Floyd County plans on $14.8 million in road and bridge construction in next five years

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County Secondary Roads Department plans on spending $14.8 million in the next five fiscal years on road and bridge improvements in the county. All but about $1.84 million would be state and federal funds.

At its meeting this week, the Floyd County Board of Supervisors approved County Engineer Jacob Page’s five-year secondary roads budget for the Iowa Department of Transportation.

The Iowa DOT requires county secondary roads departments to submit five-year plans annually for planning and resource allocation purposes, and for potentially coordinating state and county projects where appropriate.

The Floyd County projects include repainting pavement markings every other year, replacing at least seven bridges or culverts, and repaving parts of five county roads for a total of almost 35 miles.

The upcoming fiscal year, 2024-25, which will begin July 1, has the most spending planned, with $5.51 million estimated for seven projects.

Page said he tracks road and bridge priorities and receives input from his employees who work on the roads, as well as from residents and others in making his decisions about which projects to prioritize each year.

Projects can be changed or moved around in future years to have them worked on sooner or later as conditions change, he said.

FISCAL YEAR 2024-25 PROJECTS ($5.51 million):

• Pavement markings, Farm to Market funds – $170,000.

• Bridge replacement with a twin box culvert on Kirkwood Avenue over creek, day labor project with local funds – $170,000.

• Pipe culvert replacement with single box culvert on County Road B60 east of Miner Ave., day labor project with local funds – $170,000.

• Bridge replacement with railroad tank cars, Avon Avenue over small creek, day labor project with local funds – $50,000.

• Bridge replacement with railroad tank cars on 165th Street over small creek, day labor project with local funds – $50,000.

• Asphalt resurfacing on 200th Street from County Road B45, 4.6 miles north, local funding – $1,400,000.

• Asphalt CIP recycling on County Road B60, 12.7 miles from Highway 14 to the Nashua city limits, Farm to Market funds and Federal Assistance funds – $3,500,000.

Farm to Market funds are state funds coming primarily from the state’s fuel tax, used to maintain and improve the road infrastructure that connects Iowa’s farms and rural communities to local and regional markets.

The federal assistance funds are used to replace or rehabilitate deficient bridges and local roads. The program is administered by the Iowa DOT and is funded by federal and state sources.

Local sources include the local option sales tax and property taxes.

“We’re doing the bridge replacement with the twin box culvert on Kirkwood Avenue that we had let a month ago or so,” Page said. “And then also a pipe culvert replacement on B60 with a box culvert that we let about a month ago. So those are our daily labor projects for the year.

“We’re planning to do two bridge replacements with railroad tank cars. Those are out south of Nora Springs. We have two bridges over there that are posted with load limitations. The one’s on Avon Avenue and one’s on 165th Street, and they cross the same creek,” he said. “The main cost is buying the the railroad tank cars and then our labor as well.”

The asphalt cold in place recycling (CIP) project on B60 from Highway 14 to Nashua “is a neat process” as long as the existing asphalt is thick enough, Page said. About six inches of the existing asphalt is taken off, mixed with new oil and laid back down.

“So you’re reusing the road you already have, and then you can put new asphalt on top to get a new riding surface,” he said. “This is nice because it’s that idea that the pavement is perpetual.”

FISCAL YEAR 2025-26 PROJECTS ($3.05 million):

• Asphalt resurfacing on County Road T64 from Shadow Avenue east and north 7.5 miles to Mitchell County, Farm to Market funds – $2.3 million.

• Bridge replacement on 170th Street over Flood Creek, federal assistance funds – $750,000.

FISCAL YEAR 2026-27 PROJECTS ($2.77 million):

• Pavement markings, Farm to Market funds – $170,000.

• Bridge replacement (Orchard Bridge) on County Road T42 (River Road) over the Cedar River, federal assistance funds – $2.6 million.

FISCAL YEAR 2027-28 PROJECTS ($2.3 million):

• Asphalt resurfacing on County Road T47 from Hwy 14 south 6.5 miles to County Road B60, Farm to Market funds – $1,500,000.

• Bridge replacement on County Road B45 over Flood Creek, federal assistance funds and Swap funds – $800,000.

FISCAL YEAR 2028-29 PROJECTS ($1.17 million):

• Pavement markings, Farm to Market funds – $170,000.

• Asphalt resurfacing on County Road B45 from County Road S70 east 3.6 miles to Rockford city limits, Farm to Market funding – $1,000,000.

“In the next coming fiscal year we have seven projects in that one and in the other fiscal years I only have like two or three,” Page said, because the next fiscal year plan includes day labor projects that his own department can do without bidding out the work.

“All those local projects only get put in to the next coming fiscal year,” he said. “Generally those day labor projects we plan for in the coming fall, so they’re not really programmed out as far.”

Supervisor Dennis Keifer asked if projects from a possible $9 million federal RAISE grant were included in the plan.

Floyd, Fayette and Bremer counties applied for the grant, with Page taking the lead as grant manager because he had not applied for the grant before and so could get a higher priority. Floyd County applied for funding to replace seven bridges.

Page said they won’t find out the results of that application until September.

“Hopefully we get good news,” he said.

Among the bridges applied for in the grant is the Orchard Bridge, which is also listed in the five-year plan with different funding.

“If we don’t get the funds from the grant I still want to have that bridge in the program because we need to do that bridge sooner than later,” he said. “I’m hoping that we can do it with the grant because my estimate right now is $2.6 million to do that bridge. If we don’t get this grant I’ll be looking at other grants to try to apply for to get that bridge done.

If the RAISE grant is approved it will cover the costs of the Orchard bridge and six others in the county – two bridges by Niles one year and then four smaller ones that are south of Charles City and west of Charles City that would all be done at the same time, Page said.

Total funding sources for the $14.8 million in Floyd County road and bridge construction in the next five years are listed as:

• Farm to Market funds – $7.81 million.

• Federal assistance – $4.99 million.

• Local funds – $1.84 million.

• State Swap funds – $160,000.