Attala County supervisors have had to revise their plans for road work funded through the state aid program after the State Aid Engineer notified counties the agency wants to ensure that priority is given to addressing problem bridges.
The board, in conjunction with County Engineer Christian Gardner, had proposed in February repaving of about 52 miles of county roads using the state aid funds combined with their expected user tax revenues over the course of the board term, which ends in December 2023.
Gardner originally told the board it had a little over $2.3 million in state aid funds, and that, if it did not use any on bridge projects, it would likely be able to fund resurfacing of about 52 miles of county roads. Gardner said at the time it costs an average of about $45,000 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,” Gardner said at the time, “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 initially endorsed including the State Aid Engineer’s provided list of nine roads in need of resurfacing on its list of potential road resurfacing projects. Those county roads were 4116, 4002, 3102, 3227, 3024, 2120, 2125, 5216 and 2247, totaling about 32 miles of roads.
Supervisors then reviewed state aid road maps and added roads in need to the list. Those added to the list included county roads 5053, 3122, 4167, 1106, 3102, 4101.
But then the board received notification from the State Aid Engineer indicating that all of the funding could not be used for road repaving projects unless and until repair to some sub-standard bridges were completed.
Following discussion during several more recent meetings, the board decided to submit a revised road plan it hopes will allow work to be done on about half the originally-proposed roads while it continues working on a number of bridge projects already underway.
Once those bridge projects are completed, it will propose addressing as many of the additional road projects on the list as possible given whatever funding remains.
The early repaving projects the county hopes to address include 27.566 miles of road at a cost of $1,382,238. They include portions of French Camp Road (Road 3122), Peeler Road (Road 3034), Old Natchez Trace Road (Road 2247), Knox Crossing Road (Road 5216), Providence Road (Road 5053) and McAdams Road (4167).
