National Historical Society awards $98,000 to county

National Historical Society awards $98,000 to county

News & Notes from June Quorum Court meeting

news@theeveningtimes.com

Crittenden County Courthouse is about to get a new coat of paint.

County Judge Woody Wheeless told the Quorum Court that the county has been awarded a $98,000 grant from the National Historical Society.

“We got notified last Friday that we received the grant,” Wheeless said.

The news was especially welcome because the county only applied for $50,000.

Wheeless praised County Treasurer Charlie Suiter for his efforts which ended up netting the county more than they asked for.

“I want to give credit to Charlie,” Wheeless said.

“He and I both worked on this. But he courted them around and let them look at the facility.”

Suiter said he noticed some people outside the courthouse taking pictures and at first thought they were tourists.

“I was the only one in the courthouse at the time and I walked out there thinking somebody was just taking pictures of the courthouse,” Suiter said. “They were outside looking around so I walked them through every bit of the building and showed them everything we have done.”

Wheeless said there should be a little extra money left over to also do some roof repairs.

“We have some issues with our roof,” Suiter said.

The money is being administered through East Arkansas Planning and Development District.

In other business:

• Justices approved a resolution to send a required letter to Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to show that the county has sufficient funds for the closure of the county landfill. The county has $3.5 million set aside in five separate certificate of deposit accounts.

“The bank is the one who draws up this paperwork that we send in,” Suiter said. “It has the name and number and the amount of each CD and we sign off. It is a common procedure that we are required to do each year.”

• Suiter told the Quorum Court that sales tax revenue for May was up five percent from the same time a year ago — from $198,000 to $208,000, and that the hospital sales tax collections was up one percent and has now brought in $6.7 million total.

• The Quorum Court authorized the County Health Department to spend up to $7,500 to strip and wax the floors at the county health department building. Department head Krystal Moore said she got an estimate from Quality Flooring for $7,500 but doesn’t have a line item in her budget to take the money from.

“On an average each year I come in $20,000 to $25,000 under-budget,” Moore said. “Right now I have spent $44,181. My approved budget was $110,700, but I don’t have a line item to take that money from to have the floors stripped and waxed.

And the floors are in horrible condition at this time.”

Justices asked Moore to get another estimate and go with the lowest one, but authorized transferring $7,500 from the electricity line item to the chemicals and cleaning line item.

“We will put the $7,500 max in and you can still take bids, and if it comes in at less than $7,500 then you still have the money,” Robertson said.

• Wheeless informed the Quorum Court that they opened bids for road resurfacing and received two bids — $802,000 from APAC and $743,050 from DKB Construction.

Wheeless said both bids exceeded the budget the county had set for road resurfacing, and as a result he has pulled some of the roads off the list and reduced the amount to $690,000. The county budgeted $650,000 for road resurfacing but received $40,000 from Clarkedale to resurface roads in that community.

“We cut back on some of our own projects,” Wheeless said. “And we use that money ($40,000) to re-pave roads in that area since they don’t have any road crew.

We always do that work and they provide us with the funds to do.”

• Heard a report from Melvin Watson of Arkansas Department of Health informing them that National HIV testing day will be held on June 27 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the county courthouse.

“I would like to thank Judge Wheeless and the justices for again letting me use the facility,” Watson said. “We have tested 42 people in the county so far.

This will be our third year.

I am hoping we can go up to 75 this year. There is no blood, no stick. We just swab the mouth and within 20 minutes we can have your test results.”

Watson said Walgreens and a national HIV organization, Greater than AIDS, will also be holding a similar testing clinic at Walgreens in West Memphis on the same day from 3 to 7 p.m.

“A lot of people tell me in West Memphis and other parts of the county that they are not able to come to the testing site here at the courthouse because either they have to work during the day or they don’t have transportation to come to Marion,” Watson said. “So this will give people another

option.”

By Mark Randall