Beth, Martha Roads top city list for work this year

Beth and Martha Road are the top two streets in Columbia Falls that should see work this summer.

Beth Road, on the west side of town, will be a complete reconstruction, public works director Chris Hanley told city council last week.

The estimated cost of the project is between $400,000 and $500,000, though Hanley cautioned that prices of materials are going up every day.

The city will also look to upgrade and inspect utilities like water lines, when it has the road torn up.

Martha Road isn’t a complete rebuild, but will see a new 2-inch overlay of asphalt as well as drainage improvements.

Some residents have called for speed bumps on the road in the past, but that’s not the plan for the road. Since the city put lines down on the street, complaints about speed on the residential street have diminished.

Other roads in the mix for either overlay or reconstruction include:

• First Street East North with an overlay from Fourth Avenue East North to Crescent Drive.

• Vans’s Avenue with an overlay of about 1,100 feet from Crescent Drive.

• Thirteenth Street West reconstruction of about 30 feet near Thirteen Avenue.

There are other streets on the priority list, but the city projects it will likely run out money after the Thirteenth Street project.

The city has about $816,781 in street funds this year, which includes about $128,000 in gas tax funding.

The city uses a piece of software called Iworq’s that helps it prioritize projects based on street conditions. It also tries to package projects that are close to one another to save on costs.

The city will also see some resort tax funding for the first time this year, but that doesn’t come into play until later in the year. Even so, it’s just 14% of the total of the resort tax, and will likely be well under $100,000.

The city is hoping to get a federal RAISE grant to fix Fourth Avenue West, in order to serve the new Glacier Gateway Elementary School.

In addition, 12th Avenue West will eventually see work which is funded through a blend of city, private and a federal EDA grant.

That project is about $1.2 million and would also bring sewer and water to the Cedar Palace Medical Center. Right now the project is in the engineering and permitting stages, since the utility lines have to go under the BNSF Railway tracks.

Another project will bring a sidewalk/ and or shared use path from Fourth Avenue West and up Railroad Street to near the viaduct.

The project is about $1.133 million, with just under $988,000 from a Montana Alternative Transportation grant.

The rest of the funding is a city match.

Work is expected to start on that project this year.