McComb selectmen are continuing to push toward a borrowing program to pay for street paving around the city.
“Five million is what we can borrow, but we don’t need to borrow all of it,” Mayor Quordiniah Lockley said Tuesday night during the city board’s work session. “If we borrow, the millage is going to have to increase.
“The citizens will have to accept that. If they don’t, there’s no way we can pave streets.”
Lockley said the next step is for the board to decide how much it wants to borrow, if it decides to proceed, to start trying to make up for a $9 million backlog in street repairs.
The mayor said he expects a strong public reaction.
“I know people are out there waiting to jump on us,” Lockley said.”Property owners and business owners may jump up and down, but if they jump, it tells me they’re happy with bad streets.”
He added the board still has to be good stewards of the money available to them.
Lockley urged members to remember that the more money they borrow now, the less will be available in case of an emergency.
“I’m giving you information so you can make an intelligent decision,” Lockley told the board.
He recommended borrowing no more than $3 million, leaving $2 million in borrowing capacity in case of emergecy, and estimated about 3 mills of additional taxes would be needed to cover the annual payback if the board borrowed that $3 million.
Selectman Ronnie Brock broached the idea of adding a special sales tax from which the proceeds could be dedicated to streets and other infrastructure.
Lockley said the city could pursue that, but that “we would need to start setting up meeting with our legislators now. We would need them all on board to get that approved.”
Public Works Director Alice Barnes presented cost estimates of $100 per ton for asphalt and $4.25 per square yard for scraping and milling the street before new asphalt is laid. To mill and overlay an intersection of 40 feet by 50 feet, she presented an estimate of about $5,300.
Pursuant to a discussion at a previous work session, where Selectman Donovan Hill asked about the feasibility of buying a milling machine, Barnes said Lyle Machinery in Jackson had quoted her a price of something more than $500,000 for a large model.
The city has a much smaller model, she said, but “we’d have to make a lot of passes” if the city tried to use it on big repaving projects.
In another public works matter, Barnes said the first pass around the city for cleanup of debris from the May 9 tornado and windstorm was to have been completed Wednesday, along with the takeaway of stumps and removal of dangerous hanging limbs.
The second pass for cleanup will start Monday and should be completed by July 26. She asked that residents with debris remaining have it on the city’s right of way by Sunday.
Lockley noted that the state’s assessment of damage due to weather from May 9 has not yet totaled $4.5 million, which is the amount that trigger reimbursement of the city’s cleanup costs by the state and federal emergency management agencies.
“If they do hit it, it’s a 75-25 match,” Lockley said. “If they don’t hit that, the expense is on us.”
