Coalville Mayor Duane Schmidt hopes a rancher driving a pickup truck doesn’t pull a trailer full of hay over a bridge on 100 South until the dicey structure is replaced.
“He may very well get across the bridge, but structurally speaking, the bridge is not in any condition to handle those types of loads,” Schmidt said in a telephone interview Monday. “We’ve limited the traffic load over the bridge to two tons. But there are a lot of people in this world who do not pay attention to those road limit signs and when they start bringing their hay out, two tons is not that much weight.”
Schmidt has asked the Summit County Council to help pay to replace the unsafe bridge west of Interstate 80. Because it is situated only 1,400 feet from the city limits, the mayor claims a handful of property owners in unincorporated Summit County would mostly benefit from the pricey repairs.
“The bridge serves Summit County,” Schmidt said at a County Council meeting June 3. “The city, quite frankly, doesn’t have money to repair the bridge.”
The bridge, which spans the Weber River, was built in the 1950s and serves barns and a commercial gravel pit.
“If a tanker truck wants to get across there, that’s not a safe thing,” Coalville Community Development Director Cindy Gooch said.
Though people vacationing at Camperworld, at 500 S. 200 West in Coalville, use the bridge as an emergency route, a fire engine probably couldn’t safely cross the bridge, Schmidt stressed.
Coalville officials asked the Utah Department of Transportation for help replacing the bridge.
“Money is not available from UDOT until 2011,” Schmidt said.
Meanwhile, crews are slated to begin repaving Main Street in Coalville in July.
“To add a bridge onto this, it would be a real hardship on the city,” Schmidt told councilpersons. “We’re strapped for money.”
Replacing the bridge could cost $200,000, which taxpayers in the unincorporated county are not responsible for, Summit County Councilwoman Sally Elliott said.
“We’re looking at county responsibility and if this is not in the unincorporated county, this is not a county responsibility,” Elliott said.
Still, Summit County Engineer Derrick Radke said the bridge should be repaired.
“I wouldn’t drive where they have it blocked off,” Radke said.
Coalville City Councilman Ron Boyer said the governments should work together to replace the bridge.
“The city and the county are both neighbors,” Boyer told the Summit County Council. “We want to work with you on this, and it’s going to benefit both of us to work together.”
But Summit County Councilman John Hanrahan is concerned other cities will ask for bridge repairs if the Coalville request is funded.
Completely closing the bridge, however, would not hurt the city, Schmidt replied.
“If we close the bridge, it wouldn’t hurt Coalville City one bit. It would hurt a lot of landowners in the county,” Schmidt said. “It’s not fair to the 1,500 people of Coalville to replace the bridge I don’t think the city collects one penny of taxes on the west side of that bridge.”
Whether the county immediately helps fund the replacement of the bridge will be decided by interim Summit County Manager Brian Bellamy.
“Nobody wants to step up and spend a lot of money on the bridge,” Schmidt said Monday. “What I took from the meeting is that the county will definitely sit down with us and at least discuss being creative. It wasn’t a flat-out, ‘No.'”