City Commission seeks solution on Banner Road bumps

Recent repairs on Banner Road at Holton’s southern edge may have felt like “speed bumps” to drivers, but Holton City Manager Kerwin McKee told the Holton City Commission on Monday that he is looking at funding options for necessary — albeit expensive — asphalt overlay work to smooth things over.

At the commission’s first meeting of 2022, McKee told commissioners that he and city staff are looking into financing options for an overlay on Banner Road, including a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) similar to one used to help cover the purchase of a new fire engine for the city’s fire department.

McKee told commissioners that the six-block stretch of Banner Road, which runs from U.S. Highway 75 (Arizona Avenue) to Iowa Avenue, has been patched several times in the past 20 years, including with the “asphalt zipper” purchased last summer for the city’s street department.

But the work of the “asphalt zipper,” while saving time and money for the street department, left what felt like “speed bumps” on Banner, commissioners noted. McKee agreed that the work has left the street in “rough” shape for motorists who utilize it and said the best way to repair it is with an asphalt overlay, as was done this past year on Fourth Street by the Kansas Department of Transportation.

However, an asphalt overlay for the entirety of Banner Road would cost about $200,000, according to an estimate for the work that McKee received from Bettis Asphalt of Topeka, and the city does not “have that kind of money in the street department to do that.”

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