More than 83 miles of unstriped roads in Lowndes County will be striped after supervisors awarded a contract during their meeting Monday.
Kosciusko-based J.C. Cheek Contractors was awarded the bid for the countywide project at $520,500. The project is funded by the Mississippi Office of State Aid Road Construction. Portions of 30 State Aid roads in the county will be striped. The project should begin this year.
The county will receive $195,758 in advance credits from State Aid in addition to what it was already allocated, county engineer Bob Calvert said.
In other business, the board gave Columbus-Lowndes Recreation Authority Executive Director Roger Short permission to purchase a small parcel of land at Third Street and Fifth Avenue for $1,700. The land is to be designated for overflow parking at the Columbus Soccer Complex.
Supervisors also approved a motion to pay all remaining expenses for the CalStar building project and close the project out.
Last year, supervisors used more than $6 million in loans from the Mississippi Development Authority and Community Development Block Grant funds to purchase a 23-acre land parcel near the Golden Triangle Industrial Park and assist financially with facility construction, while CalStar sought $5 million in debt financing from lenders to complete the project. CalStar took ownership of the 100,000-square-foot building shell there and Weathers Construction’s $3,113,415 bid was accepted in October to renovate the shell and convert it into a manufacturing plant.
CalStar Products is a sustainable masonry manufacturing company based out of Racine, Wisconsin, that makes bricks, pavers and other building products. Its plant began operations at the Golden Triangle Regional Industrial and Aerospace Park in July.
There was $8,222 left on the loan remaining that architecture firm JBHM wanted to spend, according to George Crawford with Golden Triangle Planning and Development District, and the firm wanted to have a change order approved.
“They sent me an email saying they wanted to get everything that was going to be spent by Oct. 10,” Crawford said. “We won’t be meeting again before then and hopefully we want to try to spend this money. I’m just throwing this out.”
Board member Leroy Brooks made a motion to approve the change order and got a second. Board of Supervisors President Harry Sanders then said repayment of the loan would be made easier if the money were not spent.
“Have we done everything that we said we would do when we were recruiting them as far as the grant?” Sanders asked. “We’ve lived up to our obligation, haven’t we? We ended up with some money left over. We have no obligation whatsoever to go ahead and spend this money. It’s not a grant. It’s a loan, so we’re going to have to pay that money back.”
“I don’t really understand their reasoning,” Crawford said. “I just told the architect I would bring it up.”
Brooks then withdrew his motion before board member Jeff Smith made a motion to pay all remaining bills and close out the project, not to include the extra funding the firm wanted to spend.
“It’s the responsible thing to do,” Smith said.
Supervisors will hold a public hearing for closing the CalStar project next month.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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