A Few Minutes With…..Kelly Smith-Newaygo County Road Commission Manager

A Few Minutes With…..Kelly Smith-Newaygo County Road Commission Manager

It has been said there are but two seasons in Michigan, winter and road construction.

​Since there’s no snow afoot and a scattering of orange barrels about one can assume we are in the latter season and while these initiatives can be... 

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...an inconvenience at times most folks recognize the need to keep our transportational infrastructure intact and adapt to coexisting with the folks fixing our roads.

N3 readers tend to be a rather mobile group and thus have a bit of a ‘need to know’ when traveling about our fair area. With this in mind we asked Newaygo County Road Commission Manager Kelly Smith to give us all a bit of an update on some of the projects presently in progress and here is what he provided:

We are well past the midway point of a very busy construction season. It could shape up to be the largest on record. With nearly 30 of our  45 construction projects completed, as well as being in the middle of our reseal program with 30 miles of paved roads slated to receive treatment, we are hoping for things to slow down a bit before that “other” season arrives.

Yes, I was referring to winter, and no, I did not want to say it.

But back to construction.

We also have two bridge projects going as well as a federally funded reconstruct of 88th Avenue at Hess Lake.

The larger bridge project on the causeway in Croton has been ongoing since early April with it being what we call a “part width” construction. This means we are doing one side at a time to maintain traffic as the detour for this particular stretch would be quite lengthy. That project is scheduled to be completed by mid November.

The smaller bridge project is located on Bingham Avenue north of 12 mile and is slated to be open to traffic late next week. Work will be continuing for a few weeks after that but I am hopeful that the detour will not be necessary during those operations.

The project on 88th Street includes a complete reconstruct including some drainage improvements as well as paved shoulders on both sides. The limits of this project are from Redwood Drive to Park Boulevard and the work scheduled for completion mid to late April.

As well as the specific projects I listed, there are a host of township, local road, and county primary road projects that our work force has completed that are a part of the 45 I mentioned earlier.

Staff has once again been on a minimum 48 hour work week since late spring in an attempt to complete as much of the work load as possible all while trying its best to perform routine maintenance.

We will be working as long as weather permits to complete as many of these projects before winter sets in.

Our thanks go out to Mr. Smith for his input….. even though it seems he chose to use that ‘w’ word again in his last sentence. –N3 News team