Highway Commission - Regular Meeting

I will call the Coffey County Highway Commission August meeting to order. It's a few minutes after 3 o'clock. We've done our role. Everyone's here besides Ms. Carolyn Duke. No guests with us today. The next thing, we need to approve the agenda. Everybody should have a copy.

I'll make a motion to approve it.

Motion by Jeff. Second by Arliss to approve the agenda as printed. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, like sign. We have approved the agenda. Now moving on to public comments. We don't have any public comments this month. The next is we need to approve last month's minutes.

Make a motion to approve.

Second.

Got a motion and a second to approve last month's minutes. Any corrections or additions? Not seeing any. All in favor of approving last month's minutes, say aye. Aye. All opposed, like sign. The minutes have passed. We don't have any unfinished business. And now we will move into new business, and I will start with Benton.

I've got something we need to put on this. I don't know whether you can put it on the agenda or whatever. We need to talk about a stop sign. signs on the intersection of New City Industrial Park and Old Airport Road.

Okay.

And what that amounts to is we got a call the other day and just something to consider. I guess I don't know that we've got to do it anytime soon, but since new businesses are out there on the new industrial park, Right now the way it works is coming off of the AEDC road and you go right straight across 41 and you hit the new access road to the city industrial park. That road stops at the old airport road which crosses it right there at the entrance to the industrial park. It's been brought up or suggested that we put instead of just letting the... There have been a few wrecks out there that I know of, one or two that I know of, but I don't know if... You're talking about where Aspen, that little Aspen?

Yeah. It definitely needs a four-way stop.

It makes sense to... Yeah. Yeah.

Make a motion that we change the intersection of City Industrial Park Road and Old Airport Road to a four-way stop.

Okay, got a motion. Seconded. Seconded by Jeff. Any more discussion? It makes sense.

Yeah, but you're going to have to put some kind of something up there to get them, because a lot of people aren't going to realize that they're on top of it.

Yeah. Yeah, we'll put a stop sign out there.

And rumble straight up to whatever.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jeff, you seconded that, right?

You just seconded it, yeah. Any more discussion on it? All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed, like signed. Motion carries.

We will also bring it up to the Rural Road and Bridges Committee when they meet. Other than that, the end of the year was last June 30th or 31st. It was June 30th, wasn't it? I can't remember how many days.

Yeah, 30, yeah.

Anyway, we made it through that. on the Copperas Creek. They're trying to build a new subdivision back there. And a bunch of pine trees have pushed the road up. And folks are driving around those roots, and they've got another road built out in the ditch now. So we're having to get out there and straighten that out a little bit. And we've got a lot of pain to deal with around us. We're struggling. The weather's been hard on us. It's hard for us. We have to catch the rain just right. We need at least a day with no rain. It's just hard to catch it.

The month of July, I ended up, I had 20, like it ended up being 26 days in the month of July, I had rain somewhere.

Well, in between those times, we had trees falling. Oh, yeah.

That's what I know, the paving, with the way the weather's been, yeah.

But, you know, hopefully one extreme follows another, and we'll be able to do a little more paving this fall than normal. We got all our mowers are still going good. We have trouble with those off and on. It's nothing unusual. We had to send one mechanic out today to fix one, and that seems to be at least... once or twice a week, some little something happened. We had a stump jumper fall off right after he started. It went about 300 foot. The stump jumper flew off and lost the nut. The spindle and all came out and damaged the driveway. So we had to fix that. But other than that, our... Yeah, I seen him fall in one yesterday, I think it was, off of Freedonia. Mm-hmm. All the trucks are doing good. We got one back the other day from the dealer. Everything's going good as it can be, really.

I guess you get what you're more to make three rounds. Yeah, they've all made three rounds.

They'll be on the fourth here pretty quick. That's pretty good. If they're not already. They'll be doing a lot of cutting back this coming few months. Be watchful for that. Sometimes they'll I don't want to be a little extra cautious around those mowers. I know they appreciate it even if you're cautious around them all the time. We've had people actually go under the boom of the mower with their car when they're trying to mow a ditch.

I believe it.

You know, just be careful around those things.

Bridges.

Yeah, we've got a list at the state. We've got three or four bridges ready to build as soon as we get the money. But we've got one that came up, Tennessee State TDOT, put $150 million in those old high priority bridge replacement programs. That was a good program, but it ran out of money pretty quickly. So they got all these bridges ready to go. We got one that's fully designed, ready to go. We got picked as one of the counties in Tennessee, the whole state of Tennessee, to have one of those bridges built. It just so happened to be right off Highway 64. There's three back there close together.

Yeah, which one are they going to get?

I think it's this last one.

That last one, I think, when I'm thinking about it, it's like a concrete. It's pretty rough.

It's going to be 100%. State money. So we'll get that one pretty good. And we're building up enough money we might be able to. We bid two bridges last year, and we just found out – get picked for so that's the thing about you you gotta get these things ready it costs a lot of money but then you you never know if they're gonna get done or not yeah but we're pretty sure we're gonna get that norton bridge and so that leaves us with uh taylor bridge it's it's been been bid it was over a million close to having enough money to build it with our money. So that'd be a 98% match, which is good. But we've got to have the money in the state's budget before we can do it. And that's all I've got for right now.

Got anything, Jeff? No, I just had that Floyd Rovers. I got that took care of.

What about you, Arliss? No, nothing really. I brought up a couple of things last month, and I know Benton has made a note of them, and so I don't have anything else new either.

The only thing that I've got, like we talked about earlier, Ashbury, I know people are fussing. I know we're doing what all that we can do to – For that, and then, of course, I've had somebody, you know, a few people mentioned Bessie Willis along the way, you know, so much traffic on it, you know. And then, like I said, if we could get Bessie Willis to be a state aider, it would probably be a help, you know. We might be able to do that. Yeah. Because it's quite, you know, Bessie Willis catches quite a bit of traffic, people coming from Pelham Way, going to the base.

Since we're on that state stuff, 127 is going to get two new bridges built by the state. They're supposed to start up this year. One of them is pretty close in downtown Hillsboro there. Yeah.

Which road is that?

127. 127. Viola Highway, I guess they call it there. The other one's on further out. It's got a five-ton weight limit on it right now.

Right before you get to Asbury. Yeah.

That bridge is going to be closed down completely. The road's going to be closed down until they get that rebuilt. So that's going to be a nightmare in the county.

Yeah, I've heard a little bit about that.

Until it gets completed. It's going to take them about a year. So be looking for that.

Because they went to the detour?

They got detours set up before they even get on 127 out at... 55 and 41. There's no way around using some of our little county roads for a go around and that's going to cause problems. We'll do the best we can to keep them fixed up but it's going to be tough. The other one I think they're going to do a lane at a time.

So we are getting some bridges done, but it's going to cause problems.

And those two bridges I just mentioned, they're both TDOT projects. They're not county projects at all.

Let's see, Miss Carolyn sent me a text when she knew she couldn't make it and her having a procedure done today. She's had some on the side of Fredonia, not far from C. Anderson, some weeds or bushes or something hard to see. So not exactly where.

Yeah, it's a bunch of tall grass out there, but I figured they'd I've seen that coming home from church the other day. It's Bollywood. Just hadn't got out there yet.

Last thing about Johnson grass. They'll be four foot tall.

This year.

Oh, yeah.

They grow back in a week.

That's what, like I say, I say it every year. I went around, I spray stuff around some buildings and around equipment. I spray it to keep it clean. Then I get busy, and this year it starts raining, and I can't do nothing. Then all of a sudden, I got Johnson grass there, and it's worse than if I hadn't done it.

Everybody's going to spray their beans an extra time this year.

Yeah. If I had been better off, I hadn't done anything. Johnson grass comes up and now you can't see the equipment because the Johnson grass is, yeah. So that's what, so, yeah. I figured it's what it was if it's, yeah, some Johnson grass popped up and make it.

It's up and down for you on your pretty good past fair hill out in that 29er peps. Yeah. That's what I figured. I just hadn't had a chance to get out there yet. Yeah. Well, I think it's just like mine. I've got my mind over again.

Like I say, I've said six days. I mean, I'll come in. I come in the county because I know the state just been through one time and y'all been by three times. Franklin County, what property on Frank County? They just been by once. Y'all been by three times. So I I commend I commend y'all for getting done, you know,

If there's some tall grass, it shouldn't be too many more days before the mowing crew gets there.

Yeah. Yeah. Anybody have any other business? We'll need to get the date for next month.

September 2nd.

September 2nd.

All right.

Our meeting will be September 2nd. Any other business? If not, I'll take a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

Motion. Jeff, you're second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Well, we're adjourned until September. Yep. Bet anyone will get the camera.

Hey. How y'all doing?

Come on in.