Columbus City Council decides not to rebid contract for cemetery work
COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – The price of gas may be going up, but that won’t affect the cost of maintaining Columbus’ Friendship and Sandfield Cemeteries this year.
At its work session today, the Columbus City Council decided not to rebid the contract for the work and instead extend the deal with the current contractor for another year.
Sammy Brown, BAM LLC, has handled landscaping at Friendship since 2021 and at Sandfield since 2024. In that time, the contractor has only had one rate increase.
Despite rising fuel costs, they did not request a rate increase.
That was one factor in the renewal, but the quality of the work played a large role, too.
“They’ve been doing a great job. Normally, from being on the council, we’ve had a lot of complaints about, you know, those cemeteries not being cut or running over headstones. Those complaints have stopped. So, they are doing a great job,” said Columbus Mayor Stephen Jones.
The City is still trying to work with potential owners of the eastern section of Sandfield Cemetery. Since it is not owned by the city, the city cannot legally do maintenance there.
