BY KEITH LIPPOLDT

klippoldt@gbtribune.com

Barton County Works Director Chris Schartz was scheduled to address the Commissioners to discuss cold mix asphalt pricing at the March 4 agenda meeting. It was determined that his item would be tabled for additional time to figure out a better plan for 2025 county road resurfacing.

In the past, the County would purchase aggregates and sand and have it delivered to its South Washington pit. Venture Corporation would come to the site and cold mix up to 25,000 tons on location. The cost to mix was bid at $10.58 per ton, plus the cost of materials. The Commissioners tabled this discussion to enable them to investigate additional ways of mixing and storing the product.

On Tuesday morning, Schartz was back on the agenda with a new plan.

“Some of the county administrative staff met with Venture to determine if there was a more cost effective method that would enhance operations with the cold mix,” Schartz said. “It was determined that the county may save money moving the asphalt preparation to Venture’s site, which is about a mile and a half west of where our pit is currently located, with Venture mixing the asphalt, providing all the aggregates and the sand. They can mix it in bunches, like 5,000 tons, instead of mixing all 25,000 tons at once to where it’s more fresh for us to use. Not all 25,000 tons is sitting at our pit, waiting for us to use it. And they would have purer ingredients than what we are getting now.”

In addition to quality control issues, other negatives of the earlier process is Venture would have to break down their plant, That wasn’t always convenient because Venture was mixing for other jobs as well. Storage and material aging, wear and tear on county equipment, plus labor to move the finished product all were factors in the cost.

“This would help us get the asphalt sooner than we usually would get it, because they don’t have to break down their plant,” Schartz said. “We just go out there and get it. Venture will provide the aggregates that we need. We will not have to have them trucked in, and we will actually pay for the weight we’re getting from them for the aggregates, as opposed to when it’s trucked in. You may say a truck loads 24 tons, but there could be some water weight in there, so we may not actually be getting the whole 24 tons. So this way we would get the whole tonnage that we would be paying for sand.”

The County does have a sand pit in Ellinwood that they pump sand for various road sealing projects. And at the low end, it would cost approximately $7 a ton, including transporting it back to Great Bend. Venture will charge $6 a ton for sand. This will free up a loader operator to help with other county operations, like hauling the asphalt to where they’re needing it.

Schartz did some cost analysis and estimated that between pumping and hauling, and then handling the sand on site, it could save the county $45,000 a year.

“Venture will provide a loader operator to load our trucks,” Schartz explained. “The time and manpower we have to have a loader operator at the pit, that would free him up to do other things. And then if we continue to do this, Venture would be willing to let us haul any unused material that we had at our pit to them to use for next year’s asphalt, and they would give us a one to one buy back on that. Like I said before, we would get our batches mixed in increments of how we needed it. They could make 5,000 tons at a time - 10,000 tons at a time - so it would be fresher and not sitting in the elements. And then this will lessen, over time, the wear and tear on our loaders. There would be less wear and tear on the trucks for hauling the sand from Ellinwood to Great Bend, and would also lessen up the wear and tear on our screening plant. So there are some incentives to doing it this way.”

The Commissioners showed appreciation of figuring out the cost savings and praised Schartz for his efforts.

“I want to thank you for for explaining the process so well,” Commissioner Duane Reif said. “It’s something that, as commissioners, we could have taken the easy way out and just done it like we’ve always done. It was brought to our attention that maybe we should be looking into this. Just because we’ve done it before doesn’t mean that it’s the most effective way of doing things. We did spend a lot of time,  and we spent quite a bit of time on each work session. And I want to thank Chris. He probably spent the most time on it, figuring dollars and cents and and all of the numbers. So I do thank you for that. I still think this is the best way to go, or at least give it a try. And it’s nothing that were contracted in and we have to do it again next year. I think it’s worth a try.”

After further discussion, Commissioner Barb Esfeld motioned to approve the price of $32 per ton from Venture. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Shawn Hutchinson and it carried 5-0.