Commissioners hear annual road report

According to Thayer County Roads Superintendent Richard Heinrichs, the roads department will use the next 12 months to work on several small dirt jobs and two bridge projects in 2011. “Last year we didn’t have any new projects to attend to. We pretty much stuck to keeping the roads in good shape, general maintenance.”

Thayer County commissioners heard the annual One and Six road plan last week during their first meeting in February. Approximately 20 people attended.

Working with a $2.2 million budget, the roads department has 22 full-time workers and two part-time employees, he said; $752,000 of the budget goes to wages. “We spent the winter dealing with snow and ice from the major storms that hit the area in November and December of 2010.”

For the rest of the year workers cut trees, hauled concrete and scrap iron, worked at the county gravel pit, did some roadside burning, kept heavy machinery maintained and completed 49 dirt projects at a cost of approximately $75,000. There were no real weather-related problems last year such as flooding or washouts, he said.

This year the department will replace two bridges on Road 5300 between roads F and G. The area requires two separate steel and concrete bridges along the mile span; one measures 60 feet and will cost approximately $90,000 while the other is 30 feet long and will cost approximately $35,000.

A second large project includes laying a four-inch overlay of asphalt on the east edge of Bruning for nearly one mile at a cost of approximately $100,000.

Otherwise, the standard maintenance and repair of roads with several smaller dirt projects rounds out the 2011 schedule.