LIBERTY — Amite County resident Ed Funchess said roads like Middle and Lower Glading have been abandoned.
Funchess said conditions have become worse over the 10 years he has lived in the Glading community. And he feels like supervisors in the roads’ districts aren’t doing enough.
“This road (Lower Glading) is simply bereft of maintenance and has been ever since I came out here to live,” Funchess said. “What maintenance we do get is substandard by anyone’s measure, in that all they do is drop some pea gravel and hot tar in the holes and they just wallow out over and over again.”
Supervisors, however, have a different view.
District 5 Supervisor Max Lawson said the gravel part of Lower Glading road is in better shape now than it has been in the past. The stretch was recently re-graveled — a job that took more than three days to complete.
“There’s nothing wrong with the road,” Lawson said. “It’s a gravel road. Before I got it, it used to stay muddy all the time. Redistricting put it in my district. It doesn’t get muddy now.”
The gravel portion of Lower Glading Road extends about a mile south of Glading Baptist Church. The remainder of Lower Glading Road is paved.
Funchess said even the paved stretch of the road is in dire need of repair.
“I am the next-to-the-last resident on Lower Glading, and my wife and I get to dodge the entire smorgasbord of potholes and failed road edges every single day, both coming and going,” he said.
Pothole repair and maintenance are done in a conventional way, Lawson said, and Lower Glading is on the list to be blacktopped this term. But priority goes to the most populated roadways in District 5.
“I got roads with people living on them. I want to get to them first,” Lawson said. “I told them (the constituents) that I’m going to try to get every road in the 5th District black-topped. The ones that are most populated, I’ll get them first.”
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An anonymous Amite County resident recently voiced similar concerns over conditions on Middle Glading Road. The resident placed a sign on the street warning drivers of potholes and rough bridges.
Funchess said only days after the sign appeared, potholes in the road were patched — a sub-par fix, in Funchess’ mind. The sign was subsequently removed by a resident of the Hebron community, who said similar results were needed there.
District 4 Supervisor Travis Taylor said most of the roads in his district — not just Middle Glading — need repair.
“All my roads have potholes in them, and I was trying to fix it, but the pothole patcher was tied up in another district,” he said.
“It’s not that I’m not wanting to do it. We had a standing order for asphalt, and they (the company) just weren’t making it. Their machine broke down, and it was just one of those unfortunate accidents. Nobody had any power to fix it at any one particular time. We did the best we could.”
Taylor said as soon as the asphalt was made and the machine was available, the road was repaired.
“Just as quick as I got the pothole patcher, we went down and that was the first road that we fixed,” he said.
Around three years ago, State Aid funds paid for a new concrete bridge on Middle Glading. The two approaches leading up to the new bridge were covered in gravel. Funchess said to seal off the approach, the county “poured hot tar and pea gravel … maybe an inch thick.” The fix only causes a “washboard effect” and “continuous” potholes, he said, and the road is difficult to drive.
Taylor said the bridge approaches were paved like any other county road would be. He acknowledged that the condition of the approaches isn’t ideal, and he said as soon as funds allow, they’ll be fixed.
“When I get enough money, we can re-seal that road and the approachment will be better,” he said, adding that re-sealing is a common way of maintaining roads. “The whole road needs to be re-sealed. I have a bunch of them that need to be re-sealed.”
Even so, the supervisor admitted those fixes may be a long way off because of the slumping economy.
“You don’t ever know how much money you’ll have coming in,” Taylor said. “The way the times are right now, I just don’t know. I’m trying to get people off of gravel that have been on gravel all their lives. The way it’s been this year and the way it looks next year, there’s not going to be a lot of it done.”
