Board Defends Decision-Making Process for Stegall Road Project

Board Defends Decision-Making Process for Stegall Road Project
(Miller/KNEB/RRN)
April 20th, 2021 | Scott Miller

Members of the Scotts Bluff County Board defended the panel’s handling of the preliminary work on the Stegall Road Project Monday night, saying they have been acting in the best interest of the county and its taxpayers throughout the process.

Chair Ken Meyer said those who may not have been at commissioner meetings regarding the project could have been mislead on how the process played out over several months. Meyer said the board would not have approved the Simon Contractors product if they thought it would lead to an inferior roadway. “We just didn’t pull things out of the air, there was a lot of research that was done before we made the decision that we made, and we think it was a good decision,” said Meyer. Again, we were talking to the people that do the work. This product we’re putting down, hundreds of miles of this stuff is all over the state of Nebraska, and it seems to work, it seems to work fine. But it wasn’t given to us as an alternative when we did the original bid. It came after the fact, and we said ‘you know what, maybe we ought to go this way.”

Meyer also defended the sharing of information on the project via email, saying no decisions were made ‘behind the scenes’ through communications in which all board members were carbon-copied when it came to changing the interlayer for the project. He said such communications were informational-only, but the County Attorney had advised that such emails needed to be limited to involving no more than two board members at a time in the future to avoid any potential issues regarding open meetings.

Board members also said following the receipt of additional information, they understood that engineering firm MC Schaff had fulfilled their portion of the pre-construction contract, and the company was within their rights to decide not to over see the construction portion of the project.

The Board then moved forward with approval of a contract with Baker and Associates to fulfill that role for the construction, which is expected to begin as soon as weather conditions allow. The contract will be paid on a per hour basis for services performed in an oversight role, not to exceed a total of $31,000.

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