Public hearing on road vacation Monday

Published 3:00 am Saturday, June 9, 2018

After a long and controversial process to vacate a county road to Lockheed Martin earlier this year, the Pike County Commission is looking to decide on the vacation of two more roads.

However, interim administrator McKenzie Wilson said this decision does not appear to be nearly as contested as that previous process.

“There will be a public hearing on the closing of County Road 7724 Monday night at the work session,” Wilson said. “That is the road they are considering closing, but really they’d be relocating it. We haven’t gotten a single call about it.”

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The road vacation was initiated by the commission as a step in the process of bringing Rex Lumber, Troy, LLC., to Pike County. The road is currently running directly where the modern sawmill facility is planned to sit.

Commissioners have said they desire to close down that portion of dirt road, just over half a mile, and create a new paved road to replace it. Wilson said the planned new road would still run through the company’s property and would help to support the truck traffic associated with the sawmill site.

Wilson said the commission will be able to vote on the road vacation at the business meeting that will follow the work session at 6 p.m., or they could wait until a later time to make a decision.

At the June 25 meeting, Wilson said they’ll be considering a road vacation on County Road 1101, which she said is basically a resident’s driveway.

“I think the residents even thought it was a driveway – they didn’t realize it was still county property,” Wilson said. “It really is a driveway. It doesn’t go anywhere else.”

Wilson said that, too, will likely be an uncontested move. In fact, county attorney Allen Jones said he is working on a plan to locate and vacate similar county roads that now serve as driveways en masse.

Commissioners Jimmy Barron and Chad Copeland will also be bringing back discussion on what to do about County Road 5515, a one-way dirt road to Banks School that parents have asked to have paved.

The commissioners will also hear a request from Kimber Manufacturing for a tax abatement on non-education sales tax in the county when they begin construction on their new facility in Troy.

Out of the county’s 2 percent sales tax, only .25 of 1 percent doesn’t go to the local school systems.

The work session will begin at 5:15 p.m. Monday upstairs at the Pike County Health Department. The business meeting will begin at 6 p.m.