Some long-awaited bridge repairs may be about to take place in the county.
At Monday’s Sunflower County Board of Supervisor’s meeting, the county lawmakers received bids on two Emergency Road and Bridge Repair projects, one for Tindall Road and another for Kemp Road and subsequently took those bids under advisement.
According to County Engineer Ron Cassada, he will recommend awarding the projects based on additional funds being awarded by the Mississippi Department of Transportation’s Local System Bridge Program.
Cassada explained that since the projects came in over the ERBR estimates, the balances would need to come from the county’s LSBP money. “The way y’all need to look at this is that you would be using LSBP to do these bridges anyway and you’re just given this additional money by MDOT,” he said.
For example, the engineering estimate for the Tindall Road project was $1,075,000, but the ERBR grant only provides $727,841 of that amount, so the balance of more than $300,000 would have to come from the county’s bridge fund.
And although four companies picked up bid packets for Tindall Road, only one contractor’s proposal was presented. That lone offer came from McBride Co, LLC of Batesville in the amount of $1,042,105.10. “That’s good news, but not great news,” Cassada said. His remarks were apparently based on the fact that the balance was coming from the county’s LSBP fund.
For the Kemp Road project, the engineer’s estimate is $950,000 and three out of the five contractors that picked up plan packets presented proposals with the apparent lowest bid of $788,634.63 coming from J.J. Ferguson Sand and Gravel Company of Greenwood. Cassada said the ERBR grant amount is roughly $539,000 for that project.
Dozier, LLC of Natchez proposed $921,700.30 and N.L. Carson Construction Company Incorporated of Carthage bid $974,039.44.
According to Cassada, “These are the bridges we bid back in February or March of this year. They came in over the amount that ERBR had, we went back to MDOT and State Aid to see if they would allow us to do a non-seismic design bridge and they would not.“
As a result, modifications were made to the design including having the county do the work to fix the gravel approaches to the bridges.
Cassada said he hopes to present his final recommendation at the December 21 meeting contingent upon the required signatures and the tabulations being correct.
Additionally, Cassada also informed the county officials that Double-S Construction has completed the road construction project at Delta Protein Products and he submitted a final payment request for $33,986.93.
He also reminded them that it was a Delta Regional Authority 100% grant, but the project did include an overage amount for some additional base repair work on the road that the county is responsible for paying. Cassada said he had estimated the overage to be about $15,000, but it may be closer to $10,000.
In other business, the county leaders approved a request from a local church to purchase 13 old concrete parking blocks that are located at the old Ludlow building. The members decided to sell them for $5 each.
