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Longview, Kinder to be repaved in Moses Lake

by CHARLES H. FEATHERSTONE
Staff Writer | April 28, 2022 1:00 AM

MOSES LAKE — The City of Moses Lake will spend nearly $3 million to rebuild Kinder Road NE and Longview Street and add sidewalks to the neighborhood just south of Longview Elementary School.

At a regular meeting of the Moses Lake City Council on Tuesday, council members voted unanimously to accept a $2.97 million bid from Wheeler Excavation to rebuild the roads, add sidewalks and replace the area’s water main and water meters.

“We’re going to replace a 50-year-old water main and take care of some severely dilapidated roads,” City Engineer Richard Law told council members.

The construction work was originally planned for 2011, but funding difficulties and a change in city priorities delayed the project, Law said. The council rejected a single bid for $3.4 million for the project, voting instead to put the project out for bid again.

“It was quite a bit higher than this bid,” Law said.

Council Member Dustin Swartz wanted to know if Wheeler Excavation has done similar work, either with the city or somewhere else.

“They did a couple of projects for us in the past, but this is the largest project we’ve let to them,” Law said. “They did some demolition projects and some other miscellaneous utility projects for us in the past.”

“They were responsive and did a good job,” Law added.

Law said he expects construction to start around the middle of May, with about 3-4 weeks left of school. While nearby, Longview Elementary is not connected to any of the streets involved in the construction and is separated from the neighborhood, sometimes referred to as the Longview Tacts, by a Columbia Basin Railroad spur connecting the railroad to the Port or Moses Lake.

The council also voted unanimously to accept a $105,000 grant from the Washington State Transportation Improvement Board’s Complete Streets program. Law said the money will be used to add bike racks and benches downtown, put up better signs along city trails, extend the Gavinski Trail along Marina Drive to W. Broadway Avenue, and update the city’s 2005 trails master plan.

Council members, however, were curious if the city had any data on how many people used the trails.

Law said that a study of pedestrian traffic has not been done in a long time.

“We do not have the specialized equipment for that,” he said.

“I want to make sure the trail system is getting used,” said Council Member Mark Fancher, noting that building trails also requires that the resulting trails need to be maintained. “I want to make sure we’re getting a return on the investment.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.