Commissioners Agree to Armor Coating Project

McCOOK, Neb. - The Red Willow County Commissioners received just one bid for their summer armor coating road project. Still, the project resulted in the most tense discussion of any other agenda item at the regular meeting on Monday. 

The one bid came from B&H Paving of Scott City, Kansas, with owner Tyler Ness in attendance at the Monday bid opening meeting.

It wasn’t the bid that caused the tension; it was the availability of gravel and district drivers to get gravel to the projects. 

The bid specifications included in the opening included four county roads 

Road 1:  Drive 714 east to Road  387, one-and-a-half miles long southeast of McCook. Road 2: one-half mile of Drive 403 southwest of Lebanon.  Road 3:  Drive 403  to Road 714, Bartley Road, eight-point-five miles north of Lebanon.  Road 4: Road 402 to Road 726, six-point-five miles north of Bartley, the Frontier County line. 

After over a half hour of discussion, District #1 Commissioner and Board Chairman Ted Gans asked if they were going to table the discussion and move on with the meeting. 

Commissioner Randy Dean said he would make a motion to approve them. 

“I am not going to put the miles on it, but if I figured this right, I am going to make a motion to approve the bid from B&H at $19,743 per mile, using emersion oil,” said Dean. 

“For the entire bid,” answered Commissioner Gans. 

“I broke it down by the mile,” responded Dean. 

“OK, well, we bid roads,” said Gans. “We bid roads. I don’t want to keep this open-ended to where we are doing roads that weren’t bid because if that is what we are shooting for, that’s not what we had bid.”

Chairman Gans felt he could not meet the complete gravel supply demands of the entire project in his district by August 30.  “I can get this road southeast of McCook done,” said Gans. “Randy’s got enough gravel to do north of Bartley. I would rather approve the bids because leaving it open-ended, price per mile says that while we approved it, and then whatever roads we want to go to, we can just start doing roads wherever.”

“Just put a maximum on it then,” said Dean.” 

“No, I think we need to make the motion for the roads we want to build,” said Gans. 

“I am not going to make that motion,” stated Dean. 

Dean didn’t not get a second for his motion and it died for lack of a second.

The discussion between the commissioners continued and focused on doing two of the four roads. Gans motioned to approve armor coating using emersion oil on Road 1, southeast of McCook, and Road 4, north of Bartley, totaling eight miles for $124,560.00. The motion was unanimously approved.