U-town sidewalk job awaits state okay

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Jul 27, 20170

Uniontown’s sidewalk-extension project, expected to be started by August, has been placed on hold as Washington Department of Transportation forms are filled out and returned by the town.

Funding is expected to come from a $306,000 grant from Washington’s Transportation Improvement Board and $60,000 from Palouse Regional Transportation Organization.

The concrete sidewalks will be located within the existing right-of-way of Highway 195. Total length of new sidewalks will be .5401 mile.

“The naysayers are the guys in Spokane who are supposed be processing our paperwork,” said Brian Davies, Uniontown town councilman.

Davies referred to varying stages of forms that need to be filed for WSDOT to approve before releasing the promised funding for the project.

“We’re very close to getting the permits from the state highway,” said Munir Daud, Pullman engineer who is working on the Uniontown project.

Daud estimates that the town will go out to bid on the project in two weeks.

“We don’t want to delay it any longer,” said Davies.

Daud also stated that it is not too late to do the work this summer. Preliminary engineering for the project is now 90 percent complete.

“Some of it seems a little ridiculous,” Davies commented on the WSDOT paperwork. “We’re not building a freeway, we’re building a sidewalk.”

Once the bid process is complete and a contractor is chosen, work is expected to take a maximum of two months. Fall weather usually permits sidewalk work to be done into November.

The Montgomery Street/Highway 195 sidewalk will extend north from Owen Street to the Dahmen Barn and south from Frank Street to the southern town limits.