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Alcona road commission approves equipment, services

LINCOLN — The Alcona County Road Commission approved two motions for equipment and services for the agency during a Wednesday meeting.

The motions involved accepting bids for a new bulldozer as well as a service to inspect the county’s bridges, which is required for 2017.

Managing Director Jesse Campbell said he sent out a request for bids for a used bulldozer that would be used for road work projects by the commission.

Campbell said during the meeting that typically the road commission would use a bulldozer rented from another road commission, but said it needs its own.

He said when workers are doing projects on roads that require spreading gravel, the bulldozer is needed.

Chairman Alfred Scully asked Campbell what type of bulldozer was needed.

Campbell said he would like to have road commission workers go to companies where bids for the used bulldozers were submitted so they can test out the equipment.

“They know about it and they are the guys who are going to be driving it,” he said.

After discussion the board approved a motion to allow Campbell to make a purchase of a bulldozer at his discretion in the best interest of the road commission. Campbell’s budget was $45,000 for the equipment.

After that motion Campbell discussed proposals submitted for the biannual inspections of the county’s bridges that is required from the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Campbell said for the last six years the road commission has contracted with Great Lakes Engineering of Lansing to inspect the bridges.

He said he requested proposals from other agencies to see what kind of prices he could get this year.

Other proposals were given by Huron Engineering of Alpena and Spicer Group of Saginaw.

Campbell said he could get trained to do the inspections himself, but the training and the time to inspect the bridges would be too much for his schedule.

Scully said training Campbell would be costly.

Campbell said he wanted to go with Great Lakes Engineering because of its experience as well as history with the county.

“When we had an MDOT bridge audit last year, they had everything in order,” Campbell said.

After discussion Vice Chairman Harry Harvey cast a motion to accept the proposals and leave discretion on selecting an agency to Campbell.

Jason Ogden can be reached via email at jogden@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5693. Follow Jason on Twitter @jo_alpenanews.

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