Putnam County Commissioners awarded a $3.4 million bid Monday night to begin earthwork on a new school bus garage and county maintenance facility.
The first segment of work includes utilities, streets, and building pads for the Tennessee Avenue project. County Mayor Randy Porter said the commission initially rejected bids for the overall project more than a year ago, because of high prices and bids over budget.
“We had four bidders and they were all very active in the bid process, and so the bid that we got came in at $3.4 million, which is about $1 million less than what it was last time that we bid for all this same stuff,” Porter said.
Porter said the county needs to move forward with the project, which includes relocating the current facility from the Jefferson Avenue corridor.
“They are in dire need for us to get them a new facility, so if we go ahead and approve this, we’ve got $5 million sitting in capital projects just for this project,” Porter said.
Porter said awarding the bid could set the county up to be in a better position to finish the rest of the project a year from now.
“If you go ahead and approve this, we go ahead and do all this, which would take the rest of this year, maybe in the first of next year, depending on weather, and then we look at next year then at the buildings,” Porter said. “And either building one of them at a time or both of them as we get closer to our bond payments going way down and us having a lot of capacity in debt service that we don’t have right now.”
In other business, the commission approved providing the county’s share of matching grant funds for the Upper Cumberland Regional Airport. The money will be set aside for land acquisition and grant matches for the Airport.
The commission approved purchasing cooperatives. Porter said the county has already used these cooperatives when piggybacking on other contracts for purchasing, and that the auditor has requested the county list the cooperatives in the county’s budget.
The commission also honored the Upperman High School Boys Basketball Team for winning the TSSAA 3A state championship. The commission also honored Upperman Sophomore Ty Cobb for being nominated as TSSAA’s 3A Mr. Basketball.
The commission also honored Upperman High School Student Barrett Newton for his fishing accomplishments and his excellence in the classroom.
