Veterans Affairs Office hours reduced
Veterans Affairs Officer Mervin Foster proposed reducing the office open hours to two or three per day during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a request to the Board of Supervisors, Foster said he could monitor any calls to the office using his cell phone.
Supervisors approved the request, but with conditions. They indicated that the hours could not vary from day-to-day, and set the open hours to 9 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday. They also said that when the office is not in operation, there must be a sign posted on the door indicating a contact telephone number that would allow a veteran arriving to the office to contact someone immediately.
State Aid repaving set
County engineer Christian Gardner presented the board with the final list of roads to be repaved using state aid funds.
With a little over $2.3 million in state aid funds available to the county, Gardner had previously told the board they would likely be able to fund resurfacing nearly 50 miles of county roads. Gardner said it costs an average of $45,000 per mile to complete 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,” Gardner said during a February planning meeting for the project, “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 the years of funding shortfalls, a maximum of 15 of the county’s 150-160 miles of State Aid roads were worked on during the last five-year board term.
During the planning meeting the board first endorsed including the state aid district engineer’s provided list of nine roads in need of resurfacing on their list of priorities. Those county roads are 4116, 4002, 3102, 3227, 3024, 2120, 2125, 5216 and 2247, totalling about 32 miles of roads.
Supervisors then reviewed state aid road maps and added other roads in need to the list. Those added to the list include county roads 5053, 3122, 4167, 1106, 3102, 4101.
Since that February meeting, Gardner has completed the design work on the proposed roads, and told the board Monday that the identified roads total 46.1 miles.
The board voted unanimously to proceed with all of the roads on the list since it appears the funding is already in place. However, the supervisors had previously committed to adding in some of the user tax funds they expect to receive from the state during the next several years if necessary to complete the full list of approved repaving projects.
Ability Works roofing project to proceed
The supervisors Monday agreed to hire local architect Art Cook to plan the roof replacement for the county building on West Jefferson Street that houses Ability Works. Although two bids will need to be sought for the project, the estimated cost of the roof replacement is $107,000.
Lack of fire volunteers
Beat 4 Supervisor Willie Perteet told his fellow board members that he was surprised recently when a fire truck from the Kosciusko station responded to a recent Sallis house fire while the fire truck located nearby at the Sallis fire station did not.
Perteet was told that If no one is manning a local station and no other volunteer is readily available, a local truck may remain dormant during a nearby fire.
