Limited Valley Road work to continue during fair

MOSES LAKE — Construction crews will continue their work on W. Valley Road next week despite an original agreement with the city to halt all work during the Grant County Fair.

“We can tell (the contractor), ‘No,’ but they’re still responsible under the contract for site safety and traffic control,” Moses Lake City Engineer Richard Law told council members at a regular meeting Tuesday evening.

Law said the contractor rebuilding much of W. Valley Road, Wenatchee-based Selland, is ahead of schedule and asked to be able to do limited work — placing manhole covers and dealing with storm sewer catch basins on the south side of the road — because they need to have crews there during fair week anyway to keep the site secure and ensure traffic safety signs and cones stay in place.

Work crews began tearing the $2.8 million project to rebuild W. Valley Road from Stratford Road to Paxson Road in June, with the proviso that work halt during fair week. Council Member Dustin Swartz said the request amounts to changing the rules, that the other bidders on the project might have concerns, and that allowing work to go during the fair might make getting to and from the fairgrounds more difficult.

“There’s truck and trailer traffic at all hours of the day,” Swartz said. “There’s mixed messaging there.”

Swartz, along with Council Member Mark Fancher, voted against allowing Selland to continue work next week, while Deputy Mayor Don Meyers Abstained. Council Members David Eck, Deanna Martinez and Judy Madewell along with Mayor Dean Hankins voted in favor of allowing the work, provided Grant County Fairgrounds Director Jim McKiernan approved.

“As long as no dump trucks and graders are running, it’s fine, if it speeds up the process,” McKiernan told the Columbia Basin Herald on Wednesday.

McKiernan said Selland’s crews are currently using the fairgrounds’ blue parking lot to store equipment, and the parking lot needs to be available to the public during the fair.

Currently, only two lanes of W. Valley Road are open, with each direction of traffic restricted to one lane. Law said that would not change during the fair, and Selland’s crews would only be working from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. anyway.

“They won’t have people there all night,” he said.

In addition, Law told city council members the city of Moses Lake has been awarded a $750,000 grant to design the new roundabout that will go in at the intersection of Yonezawa Boulevard and S.R. 17. Law said the entire project should cost around $3-$4 million. The project will be part of breaking the intersection in order to extend Yonezawa east to meet up with Moses Lake Avenue south of Groff Elementary School.

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