TYLERTOWN — No news is good news for Walthall County.
County engineer Jeff Dungan told county supervisors on Oct. 17 that federally mandated inspections of bridges with timber components had been scheduled the previous week, and he had not heard from the inspectors.
“That means the bridges didn’t need to be immediately closed,” Dungan said.
After six of the 11 bridges subject to the inspections were examined last year, three — on Breland-Brown, Sauls and Darbun-China Grove roads — were ordered closed by the federally contracted inspectors.
The remaining five bridges were inspected this year.
The county had already closed the bridge on Payne Road, just outside Tylertown, last year, and recently completed the bridge’s replacement.
Another bridge included in last year’s inspections, on North Sandifer Street in Tylertown, is about two weeks from having repairs completed, Dungan said.
Bids were due to be opened this week to work on the Darbun-China Grove bridge, with a special called meeting Wednesday to approve a contractor.
“That will save us about two weeks getting started,” Dungan said.
The engineer also reported that the Mississippi Department of Transportation had sent a letter detailing the rules under which it will disburse money from the newly established emergency repair fund.
The state is selling bonds to seed the fund, and will send out applications to start funding projects early next year.
Before sending out applications, the state is surveying counties on their practices and procedures for evaluating roads and bridges and determining what constitutes an emergency, Dungan said.
In another road matter, Dungan said updates to the county road register are nearly complete.
Sheriff Kyle Breland asked for permission to explore buying used patrol cars from the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
Breland said Copiah County Sheriff Harold Jones had been buying Dodge Chargers from Missouri, which requires that they be pulled from service at 54,500 miles. Most of them are still under warranty, he said.
“Harold said he’d never buy a new car again,” Breland said. “He’s bought four of these cars, and they all look brand new.”
He said if he could get cars like that, he’d like to dedicate one for the use of the school resource officer at Tylertown High School.
“If somebody wanted to go in there and do something, a patrol car sitting there would maybe be a deterrent,” Breland said. “There’s nothing there to do that now.”
