Commission considers Road Groom for upkeep on county gravel roads

By Buck Collier, Special Correspondent
Posted 4/26/23

HERMANN — Gasconade County administrators are hoping to buy a new piece of equipment — called a Road Groom – to help with the problem of potholes and washboarding on gravel roads. …

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Commission considers Road Groom for upkeep on county gravel roads

Posted

HERMANN — Gasconade County administrators are hoping to buy a new piece of equipment — called a Road Groom – to help with the problem of potholes and washboarding on gravel roads. They also think having this piece of equipment could result in longer life of road graders, which means a savings of possibly $100,000 or more being budgeted regularly for the purchase of graders and related supplies.

“I’m all for it,” said Presiding Commissioner Tim Schulte, R-Hermann, during an earlier County Commission session that included a discussion of the piece of equipment, of which county administrators recently became aware. The county officials recently received a first-hand look at a road groom and was given a demonstration of what it could do.

“I liked what I saw,” said Northern District Associate Commissioner Jim Holland, R-Hermann.

“I liked it, but I do have some reservations about it,” added Southern District Associate Commissioner Jerry Lairmore, R-Owensville.

The road groom is designed to pulled behind a half-ton or three-quarter-ton pickup truck. Operating with a hydraulic system, the groom — which might be likened to a farmer’s chisel plow that breaks up the surface of a field — is lowered to break up the surface of the road in problem areas, cutting out potholes and loosening the gravel so that it could be spread out more evenly. The use of the groom would allow the county Road Department from having to send out a grader to treat a specific area on a road. Plus, the commissioners noted, the groom can do the work in a matter of minutes.

“I think it will save a lot of time,” Lairmore said. But the associate commissioner was quick to point out that the groom is not designed to replace the graders, which operate on a schedule for grading the nearly 500 miles of the county’s gravel roads.

“It’s not made to get rid of road graders,” Lairmore said. “We’ll still need the road graders,” he added.

However, as the commissioners pointed out, having a groom might mean the county won’t need to buy a grader as often as it has in the past. By saving hours on a grader through the use of a road groom, the purchase of a new grader might be delayed by a year. That could be a savings of $100,000 or more, especially considering the savings associated with the purchase of grader blades and cutting edges.

The road groom sells for about $21,000.

There is some concern, however, that the Gasconade County Road Department might be pressed to have a staffer assigned to the road groom. The agency now is short staffed and job applicants are difficult to find for positions that have come open in recent months through retirement and employee departures.

At Thursday morning’s session, the commissioners agreed to discuss the matter again with Road Department officials and decide within the next two weeks if the county will buy the equipment. Holland repeated his support for acquiring the equipment and pointed to a couple officials of other local governments that have a road groom.

“The two I spoke with spoke very, very highly of it,” Holland said.

In other matters, those long-awaited new doors for the main entrance to the courthouse might be here soon, after all. Schulte said he spoke with woodworker Mike LeRoy, whose company is producing the doors, who was at the courthouse recently taking additional measurements.

“He just wants to make sure everything is all right,” Schulte said. “This week, next week” the presiding commissioner said, referring to the latest delivery date for the $40,000 doors that are being funded through the CARES Act money received by the county three years ago to reimburse local agencies for expenses related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The doors are to be equipped with an automatic-opening device, aimed at preventing the spread of COVID. The order for the doors was placed in 2021. The check to pay for them was written in July of that year and has been sitting in the safe of County Treasurer Mike Feagan ever since. The manufacturing of the doors has been delayed several times since the county placed the order. One delay was the result of LeRoy not being able to obtain the glass needed for the doors and another delay was the result of LeRoy being sidelined for a while after contracting COVID.

That the new doors might be on site within the next couple weeks is good news for county officials. County Clerk Lesa Lietzow noted recently that the existing front doors are beginning to need repair, but it makes little sense to invest a significant amount of dollars into the repair of the existing doors if the new doors will be installed soon.

“It will be done this month,” Schulte said.