News Editor

BRUNDIDGE – As work progresses to complete the nutrition center, the Brundidge City Council members are still making decisions concerning the ground around the building.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, the council passed a resolution granting Brundidge Mayor Jimmy Ramage and City Administrator Britt Thomas permission to hire an engineer to provide detailed plans for an industrial access road from Railroad Avenue to Highway 10 on the west side of the railroad tracks.

Currently, there is a dirt road on the east side on the railroad track, which has been used in the past as an access road to Highway 10, but is has been closed to traffic, said Thomas. He said the construction of an access road will keep trucks off the dirt road and keep them from destroying a paved exit from the nutrition center parking lot.

"We want to hire an engineer to do the work now," said Thomas. "If we hire an engineer now we won’t have to back up and wait (for the engineer) if we get the money.

"If we open the current road again, we will have to spend money off and on making repairs to the asphalt drive way."

Thomas said hiring an engineer would cost no more that $5,000, and might not cost that much. He said the entire project would cost about $120,000 for the access road, and the plans would have to be detailed and meet state specifications because the access road would be coming off a state road.

Council member Jaine Treadwell addressed the council about placing speed breakers on Oak Street. She said an accident had occurred on Oak Street recently and damaged one of the ditches. Treadwell said the driver of the vehicle was supposedly speeding.

She said she had brought up the topic of speed breakers on Oak Street before, but no decision had been made.

"If the majority of the council wants speed breakers we need to vote and make it official and let me do it," Thomas said.

Treadwell suggested that speed breakers be put on Reynolds Street to stop some of the thru traffic, but Council member Cynthia Pearson said she didn’t think it would work.

Oak Street is the boundary between Pearson’s district and Treadwell’s district.

Treadwell made a motion to place two speed breakers on Oak Street and Pearson seconded the motion. The council voted unanimously to approve the speed breakers.

The discussion on streets in Brundidge continued as Council member Isabell Boyd said she had received complaints from residents of Barr Street about their driveways. Boyd said when the road work was done the driveways to home were left too high and the residents’ cars were dragging when they pulled into their driveways.

"I said something about this while the contractors were still there," Boyd said. "At that time two people had complained to me about it but now there have been four complaints."

Boyd suggested that concrete be placed on the driveways to smooth out the driveways, but Thomas said it would only back up with sand and water.

Thomas said he check the two driveways when the complaints were made.

"There was no scaring to the asphalt and we hade people drive cars into the driveways and they did not scrub," Thomas said. "But I understand that some cars sit lower and some have better shocks than others."

He said the project had to be done that way because of how the road is laid and because of flooding, but the way it is now has solved the problem.

"If we do one of the driveways we need to do them all, but it will be a whole other engineering project and would be quite expensive," Thomas said.

Thomas suggested they city try putting asphalt on the driveways to see if it would fix the problem. He said if the asphalt did not solve the problem it could easily be removed.

In other business, the Brundidge City Council …

· planned a public hearing at 4 p.m. Sept. 5 for a zoning change request.

· set election official salary at $75 per day and one meal.

· set time to canvass the election results. The council will meet at 7 p.m. Aug. 22 to certify the election results. Results must be certified by noon on Aug. 23, Thomas said.

· Thomas told the council a public test of the voting machines was held, and everything went well.

· Thomas reminded the council that 5 p.m. Aug. 17 is the last day to obtain absentee ballots. But the absentee ballots can be turned in until election day.