Engineer reports on road projects

WALKER -- Cass County Engineer David Enblom reported Tuesday blacktopping crews have moved onto County State Aid Highway 50 (Upper Ten Mile Lake Road) to lay a surface on the reconstructed bypass section.

A portion of that road was moved farther away from houses last year, but remained a gravel-surfaced road through winter to permit settling before it was surfaced.

Resurfacing on CSAH 7 running east from Longville is 97 percent complete, Enblom said. Seeding ditches and related landscaping type work is all that remains to be done, he said.

Grading is 99 percent complete on the CSAH 31 road reconstruction project running west from Pillager. Enblom said, because gravel hauling will be done across that road this summer, it is being allowed to settle before paving is applied, tentatively scheduled for about mid-August.

The railroad will install cross arm gates and lights where the railroad crosses CSAH 31 later this year or early next year, Enblom said.

Bids received for paving the Remer Depot building parking lot ran well above estimates, but Enblom said the grant for the project should cover the costs. Few contractors bid on small projects like this today, he said, and costs generally have been running very high for small jobs.

The county had estimated the parking lot paving to run $47,000. Anderson Brothers Construction of Brainerd was the successful bidder at $76,776.73. The only other bidder, Tri-City Paving of Little Falls, bid $101,259.50.

The Cass County Highway Department staff will oversee the project to check for quality assurance and compliance with job specifications.

Enblom said he has decided to leave open one vacant engineering technician position for a while, because he got limited response to advertisements to fill the position and because work load for the engineering staff currently is down because of lack of funding for new road construction projects.