TORRINGTON – A Wyoming Department of Transportation project to re-pave West C Street this year is off the table for 2020 due to the complexities of sidewalk requirements within the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

Torrington Mayor Randy Adams said during the Torrington City Council’s meeting on Jan. 7 that city officials had received an email informing them the section of road would be dropped from this summer’s project and done at a later date. 

“For two or three years, WyDOT has said that this coming summer they would be doing a resurfacing project from Highway 26 to up north of the college building,” Adams told the assembly on Jan. 7. “About a month ago I got the information from Mark Weiss, who is in our engineering department, that he received an email from Mark Ayen, who is the construction engineer for our district, saying that they have pulled that project.”

According to Ayen, the ADA requirements required the project to be reclassified into another type of project that would require the use of federal funds. 

“When we reached the final stages of the design for this work we realized that the amount of work required had moved us from one category of project to another category,”
 Ayen wrote in a statement to the Telegram: “With the amount of work we were proposing to do, we would be required to upgrade the ADA facilities, which is a condition of WYDOT using federal funds on projects such as this. ADA upgrade projects historically take a little time to get designed and ‘out the door’ because they tend to get complicated and sometimes require extensive property acquisitions.” 

During the city council meeting, Adams voiced his displeasure at the decision. 

“I contacted those people,” Adams said. “I contacted the director of WyDOT, and on their first day back from their holiday week they were very apologetic. They understood the situation and said they would be sending people here to communicate with me and the city on the project.”

Adams and other city officials met with WyDOT officials on Thursday, Jan. 9, and Adams said the city “held their feet to the fire” to find a solution for the issues with the deteriorating street. 

“They were very contrite,” Adams said. “They were very apologetic. They admitted that ‘yes, they made some mistakes, and yes, they probably should have been more thoughtful about what they had promised.’ 

“I can tell you that their intention when they came here Thursday was to say ‘sorry, we can’t. Maybe in a couple of years we can.’ We kind of held their feet to the fire and we discussed it for over an hour and I repeatedly reminded them that because of what they said, I had communicated to the public that it was going to be fixed. I had repeatedly been asked questions by the public about why the city doesn’t fix the street. A lot of the public doesn’t know that it’s a WyDOT highway.”

Adams said a lot of the discussion centered around the details of the project, specifically the ADA requirements, and funding. The conversation ended on a somewhat positive note as Adams said the WyDOT officials promised they would look into their options to help with the project. 

“There was a lot of discussion about that the city can do, what the state would be able to do, the highway funds they would have to use, the ADA ramping they would have to put in, the connections they have to make between the storm drains because a lot of our corners have access to storm drains, so they have to work with that,” he said. “They’d have to move the poles – they had all kinds of excuses as to why they didn’t want to do it. 

“Ultimately, they went back to Cheyenne with the promise that they would look into it and see what they could do and how they could help.”

Adams said the WyDOT officials are considering finding ways to work with the city during the waterline project. At the present time, there is no timeframe for the repaving of the whole road, but Adams said there will be something done on West C in the coming year – even if it’s just the city’s project. 

“We have a project going on between 21st and 25th streets, a water line project, so we want to try to cooperate with them and what they want to do so we don’t have to dig it up twice,” Adams said. “They thought they’d try to consider working with us on how we can get that done. 

“We won’t be doing the whole project, for sure, but maybe we can get something done between 21st and 25th. Part of it is for sure. We’ve already gotten the bids on the waterline project and we’re going to do that this spring. If they can figure out some way they can support us financially, then yes. We’re going to get some of it done – not all of it, just some of it.”

Ayens said there is no timeline for the project, but WyDOT is working with the city to find ways to improve the roads before the entire project can be completed. 

“As we look at options for this particular project, we have not set a firm timeline. But we are exploring some options to accelerate the project, minimize impacts to adjacent properties, and at the very least try and temporarily improve the roadway until we can find a permanent solution,” he said.

“The work we are contemplating is turning out to be increasingly more complex the more we look at it. I understand the frustrations of your friends and neighbors in Torrington, but I assure you we are working toward some kind of conclusion.”