Stephens Co. Commission Meets

Stephens County will move forward with new signage and striping on 35 county roads with the help of funds from the Georgia Department of Transportation.

Tuesday, the county commission unanimously approved a total bid from Brown’s Asphalt Maintenance in the amount of $236,916.50 for the project.

Part of the money will come from the Georgia Department of Transportation through a grant, while the county will cover the rest of the cost.

According to Stephens County Administrator Phyllis Ayers, this bid that commissioners approved would require additional funds from the county that were not originally budgeted as part of the local match to the state grant.

However, Ayers said that if commissioners approved the full project and additional funding, the state DOT was also chipping in some extra grant money.

The commission could have also chosen to scale the project back to fall within the original funding parameters, but it would have meant not striping nine roads.

County Commission Chairman Dennis Bell said that striping is important from a public safety perspective.

“We need those stripes on those roads, especially those fog lines, white lines,” said Bell, adding it would help prevent accidents.

Also on Tuesday, Stephens County Commissioners unanimously approved sending a letter to the state DOT requesting the 2017 Local Maintenance Improvement Grant.

Ayers said that the county would like to put next year’s funding towards two county roads in particular.

She explained that the county was looking at topping Wolf Pit and Ridgeland roads.

According to Ayers, the county can change this request at a later date if necessary.

She said topping the roads will help the base on those roads that was done last year last longer.

Meanwhile, Stephens County employees will now be able to donate their sick leave and vacation days to other employees.

Following an executive session on Tuesday, Stephens County Commissioners voted unanimously to allow a policy to allow sick leave and vacation days to be donated by an employee to another employee on a case-by-case basis with the approval of the County Administrator.

Stephens County Administrator Phyllis Ayers said this idea came from the employees.

“We did have a department that has an employee inside the department that has an illness that will not have enough sick time to cover the time needed to be off, so the department has gotten together and wants to donate,” said Ayers.

Ayers says it speaks to the employees that work for the county government

Also on Tuesday, county commissioners unanimously approved a 10 percent pay increase for the E-911/EMA Director as discussed during the hiring process.

In other action from Tuesday’s county commission meeting, commissioners made a host of appointments. Those include re-appointing Roger Duncan to the Board of Tax Assessors, Dean Scarborough and Bob Evans to the Joint Development Authority, Rex Anderson to the Stephens County Health Board, and appointing Billy Chism and Doris Adams to the Library Board.