COMANCHE COUNTY - Spring rains and legislative raids on a county commissioners’ transportation “savings account” have played havoc with Comanche County road and bridge maintenance projects.
Because of recent flooding, District 1 County Commissioner Gail Turner had to replace three large tinhorns: one south of Fletcher, one southeast of Sterling, and one east of Elgin.
District 3 County Commissioner Alvin Cargill said his transportation crews also had to “replace or reset some culverts due to the rains.”
BEHIND SCHEDULE
District 1 crews are “behind schedule on mowing and spraying around traffic signs and bridges,” and bar ditches are “saturated,” Turner said. The weather “has put us behind on everything,” echoed Cargill.
District 3 has 635 miles (“plus or minus”) of county roads, Cargill said, and Turner said his district has “about 600 miles” of roads for which he’s responsible.
Besides coping with fickle weather, county commissioners across the state have had dozens of road and/or bridge repair or replacement projects delayed because the Legislature previously siphoned $230 million from the County Improvements for Roads and Bridges (CIRB) fund to plug holes in the state budget.
Since its inception in 2006, the CIRB has reduced the number of structurally deficient bridges on local roads by more than 1,860, according to the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.
CIRB FUND
The CIRB is a fund that county commissioners across the state use to finance big-ticket projects. The CIRB is a savings account; typically a commissioner has to let the necessary funds build up over a period of years.
Under the terms of the program, a county commissioner must have all of the funding in hand before starting a bridge replacement or road reconstruction project that will be paid for through the CIRB.
LEGISLATIVE RAIDS
The first two times the Legislature raided that fund, 40 county road/bridge projects throughout the state were delayed.
One victim of the repeated raids is a nearly seven-mile reconstruction project on Trail Road east of Elgin, extending from about half a mile south of Spencer Road north to SH-17. That job has been on the drawing board for a decade, but because of the CIRB funding diversions the project has been pushed back for three more years, to 2022, Turner said.
A bridge on east/west County Road 157 spanning Beaver Creek eight-tenths of a mile south and eight-tenths of a mile east of Sterling is slated for replacement.
Preliminary engineering on that project was scheduled to be performed in Fiscal Year 2020, which starts July 1, but the job got bumped.
“It’s now probably three to five years out,” Turner said. Fortunately, although the truss bridge is old and narrow, it’s nevertheless “sturdy and stout,” the commissioner said.
The bridge on east/west County Road 165 crossing West Cache Creek a little over one mile south and four-tenths of a mile west of the junction of US-62 and SH-115, near Cache in Cargill’s district, is scheduled for utility relocation and right-of-way acquisition in FY 2020.
Those tasks must be completed before the structure can be replaced.
A truss bridge on east/ west County Road 169 spanning East Cache Creek two miles south and one mile east of the junction of Interstate 44 and SH-7, south of Lawton, was scheduled to be replaced in the current FY 2019. However, that project “got hung up over environmental issues” and has been pushed back indefinitely, Turner said.
One bright spot is a project to replace a bridge on Meers-Porter Hill Road (E/ W-154) spanning Nine Mile Beaver Creek 2.2 miles east of Elgin. That bridge, which is 80 feet long and 26 feet wide, is on track to be replaced in FY 2020 and on a new alignment, Turner said.
The job will cost an estimated $1,375,000, Oklahoma Department of Transportation ledgers reflect.