Floods Wash Out Benton County Road Program

BENTONVILLE — Spring and summer flooding, coupled with the firing or resignation of three top Road Department officials, made a disaster of Benton County’s 2013 road plan.

Officials began the year with an ambitious plan to spend more than $3.2 million to pave 81.4 miles of roads. Flooding from April 18 and May 9 storms caused that plan to be revised. A midsummer replacement plan approved by the Quorum Court in July called for paving 47.9 miles.

The Road Department was rocked in late July and early August when three top administrators were arrested in connection with allegations of theft, and a Aug. 8 storm flooded large sections of the county, leaving the department scrambling to catch up.

At A Glance

What’s Next

Benton County’s Transportation Committee is set to hear a report on the 2014 road program when the panel meets at 6 p.m. Nov. 14 in the Quorum Courtroom at the County Administration Building, 215 E. Central Ave. in Bentonville.

Source: Staff Report

“We didn’t do any chip and seal or double chip and seal this year,” Terry Nalley, the recently hired public service administrator, said Friday.

The paving program has completed 18.56 miles of asphalt paving work this year, but 15.93 miles of 2013 projects remaining unfinished, Nalley said.

Nalley and Jeff Clark, director of road and bridge construction, said the department may get some paving work done before the end of the year, but with the cooler weather, area asphalt plants aren’t operating on a regular basis. The cost of firing up the plants makes producers reluctant to do small batches of the sort the county often needs, Clark said.

County Judge Bob Clinard said the county will push to get some paving work done. If that proves impossible, the department will concentrate on preparing roadbeds for paving so the work can begin as soon as possible in 2014.

The department is focused on repairing damage from the spring flooding. Nalley and Clark said work remained to be done on 21 sites of the 113 damaged in the spring flooding.

Plans are to shift repairing the August flood damage to contractors and get road crews back to their normal work next year, Clinard said. A reorganization plan developed for the department will help with that, Nalley said.

“That’s the game plan,” Nalley said. “With the new positions we are requesting that will give us the extra folks to accomplish the work we need to do.”

The department’s plan, which is still being worked on, isn’t as ambitious as the initial 2013 plan, Nalley said. The current proposal for bridge work and road paving calls for replacing the bridge on Wildcat Creek and the Stage Coach Road bridge for $1.31 million and do 13 miles of asphalt paving, 18 miles of chip and seal paving and 4 miles of double chip and seal paving. The cost of the bridge and paving program is $2.9 million.

Clinard said he plans to have repairs from the August flooding done by contractors. The county has estimated the damage at about $3.5 million and expects to receive about $3 million in disaster aid from the state and federal governments. Clinard said using contractors will increase the cost, but quicken the pace of the work.

“The work on the spring flooding should be finished by the end of the year,” Clinard said. “It will be the end of December or early January before we have all the information we need to go out for bids on the August flooding repairs. With the time needed for the bid process, it will be February before the work is bid out. The vast majority of the work on the August flooding should be done by the end of next year.”

The contract work will take up much of the disaster assistance money the county anticipates receiving in 2014, Clinard said. Sarah Daniels, comptroller, said the county has appropriated $1.5 million for repairs this year, with $453,093 of that having been spent, and has budgeted another $3 million for repair work in 2014. Daniels said the contract work can be paid out of that amount.

Kurt Moore, justice of the peace for District 13, said road plans are always subject to weather and other influences. He said moving some of the work to contract jobs makes sense.

“I think they’ve got to,” Moore said. “With the flooding and the personnel issues they’ve had, this has just thrown a wrench into any kind of program we’ve been trying to make for paving and repairing our roads.”

Moore said speed is a consideration in getting the paving work done, making the use of contractors more feasible even though it will be more expensive.

“A lot of these roads need resurfacing now,” Moore said. “They don’t need to go through another winter, which will damage them even further and make the repairs more expensive. In that regard, I support some use of contract work.”

Tom Allen, justice of the peace for district 4 and chairman of the Finance Committee, said using contractors has been discussed by the Quorum Court for many years.

“We’ve talked about that for years, whether it’s the right thing to do or not,” Allen said. “From our perspective, we only have “X” amount of dollars in the budget and it has to fit within the budget. It will help things get done faster and I think that needs to be considered as well.”

Both Allen and Moore said they will want to have regular reports from the Road Department on plans and progress during the year. Moore said the justices of the peace shouldn’t try to direct the work, but they have to monitor it.

“The Quorum Court doesn’t need to try and tell them what projects they need to do and when to do them,” Moore said. “We need to allocate a pool of money for contract work and when that’s used up it’s used up. The judge can decide how he wants to spend it. I think a quarterly report would be a reasonable thing for them to provide. They do need to tell us what they plan to do and what their timetable is.”

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