by Stephanie Croston

    The village of Cordova is prepared to take drastic measures to get 462nd Road paved.
     The village board voted 4-0 with one member absent Oct. 3 to look into moving to York County if the Seward County Commissioners don't reconsider their Aug. 15 decision to not move the road up on the improvement plan. They gave the board a deadline of Dec. 31 to revisit the road issue.
     "We are giving them one last chance," Boardmember Angela Petersen said Oct. 6. "If the county commissioners decide to change their position, it won't be an issue."
     Petersen said the village board has not officially determined the territory to move but was looking at an area bordered by Interstate 80, 434th Road and the Saline and York county lines. The Seward County Assessor's office said the estimated value on that area was $34,766,000, with real property taxes of $632,287.
     Petersen and other residents of Cordova attended the Aug. 15 county board meeting to request local funding to pave 462nd Road from Interstate 80 to Denton Road where it would connect with existing paving. The possibility of bonding at least part of the project was discussed, as was using the inheritance fund to help pay for the paving.
     After discussion, the commissioners favored a 50-50 match with paving to be done in 2009, but no vote was taken. At the Aug. 29 meeting, the commissioners voted 3-2 against upping the county's share to 50 percent and moving the project to a possible 2009 timeline. Commissioners Bill White and Ray Naber voted in favor, while Commissioners Bob Elwell, Ron Minchow and Joe Ruzicka voted against.
     Naber, the Seward County board representative for the area, was surprised to hear of the village board's vote.
     "I thought the group was satisfied when we'd discussed grading the road after the Aug. 15 meeting," he said Oct. 6. "I had no idea this was coming."
     Petersen cited state statutes 22-218 to 22-221 as giving the village the option to move. According to the statutes, a majority of legal voters living in a territory must petition their county board and the county board of the county to which they wish to move. The question would then be placed on the ballot at the next general election, according to 22-218.
     "This isn't a heated battle. We're not declaring war," Petersen said. "They have given us no other choice."
     Ruzicka, chairman of the Seward County commissioners, said Oct. 5 Seward County had not been officially notified of Cordova's action. He said he could not support reconsidering the Aug. 15 county board action because it would set a precedent for other roads in the county.
     Cynthia Heine, York County clerk, said Oct. 6 that the York County board had not been contacted about adding Cordova and the surrounding area to the county.
     Russ Daehling, Seward County highway superintendent, said 462nd Road is scheduled to be paved in 2011. The Nebraska Department of Roads is slated to pay for 80 percent of the project, with Seward County contributing 20 percent. The county has already set aside $265,000 and could budget the $140,000 required to meet the 20-percent match, Daehling said.
     The state's money would come from the Surface Transportation Program (STP) funds. Seward County used its previous allotment to pave 238th Road from Milford to the Saline County line, a project that was completed in 2000, Daehling said.
     County crews are grading the road to prepare it for paving. They started at the interstate and are working south. Daehling said Oct. 5 they were almost to Van Dorn Road, where they might stop for the winter. If the state credits the county for its grading work, that would top the 20-percent match, he said.
     "I pushed the board to let us grade this," he said.
     The county has already required the necessary right-of-way for the paving project and is doing the grading this year. Upgrading the bridges on the road is the next stage, Daehling said.
     One of the concerns raised by Cordova residents is the amount of traffic on the road. In 1990, Daehling said, approximately 300 vehicles travelled the road daily. The most recent counts put that number between 350 and 375, with the biggest increase coming in heavy truck traffic.
     An aggregate road, like 462nd Road, is generally built for average daily traffic counts of around 200 and designed for speeds not exceeding 50 mph, Daehling said. Maintenance and operations costs for an aggregate road run between $2,000 and $3,000 per mile.
     The project had been included in the federal transportation bill under former Rep. Doug Bereuter. It was not included in the 2005 version of the six-year plan, which led Cordova residents to request a meeting with Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, who took Bereuter's seat in the House of Representatives.
     Even if the road had been included in the bill, Daehling said, it could have been scheduled at the end of the cycle, which would be around 2011.
     Fortenberry visited Cordova in December. At that time, he told them that the road was not considered a priority at the state level, so he did not consider it a priority either. He recommended trying the high-risk rural road safety program to see if the road would qualify.
     A letter from the Cordova village board to the commissioners dated Aug. 1 reported that the road did not qualify because "the road must have crash fatalities or incapacitating injuries above the statewide average to be eligible," the letter said.
     An informal survey conducted in the Cordova area found that 60 percent of the 53 respondents had had a one-vehicle accident on the road in the last four years. Most of those were not reported to law enforcement for a variety of reasons, including insurance rates, the survey found.
     According to the Seward County Sheriff's Office, between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 1, 2006, one injury and three non-injury accidents were reported on the Cordova road.
     Petersen said the residents are mainly concerned with safety for the school buses that travel 462nd Road on their daily routes. She described the village board's action as "a business decision over the safety of the residents."
     Board members first started talking about the possibility of moving counties after the meeting in August, she said, and discussed the option further at their September meeting. They have not received any complaints or phone calls from residents questioning their decision.
     "We have done everything we needed to do and presented the board with the facts about the road not being safe," she said. "We haven't been given any other options."