County to upgrade Sunflower at 140th to allow public access

Road and Bridge Direc?tor Randy Crawford said Mon?day at the Marion County Commission meeting that he needs to upgrade a section of road at 140th and Sunflower to allow the public to access the road that was altered for construction of Union Pacific Railroad siding.

The commissioners agreed to put down three miles of cold mix road surfacing at a cost of $1,000 a mile in about two months to be followed by chip sealing of the road with funding from $210,000 received from Union Pacific for disruption of the road through to 180th.

The cold mix was part of a $68 a ton purchase the commissioners approved from High Plains Co.

Crawford and the commissioners also reviewed prices and capabilities of road graders offered with Jeff Bender of Foley Equipment and Randy Case of Murphy Tractor & Co., for both new and used machines from Caterpillar and John Deere.

Crawford noted that with variation according to packages offered, new machines were lower in price at times than used machines.

The commissioners approved a road and bridge transport fuel bid of $26,592 for 5,000 gallons of diesel and 3,500 gallons of gasoline from Cooperative Grain of Hillsboro over a competitive bid of $26,914 from Cardie Oil of Tampa.

In reply to a request from commissioners, Sheriff Rob Craft said the average daily cost for keeping a prisoner vary greatly per prisoner. The cost is largely affected by the numbers of prisoners and jailers on hand.

Over time, he said, costs average about $60 a prisoner per day. But costs have varied all the way from $39 a day in 2011 to $75.24 in 2012 to $56.82 in 2013.

He said the jail has been averaging 10 to 15 prisoners at a time with no more than 25 desirable if the commissioners were to decide to add prisoners from somewhere else to offset costs.

The commissioners approved a resolution declaring April 13-19 as National Public Safety Telecommunications Week.

Economic Development Director Teresa Huffman said owners of downtown buildings may apply through her department for 75 percent state funding to restore and upgrade downtown buildings.

Emergency Management Director Randy Frank introduced a new county burn ban plan that would allow him to institute a ban with the concurrence of 51 percent of the fire chiefs in the county subject to notification of the county commissioners by phone.

The commissioners said they would approve the ban process subject to review by County Attorney Susan Robson.

Emergency Medical Director Steve Smith reported 67 ambulance runs for February including 13 from Peabody, four from Florence, 19 from Marion, 28 from Hillsboro and three from Tampa.

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