Newton County Supervisors will not spend the county’s allotment of Local System Bridge Project funds this year, opting instead to save them until January 2020.
In a regularly scheduled meeting Thursday, County Engineer Duane Stanford told the board they had around $500,000 in LSBP money ready to be spent on a qualified project.
“What do y’all want to do with it,” he said, adding the cost of bridges is expected to go up with the increased demand from counties spending Emergency Road and Bridge Fund dollars.
Currently, Stanford said, the county has three bridges that could be repaired with the LSBP money, which can only be spent on certain projects. Two of the bridges, he said, are in Beat 4 on Pine Ridge Road. The third bridge is in Beat 5 on Buckley Road.
Stanford said $500,000 might be enough to do the bridge on Pine Ridge or the bridge on Buckley but would not be enough for three bridges.
“It’s not enough to do all three of them,” he said.
If the board held off, Supervisor Joe Alexander said, additional LSBP funds would be allotted in January 2020. That could give the board enough money to do all three projects, he said.
However, Supervisors Kenneth Harris and Charles Godwin had another objection. Under Mississippi law, county supervisors are prohibited from accepting contracts after a certain point in an election year. The law is intended to keep outgoing officials from obligating their successors to spend money.
County Administrator Steve Seale said that deadline will go into effect in June.
“You can’t accept new contracts after June 1 because of election year,” he said.
Due to the need to draw up plans for the bridges and design project specifications, Stanford said getting a contract approved before June 1 wasn’t feasible.
“You could get it programmed, but you couldn’t get a contract,” he said.
The board acknowledged the chances of getting a project drawn up, bid out and approved within a month were slim to none. However, they told Stanford to go ahead and draw up the plans to be ready for bidding come January.
In related news, Godwin said Stanford and Board Attorney Jason Mangum had been investigating a possible change to the Newton Calhoun bridge project. The board previously accepted a bid for $213,000, though the county had received over $400,000 for the project through the Emergency Road and Bridge Fund Act.
Mangum said he had spoken with the attorney general about the matter and concluded it changing the project could be done with approval from Mississippi Department of Transportation. Under normal bidding procedures, he said, projects cannot be changed once a bid is awarded. However, since this is an emergency bridge fund, the county is not bound by the same rules.
“If we can get written approval that this does not violate the terms of the grant, we can do it,” he said.
However, Mangum said, in his opinion it was highly unlikely MDOT would approve the county’s request.
In other business, the Board of Supervisors:
Approved $250 to advertise in The Newton County Appeal’s 2019 Graduation Section; and
Agreed to help Pat Harrison Waterway with the fireworks display at Turkey Creek.
