Choctaw County Supervisors Team Up To Fix Roads And Save Money

CHOCTAW COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – A road project is getting underway in Choctaw County, and county leaders are taking a little different approach this time around.

A few of the county supervisors are pooling their resources to improve some roads and save the county money.

About nine roads are getting a makeover in the reseal project.

The county is doing all of the work themselves rather than bringing an outside source in to do the job.

Improving roads and saving dollars.

That’s the name of the game in Choctaw County this week.

“We’re what we call a beat system county, which with the roads, the supervisors are actually over every aspect of road work. They actually can get out here and work on the roads, where in a unit system county they cannot,” says District 3 Supervisor Chris McIntire.

Three supervisors and their district workers are teaming up to make it all happen.

“We have approximately two to three employees per district that we use to do all of our road maintenance, bush-hogging, pothole patching, and doing these road prep work and we have to pool our resources together, so three of us, district one, three, and four have pooled their resources to do this project.”

Making it a team effort is cutting costs for the county and its taxpayers.

“We’re lucky enough that we have great road workers that are able to do this, very talented guys, all of them. They can do just about anything and one thing this helps you know, it keeps our millage rate from going up, you know? We’ve went another year with no increase in the millage rate,” says District 1 Supervisor Joey Stephenson.

With the county doing its own work, project costs are half of what they would be if they were paying someone else.

“Tremendously cheaper. You know, over 50% cheaper than contracting it out. I mean, we have the equipment, you know, these guys, you’re going to pay them regardless.”

Wear and tear is what drove supervisors to certain roads in the county.

“We had a pretty bad winter this past winter, where a lot of the roads froze and cracked and we’ve been having to do a lot of prep work leading up to this week. We probably had three weeks of prep work, where we had to go out and fix potholes, leveling, do some patchwork to get ready to sweep the roads and get ready for this.”

Those supervisors say they do this project each summer, including last year.