Seward County Commissioners have voiced opposition to using their small issue exemption to issue bonds without voter approval for the paving of 420th Road, but are not yet saying yes to a bond issue.
Commissioner Raegan Hain brought the issue before the commissioners at their Dec. 9 meeting, proposing that with or without plans for a voter-approved bond issue, the commissioners take on a multi-faceted effort to share information about the 420th Road project countywide. That would include community meetings, articles, flyers and other means of communicating with county residents.
The project involves paving the section of 420th Road from the Interstate 80 Beaver Crossing Exit north to Highway 34, for which the county received $3 million in federal grants to engineer and survey in preparation for paving a few years ago.
Most of that work has been done and the county had expected $4 million earmarked by Sen. Deb Fischer as a Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) request to complete the project. But 420th Road was one of several projects in the area deleted from a continuing resolution in the U.S. Congress in April.
The county had recently worked with Rep. Mike Flood for a similar allocation of $1 million for the project, but Hain received an email during the Dec. 9 meeting indicating that request was cut in the most recent continuing resolution.
So about $4 million is still needed to complete the project.
Hain wants to see the road completed and invited area residents to speak to the commissioners last week.
Dave Mooney who has lived on 420th Road for 35 years and owns a feedyard created there in 1962, said people in other parts of the county and some commissioners may not realize the traffic that road sees or the condition it is in.
“They are spending a lot of time trying to keep this road up and they just can’t do it because of the amount of traffic,” Mooney said in an interview Dec. 12.
The road, he said, is a strategic passage between Highway 6, Interstate 80 and Highway 34 for the western part of the county.
He cited heavy truck traffic during harvest when western Seward County farmers may be taking grain south to Fairbury, detours are needed from Interstate 80, trucks from his and other operations are moving cattle and supplies, as well as students travelling to and from Centennial from areas south of the interstate.
Mooney said detouring traffic from the interstate following a rain tears up the road in its current condition and raises safety issues. Such conditions push vehicles of all kinds to use Adams Road, which is also not built for such traffic, to go west to the Utica Highway.
Jeremy Stoll and Mary Stoll, who also live and work on or near 420th Road, also spoke at the commissioners’ meeting.
The area residents and Sheriff Mike Vance said the road could be dangerous for drivers.
Hain said she does not know if the county will have to return the $3 million already received if the county does not complete the paving project by 2032, though there was question about whether it could be used to complete a portion of the road.
“That sounds like a lot of time, but it’s not with all we have to do,” Hain said.
“It would be a shame for Seward County to see those funds go away.”
Tim McCarthy, project engineer for Kirkham Michel, the company that worked on the road plans, said the possibility for federal grants for projects like this now is slim. He also said the project does not fit the criteria for Nebraska Department of Transportation funding.
Jay Spearman, managing director for Northland Securities, also attended the commissioners meeting to provide information on bond financing for the project.
He said issuing a $4.5 million bond to be repaid over 5 years at 3.5% interest would require a $1 million annual payment and a 2.4 cent tax levy. The same amount with a 15-year payback period and 3.9% interest would require an annual $400,000 payment and a levy of just under 1 cent.
Hain said some years ago the road was apparently graded for paving, but the paving was not done.
That preparation has allowed the road to become wider and lower than the ditches in some areas, causing water to pool and creating more damage, Hain said.
She said the county could look at re-phasing the project to do something rather than nothing on the road.
“The farmers pay the greater amount of property taxes and this is a significant agricultural route,” she said.
The 420th Road segment is one of two unpaved connectors between Interstate 80 and Highway 34 in Seward County, the other being 154th Road going north from the Pleasant Dale exit.
Commission Chair Misty Ahmic said residents in that area have also approached the county about paving the road between the interstate and Highway 34.
