Pethel asks about progress on Sam Bruce Road

District 2 commissioner John Pethel posed the question Monday during the board of commissioners’ meeting.

“It has been four months since the litigation was settled on the Sam Bruce Road bridge,” said Pethel. “And I haven’t heard anything about any progress. I wondered, could anybody tell me are we planning to put something back up there, or are we going to let it lie like it is? What are we going to do?”

Madison County commissioners battled for three years with Harrison-area property owner Marion “Hoss” Cartwright on whether Sam Bruce Road should remain closed or whether the bridge on the road should be repaired.

A settlement on the 2007 suit between county commissioners and Cartwright was filed Nov. 2, 2010, in the office of the clerk of Superior Court of Madison County.

According to the settlement, Cartwright was paid $60,000 in exchange for dropping his suit. Meanwhile, Cartwright will no longer block county efforts to repair a washed out bridge and re-open the closed portion of Sam Bruce Road.

The $60,000 settlement set the total cost of the lawsuit to the county at $298,361.
Cartwright said he spent upwards of $150,000 on the lawsuit.

County commissioners haven’t taken any votes on repairing the bridge now that the suit is over.

But BOC chairman Anthony Dove said he has a report from county engineer Phil Munro regarding Sam Bruce Road.

“He (Munro) has downloaded the floodplain from the federal government, the Corps of Engineers’ policies on putting a bridge in there,” said Dove. “We’re working with the EPD (Environmental Protection Division). The EPD has certain things they wanted to see and one of the things is a plan to remove the asphalt and concrete there. But we’ll have to have those things done before any work is done.”

OTHER BUSINESS

In other business Feb. 28, Dove reported that special purpose local option sales tax (SPLOST) and local option sales tax (LOST) revenues were up five percent in February over the same month in 2010 and eight percent overall in 2011 over the first two months of last year. Dove noted that higher gas prices typically lead to higher sales tax revenues.

The board approved a tax refund for a property owner incorrectly charged. The group agreed to consider three proposed recreation board members at its March 7 meeting. The commissioners postponed a decision on a lawn maintenance contract until Feb. 28 after receiving three bids on the proposal. Pethel brought up the prospect of having inmates cut the county’s grass.

The board opened bids for the removal of an old truck scale at the transfer station, along with bids on the purchase and installation of a new one. The board will consider the bids again March 7.

Commissioner Mike Youngblood said he’d like for the BOC to draft a letter to Ingles, asking them to extend a fence behind the store to protect the residents of Windsor Heights from debris and traffic behind the store.

The board also renewed a fire protection and emergency rescue services agreement. The county allocates one mill in tax dollars each year to the 11 county volunteer fire departments. That has translated to roughly $650,000 in recent years. The BOC often serves as a financial representative for the departments when they purchase a new truck or other major equipment. If a department fails to make payments on a truck during such an arrangement, the new agreement allows the county to use the departments allotted funding to cover that expense. During the fire department funding discussion, commissioner Stanley Thomas voiced concern that a possible reduction in insurance premium taxes at the state level could affect revenues the county receives from the state for the tax. Thomas said that revenue helps the county fund the fire departments.