Contract awarded for grant-funded paving
The Brown County Commissioners awarded Seymour paving company All Star Paving Inc. the contract for this year’s paving projects that will be funded by grant dollars and local matching funds.
The contract for $1,431,686.32 was awarded at the May 6 meeting. Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner had presented the bids for the paving contract at the April 28 meeting.
In April, Brown County received $1 million in Community Crossings grant funding through the Indiana Department of Transportation to pave 11 miles of road: All of Becks Grove Road from State Road 135 to the county line; Mt. Liberty Road from Bellsville Pike to Rinnie Seitz Road; and the southern end of Lick Creek Road south of Cottonwood Road to State Road 45.
The grant required a $333,000 local match.
All Star Paving was one of four companies that bid for the contract. Its bid to pave three roads this year was the lowest by nearly $158,000 over Milestone Contractors out of Columbus. One of the four companies submitted a bid for only two roads.
All Star Paving submitted a draft contract that the commissioners approved unanimously. It will be sent to the county’s attorney and to INDOT review and approval. The contract must be reviewed and approved before the county receives its money, Magner said earlier this month.
Magner said he also would look at additional local funding to pave other county roads this year. He also said he was updating the county’s three-year paving plan.
Greasy Creek Road was not paved last year with the Community Crossings grant funding the county received because the money came in later than expected. Magner said last week that Greasy Creek Road is expected to be paved around the middle of June.
County commissioners laying out reopening plan
The Brown County Commissioners are finalizing a “Back on Track” plan for the county that is similar to Gov. Eric Holcomb’s plan to reopen the state amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Commissioner Diana Biddle said Brown County and other counties are using a template from Vermillion County to outline a timeline of when government functions will begin returning to a new normal.
“It’s just proposed at this point,” Biddle said at the May 20 commissioners meeting.
Biddle said that she was going to check with a couple of departments to make sure the plan matches up with what they are doing before distributing it to county employees by the end of last week.
“We’re now in the place where we’re creating a plan to get any other employees who are working remotely back into the office,” Biddle said.
The hope is that by June 14, government offices will resume work at full capacity — “not necessarily opening any of the buildings or this building yet to the public, but our office staff will be back at full strength,” she said.
Biddle said that some departments, like the Law Enforcement Center and the highway department, already have rethought ways to protect employees from the public. At the meeting, county Maintenance Director Ric Fox reported that safety glass windows are being installed in other county offices, but that there is a delay on the posts that hold the glass.
Fox also said he expected a drop box for the treasurer’s office would be installed last week for residents to drop off property tax payments without coming into contact with anyone.
Redevelopment commission mapping out priorities
The Brown County Redevelopment Commission is mapping out its short- and long-term priorities and wants input from the public.
The BC RDC is a five-member group appointed by the county commissioners and county council for “investigating, studying and surveying areas within Brown County that need redevelopment, and then determining a plan for combating problem areas,” according to the group’s website, choosebrowncounty.com.
Current members are Justin Schwenk, Jim Schultz, Sean Milloy, Gary Bartels and Michael Spalding. The school board also has a representative at meetings, but that person is nonvoting.
In a virtual meeting on May 7, the members — three of whom are new this year — learned about what the group had been working on last year. President Schwenk explained the concept of gathering data about abandoned, vacant homes in the county, which could possibly be rebuilt into affordable, habitable homes. All voting members supported continuing with this project. They also started thinking about others, and started working on a goals chart which is viewable online at https://bit.ly/BCRDCPLAN. The goals chart is on page 15.
Other possible goals members mentioned were looking into uses for vacant commercial properties in the county; creating a countywide land conservation plan; understanding and expanding what attracts young families to this community; creating a unified brand to include both town and county; creating a rotating loan fund; identifying “bergs” in the county that can be reinvigorated; and others.
Schwenk invited any community members who wished to contribute ideas to do so. He can be reached at [email protected].
The group’s next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, May 28 on Zoom. A link will be posted in the “government calendar” file for that week on bcdemocrat.com and on the Brown County Democrat’s Facebook page the evening of the meeting.
Highway department rebuilding part of Hoover Road
Brown County Highway Department staff were busy last week repairing a portion of Hoover Road that collapsed due to water damage from a storm late May 18 and into the morning of May 19.
A resident reported the collapse at the end of Hoover Road near State Road 46 East early May 19 when he tried to leave to go to work.
At the May 20 Brown County Commissioners meeting, Superintendent Mike Magner estimated that the collapsed section was about 10 feet deep.
“We had to pull all of our crews off from other jobs and we spent the last day and a half out there fixing water damage,” Magner said.
After workers finished repairing the road, Magner said they would be put back on normal day-to-day activities like mowing and filling potholes depending on the weather.
Commissioners President Jerry Pittman thanked Magner for his quick response. “That was potentially a disastrous situation with everything gone under the blacktop. If a heavy truck had come down through there it probably would have broken off and then gone into the creek,” he said.
The collapse was brought up while Magner was speaking about a summary budget report he had to submit to the state. The highway department brought in $4.5 million in revenue last year, including a $1 million Community Crossings grant, and spent $4.3 million, he said. The department also has cash reserves for multi-year projects and emergencies like the one on Hoover Road, Magner said.
“We accomplished a lot, bought a lot of equipment and still finished in the black,” Magner said.
He added that the forecast may not be as bright this year with expected decreases in the gas tax related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the money to pave and maintain county roads comes from gas and excise taxes through the state.
“The reductions in our gas tax has not reflected yet in our monthly checks, but I anticipate it any time now. We’ll see some drops in income for a few months,” Magner said.
Bridge going up on Salt Creek Trail, bids rejected
Bridges connecting Salt Creek Trail to Eagle Park all the way through to Brown County State Park are starting to take shape along State Road 46 East.
On May 14, commissioner Diana Biddle shared a photo of some of the bridge pieces being put together near Eagle Park. The bridge pieces arrived for the westernmost leg of the Salt Creek Trail last month. The Indiana Department of Transportation is paying for all the bridge work.
Bids were opened in late April for the Department of Natural Resources’ portion of the trail. This portion is set to go through Eagle Park between two large highway bridges. Pieces of the bridges — which used to span the Eel River on State Road 46 in Clay County — were delivered to Brown County at the end of April, where they will be reassembled and repainted to cross the creek in two places.
At the May 6 Brown County Commissioners meeting, Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner reported that bids from the three contractors came in over the estimate for the funding set aside for the project. He recommended that the commissioners reject the bids and said he would work with the engineering firm on the project to tweak the design to save money. He said the project would then be re-bid.
The DNR is in charge of building the trail section on Eagle Park and state park property. INDOT is only handling the easements and placement of the bridge for that section.
The paved Salt Creek Trail, in development since the early 2000s, will eventually connect the state park with downtown Nashville, and possibly the county-owned Deer Run Park. The first, three-quarter-mile section, between the Nashville CVS and the Brown County YMCA, opened in 2013.
No definite route has been released for the middle section of the trail to connect Parkview Road and the YMCA.
