The Attala County Board of Supervisors is hoping to catch up on road maintenance and has begun planning for bridge and road projects using LSBP and State Aid funds available to them during the next five years. They are also likely to pitch in usage tax funds due to arrive from the state in the next few years to bolster the efforts.
County Engineer Christian Gardner met with the board last week to discuss available funds, rules for projects and setting priorities.
LSBP funds
There are two currently-scheduled bridge projects which will be paid out of the county’s Local System Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program’s (LSBP) funds. Bids will be taken to replace Bridge #4 on County Road 4210 in March at a cost of about $490,000. A second bridge, located on County Road 5210, is also already slated for funding, at a cost of about $390,000.
That leaves $1,018,913 in LSBP funds for the county to spend on bridge repalcement or repair. Based on board tradition, the next area to receive bridge funding would be Beat 2, but due to the restriction that LSBP funds only be spent on non-State Aid roads, none are eligible.
As a result, Beat 3 would be the next to select a project for funding, with Supervisor Steven Goss currently reviewing potential projects.
Although there will likely be enough funding after that for Beat 4 Supervisor Willie Perteet to begin planning a project, Gardner said there is no rush for him to select a project since what is already in the pipeline will take an extended period of time to plan.
State Aid funds
Gardner told the board that they currently have a little over $2.3 million in state aid funds, and that, if they don’t use any on bridge projects, they would likely be able to fund resurfacing of about 52 miles of county roads. Gardner said it costs an average of about $45,000 per mile to do all the work to resurface a mile of road, stripe it and install necessary signage.
“In the past, before the bridge crisis hit, it was standard issue that you’d resurface every road in the county every other board term,” said Gardner, “but the bulk of these roads have not been done in at least three board terms. We’re certainly starting to get behind the curve.”
Due to lack of funding, the county engineer said that only 15 or fewer of the county’s 150-160 miles of State Aid roads were worked on during the last board term.
The board first endorsed including the state aid district engineer’s provided list of nine roads in need of resurfacing on their list of potential road resurfacing projects. Those county roads are 4116, 4002, 3102, 3227, 3024, 2120, 2125, 5216 and 2247, totalling about 32 miles of roads.
Supervisors then began reviewing state aid road maps and adding roads in need to the list. Those added to the list for consideration include county roads 5053, 3122, 4167, 1106, 3102, 4101.
Gardner will now do design work on the indicated roads. Once he provides the supervisors with estimates on each of the potential projects, the board will begin setting priorities.
Since the potential roads on the list will exceed the 52 miles of roadway that could be funded by the current pool of State Aid money, the supervisors said they will likely add in some, if not all, of the user tax funds the county will receive between 2021 and 2024 to try to catch up on the road maintenance.
The $105,489 already received, as well as the user tax funds expected to arrive in July, will be spent on other items because the funds must be fully spent by October 1 of the year in which they are received. Gardner told the board it would be impossible to complete any of the potential state aid resurfacing projects that quickly.
The board is instead looking at where else the current pool of funds can help. One potential purchase is a tar truck, whcih all five supervisors said is needed.
