Joint meeting set for March 28 concerning Stone Bridge

     During the Feb. 21 Jones County Supervisor meeting, the board set a date for a joint meeting with the Ely’s Stone Bridge Foundation, the Jones County Historic Preservation Commission, the University of Colorado-Denver, the county engineer, and Jones County Conservation to discuss the future of Stone Bridge outside Monticello.

     The meeting was set for Tuesday, March 28, following the board’s evening meeting at 6 p.m.

     The board asked County Engineer Derek Snead to bring some figures to that meeting regarding how much it would cost to replace Stone Bridge or to take out and replace with another structure.

     “We need to establish a protocol and guidelines for a timeline and what needs to be done,” suggested Supervisor Wayne Manternach. “Anything that happened to the bridge needs to go through and be approved by our engineer (Snead) before any maintenance is done.”

     Snead said if county was of a mind to give the bridge structure over to another entity, he couldn’t see spending Secondary Road or county funds to repair the bridge if, in fact, it was no longer county property.

     “If we close it,” said Snead of the several options presented, “then we definitely shouldn’t spend money improving the roadway.”

     “It comes down to whether or not we want to save the bridge and have Secondary Roads provide maintenance on it every year,” warned Supervisor Joe Oswald.

     Supervisor Jon Zirkelbach agreed. “No sense spending money maintaining a bridge that may not be ours years from now.”

     That’s when Manternach suggested bringing the Conservation Department into the conversation. He said if the county wanted to keep Stone Bridge as county structure, than maybe Conservation could take it over rather than a separate group.

     “They have a lot of projects on their plate right now,” warned Supervisor Rohwedder.

     Having the joint meeting at the end of March, Rohwedder said, gives Conservation time to meet as a board as well to discuss Stone Bridge.

In other county business:

     • The board approved James Krapfl to the Jones County Historic Preservation Commission, replacing Randy Withrow who resigned.

     • The board set a public hearing on Tuesday, March 14 at 9:45 a.m. to re-zone property owned by Roger Stephen in Lovell Township from A-Agriculture to C1-Commercial. The plan is to re-zone 19 acres, but Land Use Administrator Michele Lubben said only 1 acre would be leased for a greenhouse business.

     The Planning and Zoning Commission outlined some conditions as well with the re-zoning: All structures must maintain a 30-foot setback from the private road right-of-way. The private road (197^th Street) must be improved to a gravel road prior to the retail business (greenhouse) commencing.

     • The board approved the hiring of Roberta Robinson as the full-time office secretary for the Engineer’s Office. Robinson will work 40 hours a week, with a salary of just over $40,000.

     Robinson previously worked in the Engineer’s Office a number of years ago.