By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

The Hays city commission Thursday night unanimously approved the purchase of 19 properties for right of way acquisition  within the North Vine Street Corridor Project.

Plans are to build two-lane traffic roundabouts on Vine Street at 32nd/33rd, 37th, and 41st Streets, plus a teardrop roundabout at the eastbound Interstate 70 exit ramp.

During an executive session at the end of the Sept. 12 city commission meeting, John Braun, city project manager, presented details of proposed offers to acquire right of way, easements, and the costs associated with the project.

“These are 19 properties — various small tracts — between 32nd Street and 41st and Mopar,” Braun said Wednesday afternoon. “Those will remain confidential until the project is bid out.”

Cost of the property purchases is $390,020 to be funded out of Capital Projects.

“To reiterate what the city’s project manager said, we took no action (after the executive session) and so now we’re doing that in open session,” Mayor Henry Schwaller said Thursday night.

“This will help us complete the project on north Vine Street.”

Braun has said he expects the right-of-way acquisitions to be “all wrapped up with utility clearances out of the way” in November.

By the end of this year, the entire completed plan is scheduled to be submitted to the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) for an anticipated April 2020 KDOT bid letting, allowing for construction to begin in June or July 2020.

The total project is an estimated $9 million. Early last December, the city was awarded a $6 million federal grant for construction.

The remainder of the project cost will be paid through a two percent increase in the Transient Guest Tax (TGT). It went into effect Oct. 1, 2018, and is projected to raise $6.2 million over 20 years.

Vice-Mayor Shaun Musil was absent from the meeting.