By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Action was light at Wednesday morning's Barton County Commission meeting, but the body did approve a pair of hefty contracts. County Works Director Darren Williams presented a bid for the county's cold mix asphalt contract, and County Engineer Barry McManaman presented a bid for road striping. McManaman said the Road and Bridge Department will be doing maintenance work on roads north of K-4 Highway and east of Susank Road.
"The Road and Bridge Department is going to be overlaying and chip sealing in the northeast quadrant of the county this year," he told the commission. "Following the chip seal work, we always have to stripe the center line and edge lines."
McManaman did reach out to two companies in the Wichita area for the striping work, but received just one bid from Straight-Line Striping, Inc., based out of Grand Island, Neb. The lone bid for the 98 miles of road involved came in at $131,854.20. McManaman and Williams have been pleased with Straight-Line's work on past projects.
"On that 98 miles, the white edge lines add to up to just a hair over 1,000,000 lineal feet of striping, and the yellow center line and dash lines is just shy of half a million, so we've got about a million and a half total feet of striping we have to put out there," McManaman said. "It's a big job."
The county received one bid for the cold mix asphalt contract for 2023. The bid specified mixing approximately 25,000 tons of the material. That contract was given to Venture Corporation at a rate of $8.90 per ton. The rate increased from $8.15 per ton last year.