County outlines its priority list for big projects
The Madison County Commission’s long-range planning committee has met in recent months to determine a priority list for its outstanding large projects that have been on the commission’s agenda for an extended period of time.
Along with long-range planning, other committees including capital, financial management, budget and property committees have been involved in discussion of determining the priority list.
The list presented at Tuesday’s commission meeting was presented with Pope School being the top priority with a projected cost between $26 million and $48 million, which would be determined by how big a school Jackson-Madison County Schools want to put there.
Recent discussions at education vision meeting on Jan. 11 saw commissioners on the committee asking JMCSS Superintendent Marlon King for what he wanted, but King says he believes deciding what Pope needs should be a collaborative effort between the Commission, JMCSS and other stakeholders.
So that cost will be determined.
The No. 2 item on the agenda is the juvenile detention center that has been proposed and asked for by Juvenile Court Judge Christy Little.
The subcommittee that was recently appointed met Tuesday morning to begin discussions of deciding how to go about the procesv-/.ls of planning the building and putting out bids for possible contractors.
Little is hopeful for funding to come from different sources to offset the cost for the county.
No. 3 is renovations needed for the old part of the Criminal Justice Complex. While that cost is unknown, there is $500,000 available from the current contract for the jail, but the cost is unknown and probably will be unknown until the jail expansion is complete, which is projected to be done by the end of March, according to CJC Director Capt. Tom Rudder.
The fourth priority is the demolition of the old Beech Bluff School building.
The older part of the building has a significant amount of asbestos, and until the county has the funds to demolish that part of the building, they have it boarded off while the rest of the building is used as a community center.
The demolition is projected to cost $600,000.
No. 5 is the equestrian park that’s been in the works since 2020 to move the county’s facilities from Pugh Bourne Park in Oakfield to Fred Young Park, between Bemis and Pinson. There is still some work to be done on figuring out the price because of different line items in the project not being properly budgeted early in the process, but the grant the county received from the state of $500,000 plus the $778,000 the county has budgeted for the project gives them a little less than $1.3 million to fund the project.
According to Commissioner Jason Compton, the biggest issue with Fred Young Park is the entrance to the park off Highway 45 to the east as the highway expands with a median a couple miles north of Pinson isn’t big enough for horse trailers to pull off the highway into.
Compton said parks and recreation director Chris Guerin is working hard to cut costs to keep it in budget, but what all needs; to be done is still to be determined.
The next item was school needs, specifically replacing the oldest buses in JMCSS’ fleet, which is projected to cost between $1 million and $2 million.
No. 7 was capital needs over the next three years based on requests, which as of Tuesday morning were projected to cost $5.8 million this year, $4.5 million next year and $3.6 the following year.
Reach Brandon Shields at bjshields@jacksonsun.com or at 731-425-9751. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or on Instagram at editorbrandon.
This article originally appeared on Jackson Sun: County outlines its priority list for big projects
