A proposal to pave more than 3 miles of Devlin Road in northeast Linn County has been tabled after the Linn County Commission deemed the estimate of $850,000-plus too high when other areas of the county needed work as well. (Journal photo illustration)
By Charlene Sims, info@linncountyjournal.com
MOUND CITY – The Linn County Commissioners did not take any action on paving Devlin Road on Monday, Sept. 30. Parker resident Renee Slinkard appeared again before the commission hoping to hear that Commissioner Jim Johnson had talked with Miami County Commissioner George Pretz about the project.
In an earlier meeting, Slinkard told commissioners she was sure that Miami County would finish paving the remainder of its section of Indianapolis Road if Linn County paved on south of the county line to 2200 Road.
That is not the case. Johnson told Slinkard that Pretz had told him that he could not guarantee that the road would be paved without taking it back to the five person Miami County Commission.
Last week, Public Works Director Shaun West had presented the total cost of paving the three mile section of road at $850,000 to $1 million. His figures were based on preparation of the road for paving done by the county crew and chip and seal bids from two companies. The companies were not interested in doing the preparation work.
At that meeting, both McCullough and Commissioner Jason Hightower questioned the practicality of paving Devlin Road when there were other areas in the county that had similar issues.
Slinkard told the commissioners she believed that the estimated cost was too high. She then told the commissioners that she had been working on getting a grant for the project for a year and a half through previous economic development director Jessica Hightower but instead the county had received a grant for a road project on the east side of Highway 7.
She said that Jessica Hightower had explained that Devlin Road did not meet the criteria for the grant that was received for the High Risk Rural Road project on the east side of the county.
Slinkard said that she and a neighbor had found another cost-share grant that would have met the criteria but the deadline had passed for that grant for this year. She handed out information on that grant and asked that the commissioners consider looking at that next year.
Another person, who did not identify himself, said that an ambulance was going to stop and wait at least 15 minutes on trains that went through Parker. He said that his understanding is that a train goes through the town every 30 minutes.
However, trains go through Parker on irregular intervals and rarely block tracks for more than five minutes. If a train stops at Parker waiting for the tracks down the line to clear, it stops north of the tracks intersection with Woodward Street.
Ambulances have occasionally used Earnest Road, which goes north to U.S. 169 Highway from the intersection of Woodward and Center streets.
Slinkard appealed to the commission a few years ago to pave Earnest Road, however, Miami County officials indicated there wasn’t enough traffic on the road for them to pave approximately 3 1/4 miles to the Linn County line.
While no cost estimate was prepared about paving about 4 miles on the Linn County side of Earnest Road, those costs would have included replacing at least one bridge and smoothing out several zero-visibility hilltops. In addition, residents on the road complained that it would become a main traffic corridor instead of County Road 1077.
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