Edgar preps sidewalk costs for CTH H project

By Kevin O’Brien

Edgar residents with damaged sidewalk sections in front of their homes and businesses on Third Avenue will soon find out how much they will have to pay for repairs and replacements in conjunction with a CTH H project planned for next year.

At a streets committee meeting on Monday, village administrator Jennifer Lopez said a list of sidewalks in need of work has been compiled, and the village is trying to pin down cost estimates for the work that needs to be done. The village will have a better idea of the costs by next month, she said, and a resolution will need to be passed by the board to send out notices to landowners facing special assessments.

A lion’s share of the cost will fall on the village itself, Lopez said, since it will pay 50 percent of the cost for sidewalks in front of private land plus 100 percent of its own sidewalk responsibilities.

“So, if there’s a boulevard tree that caused the damage, that becomes a village expense,” she said.

The list of sidewalk sections in need of work does not include curb ramps that will need to be reshaped in order to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, which is required as part of the 2025 county highway project.

Quest Civil Engineers, the firm hired by the county to oversee the project, has said the village’s portion of the engineering costs will be $132,729 for designing the 42 new curb ramps that need to be redone, Lopez said.

Lopez said she recently found out from the county that the cost for redoing the curb ramps will be higher than originally anticipated, based on recent bid results that have come in “consistently higher than average due to the staging and handwork required for these operations.” The village’s costs also include approximately $10,000 for adding two new stormwater inlets at the northwest corner of Oak Street and CTH H, as requested by the village.

With the extra costs factored in, the share of federal funding available for the project has fallen to 70 percent, down from the 80 percent that was estimated at a public hearing in January. Based on the plans being 90 percent complete at this point, Lopez said the village’s share of the cost is $17,000 above its original budget.

“Obviously, it’s not been bid,” she said. “The bid prices can come in lower. There is contingency built into that, but right now, based on their 90 percent (complete) numbers, we’re slightly short.”

The village has already paid $148,000 toward the CTH H project, which includes about $123,000 for Quest Engineers to do design work and $25,000 for Becher-Hoppe, a land surveying firm in Wausau, to negotiate temporary limited easements (TLE) with landowners based on real estate appraisals of the individual parcels.

The village was required by the Wisconsin DOT to hire Becher-Hoppe for $59,300 to do a study and determine a per-foot price for each landowner to be paid for the temporary easements, which must be signed by next month for the project to proceed in 2025.

“Every property in Edgar was below the minimum ($100 appraised value), so instead of using all those fancy calculated numbers, which cost us $60,000, everybody gets a check for $100,” she said. “It’s a little frustrating, but we tried everything we could do to talk to the DOT about how ridiculous it was, and there was nothing we could do.”

Other business

■ The board adopted a resolution in support of a DNR grant application prepared by Gordon Krall, who is hoping to develop a restoration plan for Scotch Creek after he purchased seven acres of land along the waterway. Lopez said Krall has been “working extremely diligently” since he first spoke to the board about his plans last month, and the surface water grant could provide up to $47,000 for an engineering firm to write an implementation plan.

■ The board renewed its health insurance plan through the state’s Employee Trust Fund, with a 9 percent renewal rate for 2025, which will cost the village about $6,400 more to cover four employees next year. She also noted that Delta Dental presented a 0 percent increase for the sixth year in a row.

■ The board voted to schedule trick-or-treating for Sunday, Oct. 27, from 3 to 5 p.m. Village president Terry Lepak voted no, preferring to have the hours fall on Halloween itself, Oct. 31.