Secondary Roads staff updated the Des Moines County Board of Supervisors on several transportation items on Dec. 2, including a prospective DOT road transfer, an interim snow‑plowing agreement, an intersection change in Minneapolis and upcoming paving bids.

Staff said the Iowa Department of Transportation is preparing legal descriptions to transfer roughly 11 miles of old Highway 61 immediately north of Burlington to the county. Because the transfer is not yet complete, DOT asked the county to remove snow on those sections this winter; staff told the board they planned to present an interim agreement to the supervisors to reimburse the county for approximately $20,000 of winter maintenance costs.

"They asked if they could do a snow agreement with us to pay us to remove the snow for the winter on those roads...I wanna say somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000," Secondary Roads staff said.

Staff also said the intersection of Old Highway 61 and Minneapolis Road will be converted to a temporary four‑way stop effective tomorrow per a press release, a DOT requirement that precedes any evaluation of allowing through traffic in the future. The county noted the change is a preliminary step required by DOT policy; any permanent reconfiguration would require additional analysis and agreement among the city, DOT and county.

On capital projects, staff said a bid package for the Pleasant Grove Road paving project was issued and that bids are expected in January; staff also described progress on a county parking‑lot project with anticipated bidding in January or February after paperwork is completed.

On snow operations, staff described wet heavy snow over the weekend, crew rotations, a brief equipment failure that was covered by a spare truck, and a mailbox policy that limits county replacement to mailboxes physically struck by county equipment rather than to boxes damaged by snow displacement.

No formal action was taken at the meeting on these items; staff indicated the DOT snow‑plowing agreement will be presented to the board in a future agenda for formal authorization.