Highland County Engineer P. Dean Otworth met with commissioners Wednesday to discuss road improvement projects on tap for 2019, telling the board that contractors will bid on a Tolle Road improvement project on March 21.
“I’ve been working with Liberty Township on Tolle Road, which goes from State Route 138 and extends over to U.S. 50,” he said. “We had a section about three-tenths of a mile long where we did a bridge project about six years ago.”
The undertaking will include reconstruction of the existing sections that hadn’t been done prior to the 2013 bridge project, and Otworth said it would significantly improve the entire 2.1 miles of Tolle Road.
Construction will begin after July 1 with a completion date of late October, he said.
Another road improvement project still in the design phase involves the intersection of Mad River Road and SR 73 near New Vienna, where he said the angle of the intersection is a dangerous 40 degrees.
“This is a safety project that involves a curve about three-tenths of a mile south of that intersection and the intersection itself,” he said. “ODOT (Ohio Department of Transportation) is paying for the engineering on the intersection, where the ideal angle is 90 degrees and the maximum it can be is 7 degrees on new designs, so we’re going to bring that into compliance with a new 90-degree angle at the intersection.”
He said ODOT also was planning a new left-turn lane for south bound drivers to use when turning from SR 73 onto Mad River Road.
The price tag for the Tolle Road project is $1.5 million, he said, while the Mad River Road intersection project will top out at about $600,000.
In other matters, two sealed bids were opened and approved for acquisition of reinforced concrete storm sewer pipe and precast reinforced concrete box culverts.
A bid of almost $70,000 was accepted from Rinker Materials for the piping, and a bid for over $144,000 from Mack Industries was accepted for the box culverts, which Otworth said was for improvements on Carper Lane, Smart Hill Road and Riber Road.
Commissioners voted to accept a quote of $2,900 from Weller’s Plumbing for replacement and upgrading of filter grids at the Hi-Tec Center, which Commissioner Terry Britton described as “costly and time consuming when it came to doing preventative maintenance.”
In addition to cost savings that will be realized over the next two and a half years, Britton said installing the newer filter grids will make preventative maintenance simpler and will reduce interruption of services at the facility.
Commissioners also gave their stamp of approval for an annual application on behalf of the Highland County Recycling and Litter grant.
In other business, commissioners approved three resolutions authorizing line-item budget transfers, while the another dealt with improvements on Tolle Road.
Commissioners were also signatory to a trio of contracts, two of which had to do with the improvement project on Tolle Road and the roadway improvements design proposal between the county engineer and Carpenter Marty Transportation, Inc. regarding design studies for the SR 73/Mad River Road intersection near New Vienna.
The remaining contract was a prisoner housing agreement with the Morrow County Sheriff’s Office.
Reach Tim Colliver at 937-402-2571
