The Baxter County Quorum Court Tuesday night voted to spend $20,000 to purchase a piece of land near Cotter’s Denton Ferry Road.
The land, located on Brown Lane near the bridge over Hightower Creek, will be used by the county as a staging area for equipment when it replaces the bridge next year. The property will also be used to maintain proper water flow and bank stabilization during the bridge’s construction.
County Judge Mickey Pendergrass talks about the property.
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The Hightower Creek bridge has long bedeviled the county’s Road and Bridge Department. Hightower Creek drains almost 10,000 acres of land in Baxter County from the White River north of Cotter, to the former King Ready-Mix site on state Highway 5 north in Mountain Home. During heavy rains, the bridge’s five 5-foot culverts often become jammed with trees and other debris, forcing the creek to back up and even washing away part of the bridge sometimes.
Baxter County has been awarded a $900,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program to build a new bridge across the creek. The county will contribute $300,000 towards the bridge’s construction and will need to build a temporary bypass around the bridge site while work is being carried out.
Construction on the new bridge is expected to begin in December or January and be completed next September.
Once the new bridge is completed, the Brown Lane property purchased by the county will be sold to a neighbor, with the county retaining a conservation easement along the creek’s bank.
An estimated 300 homes sit along Denton Ferry Road and use the Hightower Creek bridge.
The original Hightower Creek bridge was built by County Judge James Baker in 1979. A group of Denton Ferry Road residents formed a local improvement district and volunteered to pay higher property taxes to fund the bridge’s initial construction.
Also at Tuesday night’s Quorum Court meeting, justices of the peace approved creating a separate personnel policy and wage scale for the Sheriff’s Office. No raises or additional money was requested by the Sheriff’s Office at this time with the new wage scale. Sheriff John Montgomery said he planned to discuss his department’s pay scale with the county’s Budget Committee later this year, with deputies possibly seeing a pay increase factored into next year’s budget.
The Quorum Court also approved a resolution asking state leaders to make improvements to U.S. Highway 412, which serves as a main traffic artery across northern Arkansas and runs through Baxter County.
Justices of the peace also approved the appointments of Larry Ivens and Wendy Flentge to the Henderson Fire Protection District Board of Commissioners, and the appointment of Nathan Byrd and the reappointment of Luke Glasscock to the Lone Rock Fire Protection District Board of Commissioners.
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