thing is, we just have to maintain these signs once we put them up,” he said. “So that’s what we call the risk, because we have to maintain that during the service life of that sign.”

Supervisor Steve Detrick expressed his gratitude for seeing this project come together stating, “I know this has been a big request from the folks over there.”

Hotchkiss believe the visual awareness of the speed monitoring signs is a good thing in this situation, however, he offered a word of warning about putting too many out in the county.

“They don’t want these to become so normal that people then ignore them,” Hotchkiss said. “So, it’s not something we’re going to put up everywhere. This is a unique location with the school that makes sense on one of our main roads.”

After the Board of Supervisors approved the contract with the Iowa DOT to place these signs in Salem, Hotchkiss provided an update on road maintenance efforts. He explained that crews have been working on brush removal and improving sight distances along county roads.

“We finished up our project over by on 240th Street by New London,” he said. “And then we did move down to south of Lowell, pretty much right where our last ER project ended. We’re going to extend removing some trees on the north side of the road to improve some visibility for a driveway and just kind of open up the road.”

Crews have also been blading roads as conditions allow as the weather encourages freezing, melting, and drying cycles this time of year.

According to Hotchkiss the county continues to prepare to start additional road repairs as the weather improves.

“We’re going to do some more crack filling early next week as well,” he said. “We’re going to work on some of our potholes and just some sealing of our pavements as well.”

Hotchkiss explained that crack sealing is focused on newer pavements.

“We don’t go after our older pavements, necessarily,” he said. “We typically contract those out because there’s more. With our unit, it’s more on our newer pavements, trying to stay ahead of some new cracks that would be showing up.”

For now, construction projects remain on hold due to winter conditions, including work on the Nebraska Avenue Bridge.

“My feeling would be as soon as it’s fit, they will get back on Nebraska to try to get those guardrail blisters done,” Hotchkiss said. “But we do need the frost to come out and to dry up enough that they can do some work on it.”

Work is continuing on the 235th Street Bridge and the west side is mostly cleared. Crews will move materials to the east side shortly.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Kruse@southeastiowaunion.com