T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — During Wednesday morning’s meeting, the Marshall County Board of Supervisors discussed paving the first 800 feet of Fairman Avenue going south from Highway 30 toward a residential subdivision known as The Pines just outside of State Center.

The Marshall County Board of Supervisors and County Engineer Paul Geilenfeldt discussed the potential paving of about 800 feet of a currently gravel road near a residential subdivision just southeast of State Center off of Highway 30 during Wednesday morning’s regular meeting.

As Geilenfeldt explained, the road is adjacent to The Pines, which includes 16 homes along with eight or nine more just to the south within the first half mile.

“It’s something that was kind of on my radar as a potential for improving a rock road because of our maintenance. It’s got some pretty good traffic,” he said.

The roads inside the subdivision, he added, are private drives, and he estimated that the section between Highway 30 and Evergreen Avenue sees at least 300 vehicles per day.

“I have not done a count on it, but we usually assume that any occupied dwelling creates 12 vehicles per day. And it’s a maintenance problem for us because that entire half mile usually ends up being dust control, and the dust control spots, when they’re long like that — well, any of them — they don’t freeze the same as the rest of the road because we put the flourides in there,” Geilenfeldt said. “And I know from a conversation I had this morning that it is a potholey mess, but it’s that time of year for us too.”

The option he presented to the board was paving the first 800 feet going south off of the highway, which would be a small enough job that it wouldn’t even meet the threshold for putting the project out to bid and could be funded locally with maintenance money. Paving all the way to the end of the subdivision, Geilenfeldt said, would be a much more expensive undertaking of around $500,000.

“The issue with doing that half a mile is that we would have to come up with a way to have a good way to turn snow plow trucks around because when we do pavements that just end and turn to rock when we’re plowing with trucks, we need to be able to turn the truck around without having to, you know, it’s another half mile to go down to the next intersection, so we would have to build some type of turnaround,” he said. “We’ve got a couple places where we have to turn trucks around and we use private driveways. And in a bad snow event, it’s just like every other year, we’ll get a truck stuck and then that plow is there until somebody comes and gets it unstuck. And hopefully we didn’t do damage to something in the landowner’s driveway, so that’s something we’d have to plan as far as the snow removal goes.”

The other challenge he noted is the fact that the piece of Fairman Avenue would be “an island” not attached to any other plow routes. From there, he asked for the supervisors’ feedback and reiterated his position that paving the short 800 foot stretch would provide the most immediate benefit at a lower cost.

“But I’ve had contacts from residents that are south of there on Fairman, so they would not be incredibly pleased if we decided to just do the 800 feet,” Geilenfeldt said.

He added that the project would not be on the immediate schedule and would also need to be paid for entirely with local tax dollars sans a state or federal match. Residents of The Pines, Geilenfeldt said, are considering paving their internal private roads, and if they do so, they would likely intend to get them onto the county system.

“I don’t know that for a fact, but that would make the project possibly a little cheaper because there would be more tons to put in with it,” he said. “But I don’t have anything on their timeline or how their progress is going. I spoke with the (Homeowners Association) president, and that was six months ago. It’s hard to get that many landowners to agree on (the idea that) we’re gonna invest this money because it would be a major investment for them.”

He offered to put the project in the secondary roads program while continuing conversations with leadership at The Pines and seeing what develops. Board Chairwoman Carol Hibbs said that if they’re planning to improve their internal roads, it would give the county more incentive to do something, a statement with which Geilenfeldt agreed. She offered her support for paving the short stretch first and then getting the larger project programmed into the county’s long-term plans.

The other issue Geilenfeldt raised was the ongoing expansion of Marshall Ridge Farms just a few miles to the west, and Thomas Trucking drivers often pass through Fairman when they haul hailage and silage. Supervisor Kevin Goodman asked how far the entire stretch of Fairman from Highway 30 down to Highway 330 runs, which County IT Director James Nehring said was about 5 ½ miles.

“I’m not totally familiar with that grade, but it’s unlikely that it would be pavable, where the piece of Fairman that I’m talking about right now is a pavable grade right now. It’s fairly flat and would require any earth work that could be done with a motor grader to prep it, and that helps the cost quite a bit,” Geilenfeldt said.

Both Hibbs and fellow Supervisor Jarret Heil were in agreement about starting on the small stretch, and Geilenfeldt said it had already been on his radar even before he was contacted by a resident. The board took no official action.

In other business, the board:

• Approved the consent agenda and personnel changes as presented.

• Approved a contract with Aware Health for musculoskeletal management services to begin on July 1, 2025.

• Approved a county and MHDS Region Data Release form.

• Approved a Memorandum of Understanding with Jasper County to share the construction costs of Bridge C05 on 340th Street along the line between the two counties.

• Approved the awarding of a contract to Iowa Bridge and Culvert LC of Washington, Iowa, in the amount of $570,547.64 for the replacement of a box culvert on Abbott Avenue over Sugar Creek. The culvert is along the Marshall-Tama County line, and the cost will be split evenly between the two and be reimbursed entirely through each county’s HBP funds.

Set the public hearing on the proposed property tax levy for the upcoming fiscal year for Monday, March 24 at 9 a.m.

Set the public hearing on the proposed 2024-2025 Marshall County budget amendment for Wednesday, March 26 at 9 a.m.

Set the public hearing on the proposed 2024-2025 Marshall County decrease in appropriations for Wednesday, March 26 at 9 a.m.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.