After a 45-minute discussion at a special meeting Friday, the Clearwater Twp. Board of Supervisors voted to table its decision on the road reconstruction project at the intersection of Illsley Ave. and 125th Street near the Suconnix State Wildlife Management Area.

 

Earlier in the week, the board opened bids for the project and sent those bids to be reviewed by the engineer. The lowest bidder was New Look Contracting, Inc. at $194,308.

 

Friday, the special meeting was called to either award the lowest bid or reject all the bids and scrap the project.

 

The board did neither.

 

About a dozen residents attended the meeting, and it was clear none of them were in favor of spending almost $200,000 to fix the road.

 

Resident Dave Kunkel was the first to speak. 

 

“Why is it we’re considering this project to begin with?” he asked.

 

Supervisor Dan Mol explained it was a safety issue. There were very poor sightlines near the intersection. So the board decided to have an engineer design the project.

 

Kunkel said there was no history of any accidents at the intersection, and presented the board with a list of accident reports from the Wright Co. Sheriff’s Office over the last five years.

 

“I’m not quite sure how you can tell me it’s a safety issue when we have absolutely nothing on either of those two roads,” he said.

 

Mol said the township has been working on the project for a year and a half. He said even if there weren’t any recent accidents, there were a lot of close calls. 

 

“It’s not like we just came up with this,” he said. “We had BWSR (Board of Water and Soil Resources) and the DNR out here. We all met on the road and came up with those decisions.”

 

Maintenance Supervisor Mike Ludenia said a lot of work and planning went into the design of the project, including permits from the DNR and Army Corps of Engineers.

 

“It’s getting tougher and tougher to get permitting to do this stuff,” he said. “It took a year just for this little project.”

 

“If we choose not to proceed tonight, then all that effort basically is down the drain and it won’t be available to us for a good amount of time,” said Supervisor Bill Langenbacher.

 

When asked how busy the road was, Supervisor Scott Miller said the traffic count was 91 vehicles per day, second lowest in the township. He didn’t like the idea of doing a project on a road that wasn’t used much.

 

“A lot of people think this is just going to get approved. I don’t know how the rest of you guys are going to feel on the board, but I’m not in favor of this project, either,” he said. “We spent the (engineering) money in good faith to get a feel for what it’s going to cost. It’s not that we didn’t get anything for our money. We can always revisit this at a later point. The road’s not going to change.”

 

Miller said he felt the township could improve the sightlines at a lower cost and use chip seal on four more miles of road for the same amount it would cost to do the project.

 

“I think there’s other places we could spend that money and have a better benefit to the township as a whole,” he said.

 

Resident John Notsch agreed.

 

“We’ve been telling you for a year and a half that this project is not what we as the taxpaying public want,” he said. “We want the money spent where it does the most good, which is the roads that are heavily travelled. Not one that gets 91 cars a day in a good month.”

 

Resident Ron Schabel said there wasn’t any problem with the township getting the engineering work done to get an estimate of the project cost. But moving ahead with the project is a different story. He called the bid numbers “sticker shock”.

 

“Some of us questioned this all along. (Former Supervisor) Dave Nelson even questioned it. He was concerned about the cost,” he said.

 

Resident Blayne Leuthard said there had to be a less expensive way to fix the sightlines. 

 

“You should have an alternative plan than to spend $200,000 on a low-traveled road,” he said. “There’s got to be something different. It’s too much money.”

 

Mol said the project involves cutting the high spots and using that dirt to flatten the road. 

 

Langenbacher said he was very surprised that so many people were against the project.

 

“This project has been under discussion for a year and a half. I’ve been on the board since November and I haven’t had one single person opposed to it,” he said.

 

Miller made a motion to reject all the bids, but there was no second to his motion. “Maybe you should have another meeting and see if there’s other residents in the township that want to voice their opinion on the positive side,” said Leuthard.

 

Langenbacher said he looked at the project from a safety standpoint and all the work that had already been done.

 

“I’ve driven the road myself and I can see safety issues. The township is responsible to make roads safe whether or not there’s already been accidents,” he said. “I would be for the project. But now seeing all these people against it, are you representative of the township or are you representative of those against the project? I’m really torn at this point.”

 

He made a motion to table the vote until the next monthly meeting on March 14 to give others in the township who might be in favor of the project a chance to voice their opinion. The vote passed, 3-0.