Underpass project moving forward with federal funds

The underpass project has evolved passed being a city, historical society, or downtown project. Federal funding is now in place and so the underpass is now a federal concern.

City Administrator Daniel Ortiz, made it clear that the City of Kimball is not simply dealing with a city project anymore.

“We’re dealing with regional and national historical societies as well as the Federal Highway Administration, Nebraska Department of Roads and a couple of other people have a role to play in this project now,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz explained that, at this time, the city is accumulating information regarding the past, trying to decide what information is relevant to the project and the people involved. As the project moves forward, the city must determine what information they do not have and what information they must obtain.

“We’ve had a conference call between the entities that will be involved with the project concerning the timeline of when we want things accomplished. One of the first things that we want to get done is a stake holders’ meeting. We’ll get the public up to speed and that kind of thing,” Ortiz said.

November 2015, is when the project needs to be finalized and contracted out. Between now and November 2015 there is a lot of legwork that must be done.

“This really won’t be done by the city, and I think that’s something the public really needs to know. When you have a project of this size governed by federal funds, the city is not in the driver’s seat. At this point we’re not even in the passenger seat, we’re in the third row of an SUV,” Ortiz said.

In order to be able to use the federal funding for the project, the city has to be sure to play by the federal rules. According to Ortiz while the city does have a small voice at the table, so to speak, it is not a very strong one, especially not concerning the design and planning of the project.

Due to this project being a federally funded one, many different experts are called in to acknowledge the different aspects of the project. This makes the decisions based on the information provided that will hopefully have the best interests of the structure and community at heart.

One specific expert being a called upon is a architectural historian.

“She will help out by providing information regarding what parts of the underpass are historic and what needs to be preserved. It may turn out that the slopes are historic, or the rocks are historic. Maybe the rocks without the slopes are historic and can be incorporated. We don’t really have much of a say though as to how all of that will be determined,” Ortiz said.

Once the historic value is determined then the design engineers will have a better idea of what can be done to update and preserve the underpass, whether that involves incorporating aspects that are already present or using aesthetic features in an updated way. No matter the decision , the city has little input on what will be done. They may be able to voice a thought or opinion, however, it will not have a major effect on the outcome. The more of the underpass that is considered historic, the more money it will cost to fix.

“More experts will need to be brought in in the case that the underpass has features that must be preserved,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz does not expect there to be designs for the underpass until mid fall. Until then the city is acting as more of an informational hub for the federal government. Hooking them to information that they need for the project.

“Right now we’ve been asked, ‘who are the major stake holders in this?’ Then what we do is provide a list. We are very limited in our role at this time,” Ortiz said.

Currently, the project is still in the information gathering stage. There isn’t much room for public input at this point. However, when the time does come for public input it will mostly be boiled down to which plan the the federal government has come up with that the community likes best.

“One things they will definitely be looking at is detour routes during the project. How will the detour route affect the community? Will we have a lot of big trucks going through residential areas? How will that impact certain areas? These are details that are going to have to be worked out. After all that is determined then people can step up with their opinions on what they want that underpass to look like,” Ortiz said

On July 29, at the event center there will be an open to the public stake holders meeting concerning everyone involved in moving this project forward. Ortiz will also be providing the city council with information regarding the underpass’ progress at the June 3rd city council meeting.