Commission recognizes track champions, approves items for county engineer

The Covington County Commission recognized the county’s track and field state champions from this season and approved items to be used within the Engineer’s Department during a regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, June 11.

The commission approved to request bids for the purchase of a pole barn that will be used by the County Engineer’s office.

“The Engineer’s office is requesting to construct a pole barn for their equipment. They are requesting a 60’ x 96’ x 14’ that should come well under the public works bid limit. We do suggest taking multiple quotes on that,” Administrator Karen Sowell said. “The estimated cost is $31,000-$32,000 and may come in a little bit more or less, but that gets us in the ballpark,” Chairman Greg White added.

County Engineer Lynn Ralls said he has received several phone calls since the pole barn was first discussed at the previous meeting. The commission approved requesting bids.

“I had two people call and request to bid, so I prefer to bid this rather than simply take quotes,” Ralls said.

The commission approved two bids for American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) projects related to an addition at the county jail and a handicapped ramp at the courthouse.

“We have received a little over $7 million for Covington County in funding related to COVID and have expended quite a bit of that on labor, capital projects, and purchases. We identified a list of priority projects in the early days of the pandemic, and we are under deadlines to move forward. We retained an architect who will finalize the bid specifications. Those are significant projects that could be up to $4.5 million in expenditure, but we will know in a few weeks what they are and see what we need to do moving forward,” White said.

In other business:

• The commission approved the purchase of a Ford F-550 for the Engineer’s Department through a state bid. An F-450 was approved at a previous meeting; Ralls said this was only a change in the type of truck that would be purchased because they determined that the smaller truck was not sufficiently strong for the purpose intended.
• The commission approved the purchase of six dump trucks and one lowboy truck for the Engineer’s Department.
• The commission approved declaring the county’s communications tower as surplus, so it can be dismantled and disposed of.

The commission went into executive session for discussion of a legal matter with the county attorney following the meeting. White said no action was taken at the session.

The next meeting of the Covington County Commission will be held Tuesday, June 25, at 9 a.m., at the Covington County Administration Building. The public is invited to attend.

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