“All the road restrictions are finally lifted,” Cook County Highway Maintenance Supervisor Russell Klegstad told the county board on August 13, 2013. “It’s almost time to close them again!”
Highway Engineer David Betts said he was trying to decide whether winter had started again or if it had never ended, but then he said he thought we had summer a couple of weeks ago – on a Tuesday.
The Highway Department has been finishing up its application of calcium chloride to selected gravel roads throughout the county. This is not done until road restrictions are lifted.
Zip line lane closure
Engineer Betts reported that he approved closing a lane of traffic on the lower Gunflint Trail between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. during the development of the Superior Zip Lines property. Traffic will be stopped briefly when blasting is going on.
About 2,300 cars travel that portion of the Gunflint Trail each day in the summertime, Betts said. An estimated 8.6 percent of them are large vehicles such as buses, semis, and logging trucks – about one every 33 minutes.
Commissioner Sue Hakes asked if a logging truck going up to Hedstrom Lumber Company would have difficulty starting up the hill again if it were stopped during the blasting. Betts said the grade of the road at that spot is 4½-5½ percent, and a stopped truck could get going again but would end up going very slowly up the hill.
Commissioner Sue Hakes asked who would be responsible for the cost if they needed to construct a bypass lane there. While developers sometimes pay for things like that, Betts answered, it would probably fall on the Highway Department in this case because it was not something approved by the Planning & Zoning Department with conditions like that set out.
Of the traffic decisions that need to be made when projects like this are undertaken, Betts said, “Developers don’t always see how right I am. …We put them through their paces…. We did the best that we could with the property that’s sitting there.”
Sale of surplus equipment
The board authorized the Highway Department to sell 14 pieces of equipment, including three pickups, three plow trucks, a loader, a forklift, and some pickup tool boxes. Maintenance Supervisor Klegstad said he thought they could get $150,000- 160,000 for it, and the money would be used to purchase equipment in the future.
The equipment will be put out for bid on the state’s Fleet & Surplus Services website. Highway Accountant Lisa Sorlie said they have the right to refuse a sale if the bid isn’t high enough.
Klegstad said they have a minimum price set for a 2009 plow truck. He said they expect to get $70,000 for it, whereas they expect only $20,000-27,000 for the 2000 and 2003 plow trucks. When asked why there were getting rid of such a new vehicle, he said it gets 1 m.p.g. when plowing, whereas the other plows get 5-6 m.p.g. Repairs on the truck have already totaled what they paid for the truck, he said. “It’s a very nice truck,” he said, however. He said it is much more modern than the others. It has been used as a spare, but Klegstad said it would be more valuable if they sold it.
Rollover
Engineer Betts reported that one of their pickups, a one-ton Chevy, was totaled the week before when their two summer interns were involved in a rollover on the Gunflint Trail near Hedstrom’s. They veered off the road when the driver was trying to turn up the volume on the department radio to hear an incoming call. They were bruised but not severely injured.
The vehicle landed upside down and the two interns, who are 6’ 3” and 6’ 7”, crawled out a very small space to get out. “It was pretty scary,” Betts said. “I think they were pretty shaken up.”
The air bags did not deploy as they should have, Betts said. He does not expect to get full replacement value from insurance.
2012 annual report
Betts, Sorlie, and Klegstad presented the department’s 2012 annual report to the board. Sorlie said that while they had no cash on hand at the end of 2012, they expect to have several hundred thousand dollars cash on hand by the end of this year. She said other counties also fluctuate a lot in the amount of cash on hand they have.
Weather is a big factor in the Highway Department’s annual expenses, such as when a lot of plowing is needed, but some purchase prices fluctuate a great deal as well. In 2011, the county paid $3.89 per cubic yard for gravel crushing, but the next year, they paid as high as $6.08 per cubic yard and as low as $2.78 per cubic yard.
The department paid out $6,817,996.31 in cash disbursements in 2012.
Accountant Sorlie said that in the first half of this year, they had already spent 124 percent of what they had budgeted for heating the maintenance buildings in 2013. EngineerBettsisrequestinga3percent budget increase for 2014, in line with the amount the county will be allowed to increase its levy.
Engineer Betts wrote in his annual report, “As always, our goal is to provide the best level of service possible to the citizens who travel our roadways.”
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