VIENNA — Eastern District Commissioner Rodney Southard shared his district road crew’s equipment needs during the May 21 commission meeting.

The crew’s first concern was getting one of their employees a commercial driver’s license (CDL) to drive any county vehicle. The commissioners called Bryan Boyce from Great River Engineering to discuss their options. Boyce had joined the May 7 commission meeting to discuss any county needs, including CDL training.

Southard also shared the crew’s need for a new dump truck over a new road grader because the grader needs some repairs but works fine. Patrick Kleffner, western district commissioner, said that he would help Southard in searching for a dump truck and that it could cost $50,000-$125,000 for a good used one. He also recommended letting the crew test it because they will be working with it every day.

Because the county budgeted $240,000 for a grader, Southard plans to pull from that fund for the dump truck and some other truck repairs.

Rock Island Trail in Belle

The city of Belle can’t borrow county equipment for grading its 1.1-mile section of the Rock Island Trail because of terms of the grant, according to Presiding Commissioner Vic Stratman.

“They determined that something with the grant that they don’t allow it,” Statman said.

But County Clerk Rhonda Rodgers didn’t think that the county insurance would have allowed that anyway, and Stratman said that the county would have most likely had to contract a price with the city instead.

“But he (Belle Aldermen Steve Vogt) said it’s not going to work. Forget about it, right now anyway,” Stratman said.

According to Belle Treasurer Charro Reasor, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) doesn’t allow using a county grader because when the project was awarded in late 2019 or early 2020, the city had its own grader.

At the time, the city had different employees and a different board of aldermen, and Reasor thinks the grader was sold in 2021. No current employees can use a grader.

The city is working with FHWA on a change order for the scope of work for the project, and Reasor hopes working with the county remains a possibility.

Utility right of way

The commissioners also returned to their May 7 utility right-of-way discussion regarding Ervin Cable Construction, LLC, requesting to install underground fiber cables. Rodgers said that it was not discussed during the May 11 meeting because she hadn’t gathered the necessary previous documentation.

The commissioners signed a right-of-way and road crossing policy on June 30, 2025 for companies that wanted to do utility work on county roads. Companies had to apply and then follow rules set by the county.

However, the commissioners rescinded the policy Dec. 22, 2025, and declared all pending and non-compliance applications null and void.

Vesper Energy, the company running Vichy Solar, reached out about their application in early 2026, but the commissioners declined it, saying it was incomplete and failed to disclose how deep they were going to bury equipment.

The commissioners are now determining if that rescinded policy needs to be updated before reinstating it.

“A road-use agreement is something we ought to have on file anyway,” Stratman said.

Rodgers said that utilities companies in the past emailed the county, and the county let the work be done if the road conditions were left the same or any damages were fixed.

Rodgers also advised caution about reinstating a policy.

“I feel like the reason it was rescinded to begin with was that once you set this up and made an application for me, you kind of lost your control,” she said. “Because whoever put in an application and met those specifications on that application, you had to just do it.”