Thecounty board met in a special session Tuesday, June 29, 2010 to approve awarding a pavement overlay job on the Sawbill Trail in Tofteto KGM Construction. The$24,150 of work, to include eight patches and matching some seams so snowplows can proceed smoothly, will be done before KGM leaves the county with the equipment it has been using to reconstruct portions of Highway 61 between Tofte and Lutsen.
When the Caribou Trail received its last overlay, Highway Department Maintenance Supervisor Russell Klegstad told the board, it wasn’t compacted properly, producing dips in the road that are problematic all year
round. Klegstad had planned to accept the bid without a special meeting of the board until he realized that a bid of that amount required board authorization.
The board, with Commissioner Jan Hall absent, unanimously passed a motion to award the Caribou Trail bid to KGM.
A more difficult decision was how to respond to a disagreement with KGM over what the company should be required to do with about a block of Springdale Road in Tofte that it used to transport rock from its Highway 61 project to its storage location on the old Tofte airport runway. KGM had made an agreement with the Town of Tofte to pave the Birch Grove Community Center parking lot in exchange for being allowed to use the old runway as a gravel storage spot for a minimum of five years and agreed to restore Springdale Road to its previous condition.
Both the county and KGM took pictures of Springdale Road before KGM transported the rocks over it, but KGM wanted to patch it up, whereas Klegstad believes it should be overlaid. The pavement there now is about 10 years old.
Commissioner Bob Fenwick wondered if this would be an easy job for them. “This is gravy for them?” he asked.
“Well, it’s pretty nice,” Klegstad answered. “They’re right there.”
Klegstad said he thought the county should insist that the road be overlaid. He wondered if the county should dangle the Sawbill overlay job over KGM’s head rather than awarding the bid to them outright as a way to convince them to fix Springdale Road in the manner he suggested. Commissioner Jim Johnson thought the Springdale Road issue should be kept separate from the issue of patching the Sawbill Trail.
Klegstad said KGM’s storage of rock in Tofte almost ensures their getting the bid on the next Minnesota Department of Transportation highway project in the area since they will be able to provide necessary fill from nearby. He gave KGM the benefit of the doubt, however, by suggesting that since the rock will eventually be removed from the airstrip, KGM might not want to face having to redo Springdale Road a second time. Commissioner Bruce Martinson pointed out that per the agreement, KGM will be required to take a different route from the airstrip when they remove the rock. They will not use Springdale Road again.
The group, including new Cook County Highway Engineer David Betts in his second day on the job, talked about the fact that the Springdale Road pavement was already 10 years old. Commissioner Fenwick joked, “Let them put in 10-year old asphalt.”
The board instructed Klegstad to tell KGM that the county believes overlay is the appropriate way to restore Springdale Road.
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