Jim Zibert of Earle’s Engineering & Inspection Inc. spoke at Friday’s Crawford County Commission meeting about work his firm has been doing to assist in planning a sewer line relocation in Franklin the county is responsible for handling as part of the Highway 69 expansion project.
Of two options, one where the project would largely be managed by the Kansas Department of Transportation, and another “where the county controls their destiny” and would also be able to use more local contractors for the work, Zibert said he strongly suggested the second option.
“Inherently on these dang things, KDOT projects, when you’re dealing with them, they deal with highway contractors, that’s the people that get their jobs,” Zibert said. “So if they include the sewer on this project, they’re not sewer people, they’ll sub[contract] it out. And so it’s hard to say who they’ll sub it to. Also when they’re combining things like that, the contractors’ bids will sometimes monkey around on different things, so you’re really not having a lot of control there.”
(Read more: Pittsburg Morning Sun)