County Airport’s runway to be resurfaced

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The Fayette County Commissioners entered into several contracts this week, including a contract to rehabilitate the county airport.

The Federal Aviation Administration offered by way of a grant to pay 90 percent of the allowable costs incurred by the county when rehabilitating the airport’s runway. The maximum obligation comes to $665,875 for airport development. The county will be “milling and filling” the runway.

“What is happening at the airport is just a resurfacing of the runway,” Fayette County Engineer Steve Luebbe said. “Nothing else is being done at this time, but there is at least a five year plan, I think maybe a 20-year plan, for upgrades to the airport. There is federal money available every year, but many years we don’t do a big project and so we save it up. This is the culmination of several years of federal money.”

According to Luebbe, there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the runway, it was simply time to resurface.

“The plans were done in-house to save money,” Luebbe said. “But we don’t really do a lot with the airport. In the 90s when I got here, we worked a lot with them, but then the guy who did all that work retired and we lost the ability and the manpower. But we are starting to get more involved with the airport than we had been in recent years.”

Luebbe said future plans include improving and moving the taxi-way, among other upgrades.

The Fayette County Airport is a county-owned, public-use airport located at 2770 State Route 38.

The commissioners also entered into a contract with Busy Beaver Tree Service to provide labor and material to remove trees behind the Commission on Aging building, clear out brush 10 feet from each side of the building, clean out and fix gutters on the garage, trim and cut back all bushes and trees off the surface lane behind the Commission on Aging, and haul off the brush and debris. The cost of the contract came to $3,800. The work is expected to be completed by Aug. 31.

Busy Beaver was also contracted to provide labor and material to trim maple trees on the corner lot, plant grass seed, and haul off all brush and debris at a cost of $425.

The county entered into a maintenance agreement with MorphoTrust USA from Bloomington, Minn. for the Live Scan Fingerprint System to be used at the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office. The maintenance agreement comes to $3,021 for a period of six months, from Oct. 1 to March 31, 2016.

The commissioners also entered into a contract with ECHO 24, Inc., of Reynoldsburg, for a Vertical Wave 2500 phone/voicemail system for the Fayette County Courthouse. The system is digital and expandable to up to 500 users. The system includes rack mounting, call routing, voice mail, call recording, and conferencing, and can be networked in the future. Installation and materials come to $39,143, with a cost of $2,089.20 per year for support for three years.

DGM, Inc. entered into a contract with the county for the Washington Waterloo Road bridge rehabilitation. DGM quoted the county in the amount of a $472,171.20. The project is expected to begin in mid-September, with the road closing for up to three months.

“There were structural problems to this bridge,” Luebbe said. “We are going to remove the existing deck and pier caps, then modify the existing abutments, add new beams, and grade it. The bridge was already rated low, the things that were wrong with it were worsening quickly. Everything else is just modifying and updating.”

http://www.recordherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2015/08/web1_Image-of-airport.jpg
Commissioners enter into several contracts

By Kellee Bonnell

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Reach Kellee Bonnell at (740) 313-0355 or on Twitter @newskelleebee.

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