Need a used grader?
The City of Stanley just put one on consignment. Acting at the Monday Nov. 17 regular council meeting, the council moved to list its road grader with Swiderski, for a figure of $27,000.
The action comes as the city’s last gravel road on 345th Street is scheduled to receive asphalt next year.
Appearing before the council on road matters, meanwhile, were Bob and Lynne Constantine, 8010 345th Street, sharing views on road issues near their residence.
“My name is Bob,” Constantine said. “We live just at the end of Maple Street. We have a couple concerns. Number one, we’re very disappointed in you, the city council of Stanley, for not taking care of that stretch of 345th Street. We moved here four years ago. We were told that ‘next spring or summer’ that road was going to be done. We’ve been living in nothing but dust for four years now. Now we’re getting it from Northside. When they unload that gluten or whatever stuff they unload, when the wind is right we’re getting it from that side. We cannot open our windows. It’s a mess. But I see you guys were started on it. We were so excited. My wife said they were out working that day at the end of our driveway.”
“You could only see that much of the workers,” Constantine said. “They dug it out that much. Because of that my $30,000 driveway entrance sunk, totally cracked…Now we have rocks from dime to silver dollar size coming up our driveway, but no asphalt showed up.”
“Asphalt’s scheduled for spring,” Alderman and President Pro Tempore Mark Fitzsimmons said.
“July,” Constantine countered. “Now the reason being, I heard is because Northside, that’s their busy season. Baloney, their busy season is all the time. Those trucks are running in and out of there,” he said.
Constantine then brought up a section of Janicki Street where the asphalt had been cut out and replaced.
“Boy you got that asphalt in there,” he said. “Same week.”
“We never did asphalt,” Fitzsimmons said.
“I don’t know who did it,” Constantine said. The point was it had been done.
Clarification was then made by city public works head Joe Schmitt.
“So with the patchwork right there, the reason they cut that section out was to tie into the water and sewer for the West Business Park Road,” he said of work on Janicki.
“I’m just saying,” Constantine. With recent city work alleged to have caused the sinking of a $30,000 driveway entrance, Constantine said that, “I expect the city to take care of the entrance of my driveway, he said, “Cut that out and replace it.”
“We’ll look at it in the morning,” Fitzsimmons said.
“I appreciate it,” Constantine said.
Fitzsimmons made a clarification of 345th Street. “They will be putting asphalt on it,” he said.
“It has to go through a freeze-thaw cycle. We don’t finalize it because next year there could be a bad spot right in front of your driveway. We hope not, but it happens.” Schmitt followed Fitzsimmons with a note on paving.
“There are a few spots currently,” he said. “You can take Helgerson. After they put binder down they had to recut that back out because the material under there didn’t meet compaction, and it wrecked the binder level. So that’s one reason like Mark said with the gravel we’d hate to put all that blacktop on there and especially we know because of the amount of truck traffic that road gets to lay that asphalt down and it would all get wrecked. And then you guys aren’t gaining a better road. It would be just as bad if not worse come springtime. We want to make sure that with the amount of traffic especially with Northside, Mahr’s, ACE, all that, we want to make sure that the gravel base is where we need it, so that the longevity of the asphalt and the blacktop will last.”
Freezing is expected to protect the road from having the edge torn up by snowplowing.
Asphalt will be done on 345th Street by the road subcontractor next year.