Lowndes County supervisors approved a resolution during their regular meeting Monday requesting the state’s permission to pay the last of the county’s debris clean-up expenses from an April 2014 storm.
By a unanimous vote, supervisors sent a request for legislative approval for the county to pay Columbia-based Looks Great Services a total of $3,099 for debris it collected from residents of two private roads — Susan and Bolton drives — in the aftermath of a storm that caused tornado damage. Board Attorney Tim Hudson said, though the company collected the debris from public right-of-way and never actually entered private property, the county couldn’t legally pay the invoice without legislative approval.
“We don’t have the authority to clean up on private drives,” Hudson said. “The property owners were told to pull their debris to the public right-of-way and the company would pick it up. So that’s what they did. The company didn’t know that (particular) debris wasn’t from a public drive.”
County Administrator Ralph Billingsley said between 15 and 20 total residents live along Susan and Bolton drives. Though he said he knew the drives were private during the clean-up process, he didn’t want to leave those residents to deal with their own debris. He said if the board had resolved to pay the bill before Looks Great picked up the private debris, it wouldn’t now require state approval. But since he didn’t bring it before supervisors until after the fact, the county no longer has that option.
“Hopefully, this will be a formality,” Billingsley said. “Because of the storm, we couldn’t just leave (the debris) there.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved $700,000 in storm relief for Lowndes County, according to Billingsley, of which federal sources paid 85 percent and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency paid the remainder. He said, however, the county would pay the full amount of the $3099 invoice, if the state approves it.
With the legislative session set to begin at noon today, Billingsley hopes state lawmakers will approve the invoice soon. He said Looks Great is aware of the situation and is agreeable to waiting on legislative approval.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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