County to extend agreement for engineering services
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By Carmen Ensinger
Former Greene County Highway Department Engineer David Marth attended the Monday morning transportation meeting of the Greene County Board to discuss several different items.
One of those items concerned to agreement between the county and Marth’s current employer, Volker Construction, to provide general engineering services to the county while the county is without it’s own Highway Department Supervisor.
The County entered into a six month agreement with Volker after Marth retired in December of 2020. That agreement was extended another six months upon its expiration, but now that agreement has expired.
“That last agreement technically expired on Dec. 9 and this letter is to extend that agreement again and take you through June 9 of 2022,” Marth said. “This takes care of whatever professional engineering services you might need. You are going to have 25 bridges due for inspections this year so you will have to have someone qualified to do those.”
Board member Regan Joehl asked Marth if it was at the same rate as last year and if it could be voided at any time.
Marth said nothing had changed on the agreement.
“The rates are the same as last year and you can end the agreement any time you want,” he said. “We are just trying to help you out until you hire an engineer.”
On another matter, Marth told the board that every year there is a federal funding agreement where the federal government obligates funding for projects to do approximately five years in advance. Greene County was fairly high on the list coming in at number three and stands a good chance to receive this funding.
“I made a suggestion to Mark (Board Chairman Strang) that the county really needs to keep projects moving forward for the day labor crews,” Marth said. “The project I have in mind will be a huge improvement and one I always wanted to do when I was here but there was always something that came up and we couldn’t get to it.”
That project is the realignment of Providence Road down around Jalapa.
“Instead of having four hard 90-degree turns, this realighnment would bring it up to current design standards and have it look more like Daum Road,” Marth said. “The county would have to acquire around eight acres of real estate right of way to do it, which is included in the project cost.”
According to Marth, removing these sharp, 90-degree turns will make the road much safer.
“There was a semi that was hauling grain that turned over last year trying to make it around one of those corners,” Marth said. “This would make it much safer for everyone. But it is going to take quite a bit of surveying so I recommend the county get started doing the engineering on the project.”
The project would be earmarked for fiscal year 2025.
Another project that Marth suggested was a small bridge project in Carrollton Township.
“If you don’t program them now, then you won’t have any projects for the future,” Marth said. “But if you program them in and decide you don’t want to do them, you don’t have to do them. The roadway project is pretty significant Couand will take quite a bit of effort to get it to construction so it needs to be decided now.”
Both projects will be presented to the full board at Wednesday night’s regular county board meeting.
Marth updated the board on the Woody Road resurfacing project as well.
“The only thing left on that project is for me to do the quality control and it will be ready for the letting of bids,” he said. “The plans are done and ready to go.”
Marth did have one rather unsettling bit of news regarding the county not having an engineer in place in over a year.
“The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) has given you an ultimatum,” he said. “That ultimate is your Motor Fuel Tax is going to be suspended until you get one. Not taken away – just suspended.”
Strang didn’t seem too worried about the correspondence from IDOT.
“We will deal with it when we get there,” he said.
