Newton County Supervisors were forced to tweak their plans to apply for part of a $250 million bond bill passed by the Mississippi Legislature for Road and Bridge Repair after the Office of State Aid released new guidelines for submitting applications.
In a regularly scheduled meeting Monday, the board heard from County Engineer Dwane Stanford, who informed the board the previous plan wouldn’t work.
“The application can only have one bridge on it,” he said.
Previously, the board had given Stanford a green light to submit three applications. The first application would be for closed bridges, the second for low-rated bridges and the third for miscellaneous bridge repairs. However, with the new rules, he said, the county would need to submit a separate application for each of the 14 bridges.
“You need to go look at them and find a bridge in each beat, so everyone has a project,” Board President Charles Moulds said.
“It wouldn’t be difficult to select a bridge in each beat,” Stanford said. However, additional changes to the rules state the applications need to be prioritized, with the county stating which projects are most important. That would be difficult for the Supervisors, he said, as they are elected to advocate for the people in their beats.
“I make the motion we do it by order of traffic volume,” Supervisor Joe Alexander said, adding that would be fair to county residents without giving unfair preference to one beat.
The board voted to send in separate applications for Prospect Cedar Road, Newton Calhoun Road, Greenfield Road and Pleasant Ridge Road. Additional applications would be prioritized based on traffic volume data.
