WHEATLAND — Platte County has paused in making improvements to the Palmer Canyon Road bridge at the Laramie River to examine an engineer’s proposal.
“We’ve been working on this for a couple years now,” Platte County Commission Chairman Steve Shockley said Thursday. “Originally the tubes washed out when we had high water a couple summers ago.”
Shockley said the county replaced the tubes with a prefabricated bridge, which has temporary abutments. He said this phase of the project was to make the abutments permanent, so the county issued a request for proposals for engineer services to design the abutment.
Meeting minutes report the commission reviewed the proposal from AVI Engineering during the April 3 regular meeting, then decided to re-evaluate the plan due to the total cost of the project.
“We had some questions on some of the line items on the engineer’s proposal,” Shockley explained. “We had done some of the stuff before when we put temporary footers in, so we wanted to double check and make sure we’re not paying for something we’ve already done.”
Shockley added that some other items in the engineer’s proposal might be things the county can do in house.
Shockley said ultimately, the county wants to make the bridge wider; currently it is one lane. But that will have to be a fourth phase, he said, explaining the county has to do such costly projects in steps it can afford.
In other business, the Platte County Commission:
▪ Approved vouchers totaling $47,3585.30.
▪ Approved collections: Platte County Clerk Chris Kanwischer, $11,946.20; Clerk of Court Mona McAuley, $1,510.40.
▪ Approved an encroachment license from Harry Horblit.
▪ Learned that a notice has been received that the water and sewer for the Road & Bridge shop will be increasing to $204.57 a month.
▪ Approved the readdressing of 3 and 9 Gibson Road as proposed by the Planning Department.
▪ Approved building certificates from Doug Walker, Harry and Saundra Horblit, and Phillip and Sammie Ridinger.
▪ Decided to notify the program manager of the Community Prevention Services Grant that Platte County will not submit an application for the grant at this time due to the county’s limited resources. Platte County Public Health Nurse Manager Nicole Sticka presented a draft of the grant application and said she doesn’t feel she has the time to properly manage another program and employee in her office at this time even though she feels the program is needed in the community.
▪ Approved a letter of support for Planner Malcolm Ervin to the town of Wheatland.
▪ Hosted an open house from 3-5 p.m. in honor of Jim Lockman’s retirement after over 35 years of service with Platte County Road & Bridge.
The Platte County Commission next meets at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in the commission chambers in the basement of the Platte County Courthouse.
