Williams visits Supes
During the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors' meeting on Monday, Senator Bart Williams was present to give the board a legislative update.
Senator Williams told the board he sat in on the ARPA committee meeting, which resulted in them allocating $1.5 billion that they legislatively came out with that, and he wanted to go “a little bit in the weeds” on that as it pertains to water and a couple of different fields that are out there.
“To talk a little bit about that, we've got several buckets of money, if you will,” said Senator Williams. “We've got a $450 million appropriation for cities and counties, that's where the money we're talking about here would be appropriate. $50 million of that is for cities and counties who have received less than $1 million in ARPA money, but we have more than that. So there's $400 million that's available to be matched. If the county has projects that qualify under that, which would be water, wastewater, runoff – that's the basic criteria, We allocated $400 million for that.”
Senator Williams added that the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) is currently promulgating the rules for that, and they should be ready in the next few weeks.
For the bucket of rural water money, Williams told the board that $300 million has been allocated, but it is not a matching situation.
“A rural water association can apply for this money and get it without a match,” said Senator Williams. “So there is no match; that's 100 percent money that's available for that. [Mississippi State Department of Health] is promulgating the rules for that, and July 1 is when these bills become law so the money will be written after that.”
In response to what Senator Williams told the Supes, board president Bricklee Miller asked him if they needed to reach out to William Mckercher for more details on the water allocations, to which he responded yes.
“If you've got people who you do communicate with, I would suggest asking them,” the senator said to the board. “I've reached out to them and they're just saying they're in the process of promulgating the rules, which is good, I think it's going to be a fair distribution of the money is not a ‘favorite' thing.”
After the senator's presentation to the board, District 1 Election Commissioner Greg Fulgham requested a board order to move the district's voting precinct from the National Guard Armory to the Oktibbeha County Community Safe Room, due to the county's recent redistricting.
Later on in the meeting, Bill Mcdonald of the Pickering Engineering Firm visited the Supes with an update on the Oktibbeha County Lake dam project.
Back in March, the board approved an order to proceed with the design and improvements of the lake dam based on a report they went through that day. Mcdonald told the board the next recommended step will be to proceed with a 35 percent design process to look at the design alternatives, evaluate costs, but mainly to meet with MDEQ and see if there's any way to lower the design criteria for the project because that is what is driving up the cost of the project.
What Mcdonald presented to the board in response to that board order is an amendment of the contract that defines in detail the scope of work that Pickering would perform, the schedule, and the budget.