County makes progress on its building projects
Published 12:00 pm Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Lafayette County is making progress with building projects, including a new fire station and a county road that one day could include a new health department.
After months of planning for a new fire station and determining how to fund construction, the Board of Supervisors accepted on Tuesday the recommendation from county engineer and planner Larry Britt to use the low bid of $372,000 from Heritage Builders of Oxford to construct fire station No. 2.
To fund construction, supervisors approved a budget amendment using hospital proceeds.
“When we set the budget last year, we did not yet bid out for the County Road 406 project so we had no idea what the costs and expenses were going to be,” County Administrator Joseph Johnson said. “We did not have that set amount of money from the hospital proceeds.”
County Road 406 is another large project for the supervisors, which is near Lafayette High School. Britt said the school side of the road is pretty much complete, while the other side is nearing completion after dealing with several soil issues that caused problems and delays.
“If you haven’t been out there lately, it’s looking pretty good,” Britt said. “We’ve just had a lot of bad material on both sides, but we’ve got the limestone on now and getting closer to paving. I hope that we could get through real soon.”
Supervisors on Tuesday gave final sight approval for a development along County Road 406 after allowing a couple of variances. The Heights Phase III, a 45-lot subdivision across from the high school, will proceed with development. The subdivision was in the works prior to the May 1 when the new subdivision rules in the county went into effect. One of the new rules was a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet. Developers requested a variance since most of the lots in the subdivision are less than 10,000 square feet, according to Britt.
Next up for County Road 406’s development is building a possible centralized facility that would include a new health department.
In other matters:
Supervisors approved the application for certification of a 1-mill levy
Adopted a resolution honoring the Lafayette High School FFA, which recently won two state competitions and will be competing in the national FFA in Louisville, Kentucky
Adopted a resolution designating Lafayette County as a “Purple Heart County” in honor of local Purple Heart war veterans
Went into executive session to discuss contract negotiations in regards to approving property and casualty insurance proposal from Travelers Insurance, as well as right of way acquisition for LSBT Project 35.