Co. Plans To Acquire Land For Bridge

From the Capital-Journal:

The Shawnee County Commission Monday approved the use of eminent domain to acquire 4/100 of an acre the county needs for its project to replace the Willard Bridge.

“I certainly hope we don’t have to use eminent domain but we certainly need to be prepared to,” said Commissioner Shelly Buhler, whose district includes the area involved.

Commissioners Buhler, Kevin Cook and Bob Archer voted 3-0 to authorize county counselor Rich Eckert to initiate eminent domain proceedings to buy three lots encompassing 4/100 of an acre on Wabaunsee Street in the city of Willard in northwest Shawnee County.

Government entities use eminent domain to acquire private property for public use. Entities must provide just compensation to owners of properties they condemn.

The property involved is valued at less than $1,200, Eckert said.

He told commissioners the county had reached an agreement with the person it thought was the sole landowner last week but the title company involved reported another person who held interest in the land had died in 1979, leaving interests in it to four other people.

“That threw everything into chaos,” Eckert said.

He said two of those people aren’t willing to accept the county’s offer while the county hasn’t been able to contact a third.

The county in coming weeks will continue to trying to avoid the use of eminent domain by negotiating a settlement with the landowners, Eckert said.

He said that if the county initiates eminent domain, three independent appraisers would determine the property’s value. The county would pay that amount to Shawnee County District Court to acquire the land’s title. The court would then decide how much of each of the five current landowners would receive.

Appraisers might decide the property is worth more, less or the same amount as the county is offering, Eckert said.

He said the county needs to move quickly to acquire the land because it is seeking funding from a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER grant, to help pay to replace the bridge. The county to acquire that grant needs to own all the property required for the project.

Cook said that while the county should always be careful about taking property without the owner’s consent, the situation in Willard involves “absolutely” the type of circumstance state lawmakers contemplated when they empowered government entities to use eminent domain.

He said the county needs the land to deal with safety and transportation issues, which must be resolved very quickly.

County officials expect to learn next month whether the county will receive a TIGER grant to bridge a funding gap Shawnee County faces for its project to replace the Willard Bridge.

The bridge replacement is expected to cost about $24.4 million. If Shawnee County obtains the $16.7 million TIGER grant it is seeking, it would cover the rest of the costs using about $1 million from Wabaunsee County and more than $6 million in leftover revenue expected to go to Shawnee County after a countywide, half-cent sales tax expires Dec. 31, 2016.

The bridge is located along Shawnee County’s western boundary with Wabaunsee County on N.W. Carlson Road, about 2.7 miles north of Interstate 70. It was built in 1955 and widened in 1983. Concerns over its structural integrity prompted commissioners earlier this year to reduce the bridge’s weight limit to 9 tons.

The bridge’s sufficiency rating, which measures its fitness on a scale of 0 to 100, was above 61 until 2012. It dropped to 50.7 in 2013, and to 23.7 earlier this year.