By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
Barton County's Road and Bridge Department will begin its annual road overlay work later this spring. When that is finished, the roads will need to be striped with yellow and white pavement markings.
On Wednesday, Barton County Commissioners approved a $93,500 contract to have the work completed by Straight-Line Striping from Grand Island, Nebraska. Straight-Line was the only company to submit a bid for the project.
County Commissioner Jennifer Schartz said the road striping is a good example of how the county spends its money.
“The county is responsible for a lot of things, and I think sometimes our taxpayers don’t understand where their money goes,” Schartz commented. “But in something as simple as striping the asphalt roads that we have in the county, it’s almost a hundred thousand dollars. So I just want to point that out that sometimes just doing regular business and keeping the county going is quite costly.”
County Engineer Barry McManaman told commissioners that the road work is done each year on one-quarter of the county's roads.
“This year the road and bridge crew will be working in basically the southeast quadrant,” McManaman said. “Last year, we did the southwest quadrant, so they work their way around the county doing this annual work.”
Commission Chairman Shawn Hutchinson pointed out that there are more than 400 miles of paved county roads.