The allegation that Oktibbeha County Engineer Clyde Pritchard has a conflict of interest in the potential replacement of the Oktibbeha County Lake Dam is unfounded, according to Pritchard and peer engineers from other counties.
Pritchard is a private consultant for the county, not an employee, and the county owns and maintains the dam. His firm, Pritchard Engineering, regularly does engineering projects for the county but does not work on private development projects because, he said, it would be unethical for him to take on a project he would have to approve before the county board of supervisors in order for them to authorize it.
“There is no conflict of interest,” Pritchard said. “The county engineer is appointed to do engineering work for the county.”
The suggestion of a conflict of interest has been circulating for weeks, and the board of supervisors decided two weeks ago to ask the state attorney general’s opinion on the matter. The debate over whether to replace the dam started in January, when Pritchard said the levee showed early signs of breaching. It would have forced a mass evacuation of the neighborhoods surrounding it if the county’s emergency action hadn’t relieved enough pressure to keep the dam from breaking.
Pritchard has told the supervisors the best way to eliminate the problem would be to completely remove the existing dam, build a new one with larger valves to control the water level and build a new emergency spillway and a temporary detour road below the levee — a project estimated to cost up to $8 million.
Supervisors voted 3-2 on March 16 to use county operating funds for Pritchard to develop blueprints to replace the dam, although the decision to go through with the project has yet to be made.
Pritchard said he usually only charges the county for 8 percent of the cost of most construction projects, though the state allows him to collect 12 percent, the amount he will collect for the dam project. He collects 40 percent of this fee as soon as the county puts a project out for bids and the remaining 60 percent after a project is completed, which sometimes takes several years. An $8 million Blackjack Road project is five years in the works, for example, and a $2 million Longview Road project took about 12 years to complete.
The price of the bid for the dam project is expected to be $5,305,500, and 12 percent of that cost is $636,660. Pritchard would make $254,664, or 40 percent, for drawing up the plans if the supervisors agree to put the project out for bids. He would only receive the remaining 60 percent of the $636,660 if the dam is replaced, he said, and neither the completion of the project nor the estimated dollar amounts are guaranteed.
Seeking an outside opinion
The board voted unanimously on May 18 to send a letter to both the AG’s and the Mississippi Ethics Commission to ask if a county engineer can do work for the county on a project he or she is overseeing. Board Attorney Rob Roberson said he sent the letters on May 21 and had not received a response from either entity as of Tuesday.
“Just because there’s a state law that says you can do (something) doesn’t mean that ethically we don’t need to require some things,” Roberson said.
The law in question is the rules and regulations for the Mississippi Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. Section 7 of Rule 17.4 states that a licensed engineer “serving in any official capacity, either part-time or full-time, as the engineer or surveyor for any county, city or other governmental body … cannot review, approve or recommend approval of his own plans or documents, or plans or documents prepared by any member of the firm of which he is a member.”
Pritchard emphasized he is neither a full-time nor a part-time county employee.
Roberson suggested contacting the attorney general, and District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard proposed the board vote on the matter. Howard lives near the dam and has been the most vocal advocate for its replacement. He told The Dispatch he never believed Pritchard had a conflict of interest but proposed the vote to dispel any doubt.
District 1 Supervisor and Board President John Montgomery and District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller have consistently voted against bringing the county closer to replacing the dam. Both have said at board meetings money spent replacing the dam would be better used on county road projects.
Montgomery told The Dispatch he wants Pritchard to “find the most cost-effective solution” for the dam and that he trusts Pritchard to work “to the letter of the law on top of the table.”
“I’ve urged him to find other options (than replacing the dam), but sometimes there may not be other options,” Montgomery said. “Whatever we’ve got to do to fix this dam, I know as a board we’ll do it within MDEQ compliance.”
Pritchard: No one has questioned his ethics before
Howard and Montgomery both said Pritchard is the engineer most familiar with the dam and therefore is the best person to work on the potential replacement, so the supervisors did not consider seeking bids for another engineer to work on the designs.
Pritchard agreed and emphasized his specialization as a geotechnical engineer. He also said his role means supervisors trust him to work on county property.
“Essentially what the county does when they appoint a county engineer is pre-qualify him to do their work,” he said.
William McKercher, head of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality dam safety division, said the county was right to seek the AG’s input. His office has received questions and comments from Oktibbeha County citizens asking if Pritchard has a conflict of interest, and McKercher said it is not his or MDEQ’s place to offer an opinion.
“Given that there’s a lot of opposition to the project, people are looking at multiple avenues for whether or not the way (the county is) handling it is appropriate,” McKercher said.
In his time as county engineer, Pritchard has worked on 192 projects funded by the county — not including projects funded by the Office of State Aid Road Construction or the Local System Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program — and no one has called his ethics into question before, he said.
The two most recent public projects Pritchard has worked on are the planned addition of a stoplight on Poor House Road and the planned repairs to the mudslide behind the Oktibbeha County Jail. Both public projects went out for bids May 5.
Additionally, engineers in Mississippi must complete a two-hour ethics course every two years.
“If there’s anything we’re guilty of, it’s only for billing less than we should bill,” Pritchard said.
The scope of the job
Lowndes County Engineer Bob Calvert told The Dispatch the only way a county engineer would have a conflict of interest would be if he had to approve the plans for every single engineering project that came before the board of supervisors.
Like Pritchard, Calvert is a consultant rather than a county employee. He runs the Calvert-Spradling engineering firm in West Point, and he was a member of the Mississippi Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors for four years. He also spent 25 years on the National Council for Examiners for Engineering and Surveying and was president of the committee that writes problems for licensure exams.
“A consultant is hired to do a job,” he said, “and as long as you operate under the contract that you have with your entity, nobody has to approve those plans, unless it’s established by the board that they have a (designated) reviewer.”
While Starkville City Engineer Edward Kemp is a full-time city employee, Columbus City Engineer Kevin Stafford is a consultant, like Pritchard and Calvert, and works for the Neel-Schaffer firm.
“Neel-Schaffer misses out on a lot of private developments in Columbus because we represent the city,” Stafford said. “This situation happens probably two or three times a year. A private developer comes and says they want us to develop a site for them in the city, and we say, ‘I’m sorry, we have to review and approve that site on behalf of the city.'”
Neel-Schaffer recently turned down the construction of some offices near Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle and a property at the intersection of Bluecutt Road and Highway 45, Stafford said. The firm has also declined work on the Car-Mart of Columbus on Highway 45, First Presbyterian Church on Bluecutt Road and the Bank of Vernon just south of Highway 82, he said.
Pritchard said Habitat for Humanity’s local office has been a client of his in the past and approached him recently with an offer for a project in Oktibbeha County. He said he also turned down work on the Acadiana Park subdivision on South Montgomery Street in Starkville.
“I told them we would love to do it for them, but we can’t do that work because ultimately it would have to come to me for approval on behalf of the county, so I referred them to another engineer,” Pritchard said.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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