Beachner Construction, St. Paul, had the winning bid to rebuild a bridge near the Allen-Neosho counties line on old U.S. 169.
Bill King, director of Public Works, said Beachner’s bid of $844,310 was the lowest received at the Kansas Department of Transportation headquarters in Topeka. The highest was $1.07 million.
Allen County will pay 20 percent of construction costs and already has paid to acquire rights of way and for engineering, putting its overall contribution at a little over $200,000, King said. Construction is expected to start in early June.
The bridge carries a county road over what once was a channel of the Neosho River, about a quarter mile north of the river.
The road, used by farmers and motorists between Humboldt and Chanute, will be closed for several months during construction. King said earlier that engineers found no way to create a bypass for a reasonable cost.
COMMISSIONERS told Gas Mayor Darrell Catron they would approve a revitalization plan for the city contingent on a favorable review by County Counselor Alan Weber.
The revitalization program gives property tax breaks for improvements worth $5,000 or more. No tax is levied the first five years; tax is then phased in at 20 percent increments over the next five years.
“We have a lot of vacant lots and we hope the program will encourage development,” Catron said.
Catron also mentioned the old 54 Drive-In Theater and adjoining property as a possible location for a new Allen County Hospital. Utilities wouldn’t be a problem, he said, and “there’d be plenty of room.”
Next week a county street broom will be dispatched to Gas to clear rock that has produced an annoying amount of dust throughout town.
“There’s too much rock on the roads and sweeping it off should help with the dust problems,” King said.
THE LIKELIHOOD is remote that the county will receive any reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for removing snow from roads in recent storms.
“FEMA representatives told us we’d get money only from work that was in response to 911 calls,” King said. “We didn’t wait on calls. We cleared snow as quickly as it was feasible.”
He said FEMA might provide some funding for installing cross drains on county roads, replacing those that had failed, but “we won’t know about that until later.”
