At its Tuesday, August 18 meeting, the county board awarded a County Road 6 contract to the lowest bidder, KGM Contractors. Thework will include ditch repair, aggregate surfacing, bituminous surfacing and culvert replacement on the bottom .6 miles of County Road 6. KGM’s bid, $193,046.98, was 6.06% under the county engineer’s estimate. Thedecision to pave the bottom of County Road 6 came about because of recurring incidents of severe washboard conditions caused by the steep grade on that portion of the road. State disaster aid funding will pay for the project. “We took the pavement as far as the funds would allow,” said County Engineer Shae Kosmalski.
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Another project coming up for County Road 6 will be installation of a bridge over Fall (Rosebush) Creek. Braun Intertec won a contract to provide geotechnical testing at four bridges throughout the county and engineering testing on County Road 12 at a cost of $28,040. All but $480 of the work will be paid through state aid funds and bridge bonding.
The county board approved a resolution requesting that the federal House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee include the Federal Bridge Program, which includes an Off-System Bridge Program, in the current federal transportation bill reauthorization legislation. Under that legislation, the Off-System Bridge Program, which sets aside funding to improve and replace county-owned bridges, would no longer exist due to the elimination of the Federal Bridge Program.
The board’s resolution maintained that county needs federal help in maintaining bridges because they serve the agriculture, tourism, mining and logging industries, they carry schools buses, fire trucks, and other emergency vehicles, and detours around bridges “can severely impact the economy of a rural community….”
The way things are going, Commissioner Bob Fenwick said, rural areas are going to get left out of funding, with preference going to urban bridges.
In other Business:
. The board gave Planning &
Zoning Director Tim Nelson the okay to renew the Caribou Lake Alternative Urban Area Review (AUAR) so that water quality
checks will continue another five
years.
. Paul Sandstrom, coordinator
of the Laurentian Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) Council, updated the county board on the council’s advocacy on behalf of Cook, Itasca, Koochiching, Lake, and St. Louis counties and the Grand Portage Reservation. Minnesota’s 10 RC&D councils assist local people “to protect and develop their economic and natural resources in ways that improve the area’s quality of life,” according to the Minnesota Association of RC&D Councils’ 2008 annual report.
Area projects include erosion control assistance along Caspers Hill Road in Colvill and help funding worker’s compensation for Flutereed Partnership volunteer tree planters.
Sandstrom said he would be bringing a biomass consultant from Michigan to talk with Buck Benson of the Cook County Local Energy Project about biomass possibilities in Cook County. “In our area, biomass is one of the things we really like to hone in on,” Sandstrom said.
After a lengthy discussion on control of invasive weeds earlier in the county board meeting, Sandstrom said RC&D could help find solutions that are “outside the box.” For example, he said, goats eat knapweed, one of the locally identified problems, and “you don’t have to pay them! …There [are] ideas out there we could tap.”
RC&D hopes to help Grand Portage with some problems identified on Portage Creek, Sandstrom said.
TheRC&D annual report said a Renewable Energy Clean Air Project (RECAP) feasibility study is underway in International Falls, investigating a plasma gasification waste-to-energy project that would be the first of its kind in the country.
RC&D also helped one county find funding to educate people in local food production and marketing. People need training to know how to do it successfully, he said.
RC&D likes to help find funding
for projects they believe are
important, Sandstrom said.
. County Assessor/Land
Commissioner Mary Black and commissioners Bruce Martinson and Fritz Sobanja met with U.S. Forest Service officials August 11 to discuss a long-talked-about exchange of BWCAW land for county land.
The board revised the order of its list of land exchange priorities to the following, in order of importance: gravel supply, septic system disposal areas, communication tower sites, fire halls, affordable housing units, recreation
opportunities, cemeteries,
and economic development.
. After an August 15 News-Herald
article regarding the county paying for repair on John Amundson’s property below the new horse park in Grand Marais after the June 2008 flood, Greg Gastecki of Edwin E. Thoreson, Inc. wanted to make sure the board knew that its part in the repair was done properly. Amundson had hired another contractor to do a final grading this summer. According to Gastecki, they completed the job, left a load of gravel exactly where Amundson told them to leave it, and received a phone call from Amundson thanking them for a good job. “Thejob was done right,” Gastecki said.
Amundson had asked the board for reimbursement for the final grading and possibly for some trees he thinks were damaged by the rockslide caused by the flood. He said he did not want to involve the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) if at all possible. Gastecki said the horse park has been constructed properly according to MPCA requirements.
“That’s the cleanest site in
the county,” he said.
. The county board approved purchase
of a new chair for the County Attorney’s Office at a cost of $648. The capital purchase request states that the replacement chair was recommended by a Minnesota Counties Insurance Trust ergonomics review. Purchase of the chair was
included in the 2009 office supply
budget.
. The county board met with
the city council and the Cook County Economic Development Authority (EDA) at 1:00 p.m. Friday, August 28 at City Hall regarding Cedar Grove Business Park bond refinancing, the $60,000 per lot the EDA owes the city for Cedar Grove infrastructure, and financing for the potential biomass-generated heat and energy plant in Grand Marais.
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