Biggest projects for 2019 still on KCRC calendar
Courtesy photo
Work to upgrade a two-mile stretch of Puffer Road, from M-66 to US-131, was recently completed as a precursor to the reconstruction of another 1.5 miles from Farm Lane to Inman Road.
KALKASKA – Depending on one’s point of view, the Kalkaska County Road Commission might be saving the best – or at least the biggest – projects for last, as it works to complete its 2019 summer “to-do” list.
Work to upgrade a two-mile stretch of Puffer Road, from M-66 to US-131, was recently completed as a precursor to the reconstruction of another 1.5 miles from Farm Lane to Inman Road.
The two projects cost a total of about $590,000 and will help local motorists with another upcoming project.
“Why did we do this first?” said KCRC Manager John Rogers, when talking about the work on Puffer Road. “That’s where we’re going to be detouring traffic when we do Lund Road.”
The reconstruction of nearly three miles of Lund Road, from M-66 to Good Road, is the largest, or at least most expensive, on the KCRC’s summer to-do list with a price tag of nearly $940,000.
“This is the summer’s big project,” Rogers said. “That’s a total reconstruction.”
But, of that total, Rogers said about $750,000 is federal funding, with the KCRC using about $100,000 from a countywide 5-year, 1.0-mill levy approved in 2014 and the rest from its general fund.
He added the project, which is slated to begin in mid-July, is one of the key examples of how the KCRC is able to use local funds generated by the countywide millage to get additional funding in the form of state or federal grants.
“We got a million-dollar project for $250,000,” Rogers said.
The project, once completed, should fix what KCRC officials to be one of the three worst county roads in Kalkaska County. And, Rogers can bear witness to that fact, having started his career with the KCRC on Sept. 25, 1995, filling potholes on Lund Road.
“The potholes I was patching in 1995 were big and plentiful then,” he said. “There were some real wheel-benders.
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