A new road grading program ("No Questions Asked") soon to be implemented by the McDonald County Commission will allow anyone driving on a county road to know the grading schedule for that road and any other county road they come across.
Presiding Commissioner Keith Lindquist said the county recently ordered three different colors of 4 inch by 4 inch placards that will be attached to all county road signs to signify the grading schedule for that particular road.
"It will be a visual to let everyone know what the grading schedule is," Lindquist said. "Everybody ought to be able to look at these signs after we get the information out there and know what the grading schedule is."
The three colors that will be used are blue, green and brown. Blue signifies the road is a private lane and will not be maintained by the county. Green references a road that has only a limited number of homes and will be maintained only two or three times a year. Brown placards will be placed on roads that will be on a regular monthly grading schedule.
"The blue color means it is a private lane and we are not going to touch it," Lindquist said. "We don't know why, but in the past there have been some roads graded that shouldn't have been graded. But from this point forward when we get these signs up, this is the way we are going to enforce it. The blue is going to be a private drive."
Western Commission David Holloway said the private lanes were previously graded "out of confusion." Holloway added they are going to try to put all the placards on the same posts that the 911 signs are located, including ones where the road sign is on the same post as a stop sign.
Lindquist said the Missouri Department of Transportation told the county on April 1 they would allow the placards on the state's post.
"Everybody ought to be able to look at these signs after we get the information out there and know what there schedule is," Lindquist said. "If they are on a blue lane, there is no use calling us, because it's their baby. We are not going to do anything. We hope to get enough information out there and then it will be where you don't really need to call us because it should tell you at the end of your lane."
Lindquist said the system will be explained on the county's website and that they will also do an "overlay" on the county's GIS mapping system that will have the designation of all the roads.
Eastern Commission John Bunch said on the roads that have green placards (roads that scheduled to be graded 2-3 times a year) the county would make adjustments in an emergency situation like a flood.
Bunch said the commission came up with the system because of the confusion on whether some private lanes were county roads and someone had told residents on private lanes the county was supposed to take care of the road.
"We have had to tell them these roads are actually private roads," Bunch said. "They wanted to know how we determined the designation for that."
Bunch said some of the roads currently being maintained have cattle guards, which creates a problem for road graders.
"We don't want to cross cattle guards," Lindquist said. "There are a couple of roads where we are going to have to take them out."
The commission said any road that leads to a single residence will be considered a driveway and will get a blue placard signifying it will not be maintained by the county.
"We are not closing the road, we just aren't going to be the one maintaining it," Lindquist said. "This way we don't have to do anything to make doing this meet any legal requirements."
Bunch said there also a couple of roads that being graded now, but they are only accessible by going into Arkansas.
"We are not going into Arkansas and come back to Missouri to get to them," Bunch said. "We get into legal problem when you cross state lines with equipment."
Lindquist said the placards have been ordered and should be deliver in about three weeks. He said they will be installed by the road crew in the normal course of their work.
"This will save grading time considerably," Lindquist said. "We actually think we can drop a grader (from 7 to 6) and save that much money."
Lindquist said all roads are currently on a 21-day rotation and the commission is looking at going to a once a month rotation of the roads that have a brown designation.
He said the county is also looking at going to a method of using two graders on the same road. He said this way the whole road could be done at once instead of making "wind rows," which is tough for small cars to cross.
Lindquit said the more informed the public is about the grading policy, the better.
"We are hoping it is easy for everyone to understand," Lindquist said. "But most people aren't going to be affected."
General News on 04/09/2015