Street project moving into preliminary engineering
By Michael Johnson, Editor
Washburn city commissioners heard an update on the street project at their last regular meeting. A main topic again was determining how to let the public know about how much they will be paying in special assessments to cover the cost of repairs. AE2S design engineer Jasper Klein was on hand to hand out the task order. This was a large document that he sought out approval for so that it would not have to brought forward for review with each aspect of the project. The commission was in favor of approving the document. Klein proposed opening bids for the project on April 5. Commissioner Brent Barnick questioned if it shouldn’t be done sooner. After further discussion commissioner Kit Baumann also thought it should be sooner as there may be a great deal of conflict involved in the scope of this project. Resident Ray Hager was present and, as he did in a public forum, he brought up what Bismarck did to provide residents with an estimate of what it would cost everyone to do the work before the work started. Klein said that they could get a close estimate to people, but there was no way to get an exact amount. He explained that in Bismarck, the amount residents were told was not correct and the city ended up having to pay for the remainder.
