By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

The proposed 2017 Street Maintenance program for the city of Hays includes a $108,670 overage to rehabilitate the Bickle-Schmidt Sports Complex road.

Over the winter, the road deteriorated badly, due in large part to construction of the new Fort Hays State University track and field facility, Public Works Director Greg Sund reported to city commissioners Thursday night.

“We’re looking at having to rebuild the road because the base is just gone,” Sund said. “The university has agreed to pay 20 percent of the cost.”

Sund is proposing the city’s share would come out of the Special Highway fund. The commissioners objected to that idea.

“It’s the sports complex,” said Vice-Mayor James Meier. “Is there any reason that other 80 percent can’t be paid out of the CVB (Convention and Visitors Bureau) or the sports complex?” he asked.

City Manager Toby Dougherty said the funds could also come from the sports complex budget or the special parks fund.

“It’s horrendous what happened out there,” said Commissioner Sandy Jacobs, who looked at the road with Hays Parks Director Jeff Boyle. “I don’t think 20 percent from Fort Hays is enough.”

FHSU paid 20 percent of the original cost to construct the sports complex road. The FHSU soccer stadium, built in 2011, is on the southeast side of the facility.

According to Dougherty, the blame doesn’t lie entirely with the university. The road problems existed prior to construction of the FHSU track and field facility.

“When we built the sports complex (it opened in the fall of 2011), the group promoting it to the voters oversold what we could build for $8 million,” Dougherty said. “The commission decided they wanted the complex that looked like what was sold to the voters — meaning eight ball diamonds, eight softball/football fields — and so we had to cut corners in a lot of places. The parking lots and road were one of those areas. They were all paved in the initial concept.”

By happenstance, when the facility was under construction, a portion of Vine Street was also being replaced. Dougherty explained how millings off Vine Street were used to build the sports complex road.

“We hired a company to rejuvenate those millings and then J-Corp of Hays agreed to lay down the millings on the complex road if we would name the road ‘S P Drive’ after Steve Pfannenstiel. We agreed to that. The millings were put down and the city put a couple chip seals over the top. The road problems started creeping up a little bit before construction of the Fort Hays State Track and Field Facility. The heavy construction truck traffic really just drove home the issue.

“When we investigated, we found it wasn’t so much a problem with the base as the fact the the millings had kind of turned to sand. They weren’t rejuvenated properly by the company, and we had no way of knowing that until they were on the sports complex road and kind of turned back to sand. So you have the movable base under the chip seal top now. We have to go back and grind everything in and re-compact it.”

Dougherty said the city has talked to FHSU, and in addition to paying 20 percent of the road repair costs, “they’ve agreed that every year when we do our maintenance out there, they’ll pay 20 percent of whatever we do. They’ve acknowledged partial ownership of this thing going forward.”

“And even though the north area of the road isn’t showing quite as much damage as the south end, it’s in the same kind of shape, so it makes no sense not to do the same thing to it,” added Sund. “The north end was not heavily trafficked by construction vehicles.”

The chip seal work must be done in warm weather to adhere correctly. Sund expected it would probably be done in July. Commissioners directed Sund to coordinate the work schedule with the Hays Recreation Commission to avoid summer tournament traffic at the complex as much as possible.

Sund also mentioned he’s received some complaints about trucks using the sports complex as a shortcut.

“We’re going to be putting up signs saying ‘No Through Truck Traffic.'”

Commissioners will consider approving the $1.054 million 2017 Street Maintenance program at their March 9 meeting.