MISSOULA — The Maclay Bridge west of Missoula closed on January 26, 2024, and on Tuesday evening residents had the opportunity to express their concerns to the Missoula County Commissioners at an open house meeting.
Along with county commissioners, other organizations — including the Montana Department of Transportation and HDR Engineering, that have been working on the bridge — were available for questions.
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Many people raised questions about the logistics of the bridge project and expressed their concerns about the closure.
Jan Lieber, who has lived in the area near the bridge for 17 years says she hopes there is a temporary solution to open the bridge again but she is still concerned with how this happened in the first place.
“I’m very disappointed that the bridge wasn’t taken care of when it should’ve been,” Lieber said. “I’m disappointed that it deteriorated down to this point, and it’s not the whole bridge it’s just a section, and so I would rather they talked more about how to fix it right now so people can use it, and I don’t think an open house lends itself to a group of people saying, 'here’s what we want, how can you respond to us'?”
Missoula County Commissioner Josh Slotnick was upfront about what needs to be done with this bridge and others in the county, We need to fix ‘em. [The] biggest trick on this is money.” Slotnick said.
“Bridges are really really expensive. Way more expensive than what we can possibly pay for at the county, "Slotnick added. "So we are pretty much 100% dependent on grants either from the state or the feds to do this kind of bridge repair.”
Slotnick elaborated on when the county will know about what needs to be done with the bridge from HDR Engineering and what will determine the decisions that need to be made regarding its repairs.
“Hopefully we’ll know within a week and a half or so. We were told two weeks last Thursday. Again if this is something we can fix in-house we’ll do it with our public works staff. If it’s more complex, than we can do we’ll have to engage an outside contractor. If it’s really expensive we’re gonna have to reach out to MDT for some help. So… the county’s going to play those roles.”
