County committee approved streetlights for railroad crossing on CTH B

The state of Wisconsin is forcing the county’s hand in putting lighting upgrades at a rural railroad cross near Gilman.

The state Office of the Commissioner of Railroads has ordered the county to install streetlight at the railroad cross on CTH B just south of Gilman. The county has been working with Excel energy, who owns the poles in the area, to find out a cost for the lights.

At the December 19 county highway commission meeting, commissioner Ben Stanfley reported that the cost of three lights would be about $8,500 with an additional charge if they had been be installed before April. It will also bring with it a bill of about $40 for electricity used for the lights.

Stanfley said their plan would be to hold off until after April to avoid the additional expenses. It is not common to have lighting at rural railroad crossing. Stanfley said while there are streetlights at the crossing located to the west of the intersection of Hwy 64 and Hwy 73, there aren’t lights on the railroad crossing at CTH A near Lublin. The village of Gilman has streetlights at the Hwy 64 crossing on the west side of the village.

Stanfley noted the lights were ordered by the state after a safety audit of the railroad crossing. He said the state does routine audits, but noted there had been an accident there which caused the state to look into it further. However, Stanfley noted the only motor vehicle accident that occurred at that crossing had been in July in the middle of a sunny day.

“There are not more accidents there than at any other crossing,” Stanfley said.

Commission members approved moving ahead with having the streetlights installed next spring.

In other business, committee members:

• Approved the new Clear Lake Dam emergency action plan. Maintenance of the dam has been taken over by the Esadore Lake Association and the action plan needed to be updated. The county is impacted by the plan due to the intersection of CTH E and Perkinstown Ave. being downstream from it if the dam should fail. The county had previously installed a large culvert across the intersection to handle water flow in the event of a flood failure. Stanfley said it is essentially the same plan as before, something the committee members were glad to hear. “We don’t need any more dam problems,” said board chairman Jim Metz.

• Received an update on the speed limits around the county. Stanfley is working with local municipalities to get their speed limits within the parameters of the county ordinance and to minimize the number of exceptions to the ordinance. This helps with enforcement and with compliance to the speed limit. Changes include in the village of Gilman areas that are currently 30 mph will go to the standard of 25 mph with similar changes in Lublin and Stetsonville. He said the goal is to have any speed limit zones below 55 mph to be listed in the ordinance.

• Approved the pavement marking contract with the state for $776,000. Under the state contract Taylor County’s crew does routine pavement marking on state roads in Taylor, Barron Chippewa, Clark, Dunn, Sawyer and St. Croix Counties. The contracts cover the staffing, supplies and equipment for the four people on the paint crew as well as $26,600 a year in administrative support to the county highway department. While the total contract is less than last year by about $14,000 it is more reflective of the actual amount of work being done, Stanfley said.

• Approved bridge aid requests from the town of Roosevelt for culverts located along Elm Ave. The total cost of the culverts will be $12,030 each. Under the bridge aid program, the county covers half the cost of the culverts so the cost will be $6,015 for each of them. The bottoms of the existing culverts are rusted out.