By DAVID CLOUSTON

Salina Journal

Saline County commissioners on Tuesday chose to delay considering approval of the controversial plan to adopt a two-mile road grid maintenance system to save the county money.

But not before commission Chairman Craig Stephenson took Commissioner Randy Duncan to task for time spent as Duncan directed a flurry of questions at County Engineer Neil Cable.

"This is a public hearing the for citizens today and not a Randy Duncan public hearing," Stephenson said.

Duncan shot back, "You asked us if we had questions and I had questions."

"That was 10 minutes ago," Stephenson said.

"And I didn't get direct answers to my questions, I thought," Duncan replied.

The measure to adopt what Cable calls a rural primary road system could be back before the commission within a couple of weeks, Stephenson said.

The plan would eliminate repair or replacing roads or bridges on nonprimary roads deemed to have reached the end of their usable life. The cost of maintaining or replacing all of the county's aging roads and bridges is estimated to cost between $32 to $67 million.

"We wanted to finish this public hearing today to allow staff to tweak anything that would possibly come forward today, and then to work with county (legal) counsel to make sure statutorily, everything is covered," Stephenson said.

Who favors this idea?

Duncan's questions centered on a couple of topics. First he asked Cable if he had a feel from the public who was in favor of the proposed plan, from those who attended any of three public meetings on the subject.

Cable replied that, for example, school transportation directors said it would have a negligible effect.

"No one likes to scale back on existing infrastructure, including us," Cable said. "I think people understand that this is not too terribly different than their own personal finances."

Duncan also asked how the plan could affect response times for medical, firefighters and law enforcement officers.

Emergency responders are already taking into account load limitations on the bridges, Cable replied, and routing around those.

We'd lose needed access

The choice to limit refurbishing roads and bridges at two-mile intervals would deprive farm operators like her and her husband of needed access to their property, said Marlysue Holmquist, a rural Smolan resident who addressed the commissioners.

"We have lost the ability to leave our farm without going almost five miles to go three-quarters of a mile to a paved road," she said. "There's only the plan to reduce rural road access and no plan to replace the two bridges shut down (by the county) in November.

"I understand that this means (increased) taxes and so forth," Holmquist said. "However, you need to listen to the voice of the rural people."

Cable said after Tuesday's meeting, the choices are to take more tax money to build everything that everyone wants, or to make tough decisions about what's vital.

How do you, for example, ask the whole tax base of Saline County, 84 percent of which live within the city of Salina, to fund repair of a bridge used by 10 vehicles a day.

"We want to make sure we're good stewards and be careful about using funds from the entire tax base," he said.

Another rural resident who spoke at Tuesday's meeting, Dave Eberhart, 4716 N. Crystal Springs Road, questioned whether the county Engineering Department was doing just that.

Look at Jewell County

Eberhart asked Cable why Saline County doesn't have its own bridge-building crew as Jewell County does.

"They can probably build four times as many bridges as we do with outside contractors," Eberhart said. He also challenged Saline County to adopt other cost-saving measures, such as putting in culverts as large as 12 feet in diameter made from old railroad tank cars with the ends cut out.

Jim Foster, Jewell County's road and bridge supervisor, said by phone Tuesday that the county buys those recycled tanker cylinders from companies.

The cost is cheaper than buying a corrugated metal pipe -- about $5,500 each versus about $12,000 for a corrugated pipe installed by a contractor, he said. The cylinders meet road engineering specifications -- they're 3/4 inches thick versus 1/8 inch thickness for a corrugated pipe.

His county department has a budget of about $1.5 million a year for repair work.

"We have about $142 million worth of bridge projects the bridge inspectors say needs to be done," Foster said. That amounts to 359 bridges. The county went to a primary road system similar to the one Saline County officials are considering "a long time ago."

"But there are a lot of places we have to have a bridge every mile," he said.

The county has rebuilt 45 bridges since 1997 with matching fund money from the state's Community Development Block Grant program.

"We have to match 50 percent of the cost. And we do all the work, usually with four men," he said.

It's not cost-effective

Cable said Tuesday that Saline County used to have a bridge-building crew but officials decided that the cost of maintaining a crane and keeping a crane operator certified wasn't cost effective.

Cable said his department has looked at both Jewell and Dickinson counties' accounting records on their bridge-building crews.

"We feel like with the length of structure they're building, we're at least as cost effective as what they're doing," he said.

Building materials continue to far outstrip inflation on a yearly basis -- the price of materials goes up about 12 percent a year compared to about 3 percent for the consumer price index, he said.

n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.