HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson city council member Jon Richardson is glad to see the process with the Woodie Seat Freeway continue forward.
"We're trying to shrink that timeline to actual construction happening," Garrett said. "The longer we wait, the more expensive it's going to get. The anticipated timeline was that we would have plans by the end of this year. For some reason, October or November sticks out to me, when we'd actually have plans that we could send out for bid."
The plan is to do a roundabout at Avenue A and explore the options at Avenue B to see what can be done to allow traffic there. Part of the reason getting this done quickly is so important is because costs of everything continue to skyrocket, especially when it comes to consumables and supplies needed for construction.
"There's going to be a lot of, I don't want to say, flying by the seat of our pants, because that sounds pretty haphazard, but there's going to be a lot of adjusting as we go and we see things change," Richardson said. "Things that we can get now in six months we may not be able to get, things we can't get now, we may have a surplus of and be sitting on it."
The uncertain cost environment is part of the reason the city is making an effort to get as close to a revenue-neutral budget as possible this coming year.