Riverview Ave. project experiencing delays due to Viking Addition design
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — Although the street work on Riverview Avenue in Colfax is progressing steadily, the project is experiencing delays because there is only one entrance to the Viking Addition.
The week of August 16, the base will be put down and staking will be done for the curb, and then the week of August 23, the street will get asphalt, said Lisa Fleming of Ayres Associates at the Colfax Village Board’s August 9 meeting.
The contractor “knows he’s cutting it tight on the timeframe,” she said.
The contractor for Riverview Avenue is Skid Steer Guy LLC, and prior to awarding the contract to Skid Steer Guy’s low bid last spring, several village board members expressed concern because of delays when the contractor was working on Main Street in Boyceville.
“Why is he behind?” asked Jody Albricht, village president.
The answer, Fleming said, is that most streets in cities and villages are laid out in a grid pattern. When streets are being reconstructed and repaved, the people who live along those streets have two ways to get in and out, so that if one end of the project is blocked one day, the residents can go to the other end of the street to get to their houses.
Fleming said she is so accustomed to working with grid patterns, that she did not necessarily think about the Viking Addition on the north end of Riverview Avenue being landlocked when she was thinking about a timeframe to finish Riverview.
The work on Riverview Avenue is going slower because every night when the contractor shuts down for the day, all of the equipment must be moved and out of the way because there is only one way in and out of Viking Addition, she said.
Skid Steer Guy is working harder to keep the street open for the neighbors than he would on a “regular” street, Fleming said.
“When you land lock a group that big, it becomes more of a problem,” she said.
The contractor must also do more grading and more smoothing out of the street at the end of every day, said Gary Stene, village trustee.
Contractors generally only have to smooth out one lane because the neighbors usually can get out both sides, Fleming said.
Lynn Niggemann, village administrator-clerk-treasurer, said she did not realize, either, that having only one entrance to Viking Addition would add that much more time to the Riverview Avenue project.
407 High Street
There are tree roots in the sewer service at a house on High Street, and now would be the time to get the service out to High Street instead of Riverview, said Rand Bates, director of public works.
The sanitary sewer crosses the lot of a different property owner, Niggemann said.
The cost to install another sanitary sewer service to the sewer main would be $3,120 for the pipe, labor and excavator, Fleming said.
Colfax provides the sewer service with the sewer main, and because the tree roots are in the lateral, it would be up to the property owner to cover the cost, Niggemann said.
The road will already be open, so there would be no street opening costs to connect to the village’s sewer main on High Street, she said.
A lot was sold off the original property, and when the lot was sold, there were no easements for the sewer service, Bates said.
It is difficult to put 2021 requirements in an area where there were no houses 50 or 60 years ago, Stene said.
A previous village board allowed a subdivision to be built with only one entrance, and the current village board is dealing with those problems, he said.
Stene said he was in favor of the village paying the $3,120 to install the sewer service “the right way.”
If the sewer service is installed, the property owner does not have to hook onto it right away, Bates noted.
The Colfax Village Board unanimously approved a motion to pay the cost of fixing the sanitary sewer service on High Street at a cost of $3,120, with the condition that if the property owner does not hook onto the new service now, the property owner will pay for the cost of hooking up later.
Village Trustees Margaret Burcham and Mark Halpin were absent from the meeting.
Voting in favor of the motion were Stene, Albricht and Village trustees Jen Rud, Carey Davis and Jeff Prince.
The village saved money on other items associated with the Riverview project, Davis said, in reference to spending the money to fix the sewer service.
Earlier in the meeting, Fleming had pointed out that while soil borings are common in other municipalities for street projects so the contractors know what kind of soil they will be working with, soil borings are never done in Colfax because the street base is either sand or clay.
The contractors bid the street jobs in Colfax both ways, one bid if they find sand and a different bid if they find clay and have to dig the clay out and haul in sand, she said.
Riverview happens to have a sand base, so the cost of the street project is less than if there was a clay base.
The village also did not have to pay for soil borings prior to the start of the street work.