The Barton County Commission on Tuesday approved a quote from Straight-Line Striping Inc. for this year’s highway striping project.

Straight-Line’s quote was $112,311, compared to the only other quote of $115,351 from Heartland Traffic Services.

County Works Director Chris Schartz said the work includes centerline and edge striping for about 97 miles of roads where they plan to do overlay and sealing. The county has used this company before.

“I believe last year they got done in three days,” he said. “They work great for us; we have no issues. They do a lot of other counties in the area.”

The work will be in the southeast quadrant of the county, and a bit to the northeast. 

“We’re going to go from Dartmouth blacktop all the way east to the county line and all the way south to the county line, and then we’re going north as far as the city of Odin, and we’re going to go east to the county line. Then we will do a little bit on what us county people call Farman Road (NE 150 Road), which is about a mile north of the Odin blacktop and then east to the county line; that’s as far north as we’ll go this year.”

In other business:

• Payment of appropriations was approved, including the fifth (and possibly final) batch of “13th Month” appropriation for 2025 expenditures.

• Another batch of added/abated/escaped/refunded taxes was approved, totaling $43,373.52. County Clerk Bev Schmeidler said this represented 65 records. Several were the result of February hearings on real estate taxes paid under protest. “We expect one more big group like this,” she said. County Appraiser Wendy Prosser said annual valuation notices have been mailed. For people who like to view valuations on the county website, the ORKA property parcel search has not yet been updated, but people can use the Barton County Appraisal Portal. Go to bartoncounty.org and click on the “Property Search/Appraisal Portal” on the left-hand side of the County Appraiser’s page. Then click on “Public Search” or login if you have a paid subscription.

• Barb Esfeld reported on County Day at the Capitol, and other commissioners also commented on their March 3 trip to Topeka.

• The county renewed its annual peopleware agreement with Computer Information Concepts Inc. for $45,680. The quote started as $46,520, slightly less than last year’s $46,775. However, the county saved more money by dropping the keyword indexing feature because it is not needed.