December 15, 2021–12:21 p.m.

STAFF REPORTS

The Floyd County Board of Commissioners Public Utilities & Transportation Committee discussed road paving during their meeting on Wednesday.

Public Works Director Michael Skeen presented a preliminary list for roads to be paved using $1.219 million in state funding.

“This represents a pretty good list,” he said.  “It’s pretty heavy on the northeast quadrant.  I try to spread it out but, by default, Calhoun Road, Ward Mountain, and even Old Dalton Road, all those qualified all in the northeast.  Also, we are committed in the 2017 SPLOST to getting all those roads paved.  I have been trying to some of those through LMIG [Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant] and some through SPLOST.”

The list totals $1.57 million dollars.

County Manager Jamie McCord suggested using Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax money to balance the budget.

“I would remove Old Dalton,” McCord said.  “We can put that in SPLOST.  I would go with this list, minus Old Dalton.  You have SPLOST funds available but you just don’t have them in the budget yet.  We were waiting on the ARPA award in January to make the decision.  Once we get the state ARPA award, and there’s also some pending federal legislation that may open up the ARPA funds to a little broader category than they are.”

ARPA is, of course, the American Rescue Plan. In just the third year of collections of the current SPLOST, the county had completed 47 of the 75 miles they had committed to paving.