The Washington County Board of Supervisors at the Tuesday, May 5, meeting approved an agreement to authorize the County Engineer's staff to provide inspection services for two Iowa DOT construction projects in Washington County for 2009.
District 5 of the Iowa DOT, headquartered in Fairfield, is scheduled to receive $150 million in stimulus finding for infrastructure projects. These shovel ready projects leave the DOT staff short handed to provide the needed inspection services required for the Federally funded projects.
Under the agreement with the County, the DOT will pay wages, benefits and mileage to provide inspection services at the G-36 intersection and the Coppock bridge projects. County Engineer David Patterson stated that both of these projects are nearing completion and the time required by the staff will not be extensive. The scheduling of the inspections can be coordinated with county projects in those areas. Patterson and the Supervisors concurred that the agreement would benefit both parties.
The board approved a personnel change request from Washington County Conservation to hire a temporary summer employee Seth Adams.
Three resolutions for highway right-of-way easement purchases were approved by the board. Three small parcels totaling .21 acres were purchased from Terry Stumpf, Troy Fisher and Linn Havel of Riverside. The easements expand the area for the extension of two box culverts along old highway 218 as part of the improvements scheduled for this year.
The board authorized the Washington County Engineer's Office to acquire a VISA credit card for the department use. Currently only one credit card assigned to the Auditor's Office is in use for all county departments and the unavailability of the card when making equipment purchases or confirming motel reservations has presented difficulties. A limited number of staff at the Engineer's Office will be authorized to utilize the card and administrative procedures are in place. The Engineer's Office is the only county department, which processes their own claims and assigns project numbers before forwarding the claims to the Auditor's Office for payment processing.
The board will consider the appointment of the Weed Commissioner and select the employment tenure at the May 12 meeting.