Liberal City Commission Approves Western Avenue Project

The Liberal City Commission in its regularly scheduled meeting, approved J & R Sand of Liberal as the contractor for the Western Avenue Project. After being on the agenda at two previous city commission meetings and one special meeting, the Liberal City Commission finally gave the go ahead to J & R Sand for reconstructing Western Avenue. The other bidder for the job was JAG Construction. Questions arose for the commission when J & R bid asphalt for the project and JAG bid concrete. The commission asked several questions throughout the process trying to get a fair comparison of the two different matierials. Through research and input from the Kansas Department of Transportation in Topeka, 10 inches of asphalt compared fairly equal to 9 inches of concrete. With those figures in mind, the commission asked both parties to adjust their original bids to those specifications. J & R Sand won the project with a bid of $3,882, 493.25 compared to JAG’s concrete bid of $4,598,564.70, a difference of roughly $716,000.00. The project is scheduled to start in the Spring of 2010 with a 190 day window of completion.

In other action items the Liberal City Commission approved the Arkalon Grazing lease with Max Louderback, and approved the Floodplain Management Regulations, and Flood Insurance Rate Maps for the city. The next meeting of the Liberal City Commission is scheduled for September 22nd, 2009.