City opposes closure requested by railroad

Carthage officials say they want a local railroad to talk to them about the “whee” bridge before they will support changes to two railroad crossings in the city.

Carthage City Administrator Tom Short told the Carthage City Council on Tuesday he planned to write a letter on Wednesday opposing plans to close the crossing at an alley near Elm Street and declining to help with changes to the crossing on north River Street in an effort to force the state and the Missouri and Northern Arkansas Railroad to compromise with the city on reconstructing the old railroad bridge.

He said plans to rebuild the famous “whee” bridge on Oak Street have languished for several months because the railroad and the state want the city to increase the height of the bridge.

“In discussions with MNA Railroad and MoDOT they basically wanted the city to raise the bridge another four feet above what it is now,” Short told the council on Tuesday. “That has more than doubled the cost on the project.

“We tried to get a meeting with MoDOT, MNA, the city and our consultants to talk about both projects so we could work out the details about both projects. The two bridges south of the Oak Street bridge are about 18 and a half feet above the tracks. MoDOT and MNA wanted the city to raise the Oak Street bridge to 22 and a half feet or 23 and a half feet. We’ve tried to explain to them that raising that bridge is not really going to help anything because the bridges further south that are in need of repair probably aren’t going to be touched any time soon.”

Short said MNA has declined to meet with the city so the city would send a letter to MoDOT opposing the closing of an at-grade crossing in an alley near Elm Street and declining to help the railroad with new signals on the River Street crossing between Central and Missouri Highway 96.
Public comments on those proposed changes were due to MoDOT on Wednesday.

“Because we cannot get MNA Railroad to the table with us, we’re proposing that we decline participating in any costs of the closing projects and that we oppose the closing of the crossing at the alley east of Elm Street,” Short said. “We’ll send those comments into MoDOT on Wednesday and unless there are any adverse comments to that, that’s how we’ll proceed.”

No one from the council spoke against Short’s decision.

In other business, former animal control officer Justin Butler was sworn in as a police officer with the Carthage Police Department.

Butler was the first graduate of an experimental program where the city paid for him to attend the Missouri Southern Police Academy in return for a commitment from him to work for the department for a set amount of time.

Public Works Director Chad Wampler said a recent cleanup day, held by the BYKOTA Church in Carthage, probably saved the city hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in future fines and tax bills by helping residents with cleaning up their property, mowing lawns and clearing brush.

“The work that they did on most of these addresses were code violation-type problems as far as people not being able to pay fines,” Wampler said. “A lot of the cases were people with handicaps or different ailments that were preventing some of these properties from being cleaned up.”

Wampler said the church was planning another cleanup day for Sunday, June 7.