By Eileen Persike
Editor

Anyone who has driven Lincoln Street from the Oneida Avenue intersection east knows it is in rough shape. Though it is part of the city’s five-year capital improvement plan for a utility project to replace sewer, water and storm sewer, a more immediate fix is in the works.

Mark Barden with Town and Country Engineering, the firm that works with the city, told the Rhinelander Common Council Monday they are looking at a “patch” that will get the city – and drivers through until the big project is on the calendar.

The plan would be to mill out the existing surface to the curb and add two inches of pavement.

“What that’s going to do is provide proper drainage along Lincoln Street and give you a nice drive-able surface,” Barden said. “It’s not going to last 15 years, but it will last until that sewer project starts, presumably in the five-year range.”

The project will encompass the Lincoln Street/Oneida Street intersection and run east to Evergreen, where the overlay project ended five years ago.

Barden said the city negotiated with Musson Brothers to make the project a change order to the Stevens Street work currently being done. The cost would be around $190,000 and would be slated for mid July.

“With the milling, with the traffic control, they’re proposing to get this done in two days,” Barden said.  “If the council were to say ‘go ahead,’ they would mill this one day into the night, the next day they would pave it.”

The Stevens Street project is running under budget, Barden said, and with this addition, the city would still be under budget by about $200,000, based on projections.

“What can go wrong on the Stevens Street project is very limited at this point,” Barden added. “I would say that $200,000 is within your contingency to finish this project.”

Curb and gutter  work is expected to begin next week on Stevens Street, with the first course of asphalt going in around the Fourth of July. The final course of asphalt, repairs and striping would be completed spring, 2021.