(Estherville)– The cost of widening Highway nine on the east side of Estherville is going up.
Meeting in special session Wednesday, the city council voted five-to-one to go ahead with plans to widen the road between 20th and 28th streets at an additional cost estimated at 100-thousand dollars. The D-O-T was asked to foot all of that, but instead has agreed to pay half of it.
Officials with the Iowa Department of Transportation say original plans didn’t include rebuilding sidestreets and driveway connections to meet new grades. That isn’t sitting well with city council members, who say the engineers should have never overlooked that. They directed city staff to fire off a letter to local legislators and the Governor expressing their displeasure.
The city of Estherville had originally budgeted 220-thousand dollars for the project. The change means the city’s cost will now be somewhere between 270-thousand and 290-thousand dollars.
