by Hunter Dawkins
The first item on the agenda for the Long Beach Board of Alderman at City Hall Tuesday night was arguably the most important, as South Mississippi Planning & Development District (SMPDD) representative Krystn Gunter delivered a presentation outlining pavement preservation.
Gunter correlated the streets of Long Beach to two cities in Connecticut, one that used the SMPDD strategy after time and the other that didn’t use their plan. The Board noticed remarkable differences in the timeline shared, where Gunter outlined that Long Beach is roughly covering 100 miles and the need to start implementing treatments. “As your road gets worse, it costs more dollars to maintain,” said Gunter.
Finally, Gunter expressed the estimate cost would be about $1 million for the treatment of all roads in Long Beach. Additionally, there would be some cost benefit by the traffic count and there were multiple listings for the same roads in the presentation.
Mayor George Bass asked for a specific day for the Board to schedule a workshop before the Mississippi Municipal League (MML) meeting next year. Then, December 11 was motioned and approved by the Board for the date.
Following this action, the Board established the date as Saturday, January 5 at 9am to have a work session for school board interviews. School Board member Angie Johnson’s term expires early in 2019. Johnson indicated at the last school board meeting that she intends to maintain her position.
In other actions, the restate building and water/sewer ordinances were tabled after City Attorney Jim Simpson said that no one from Municode responded to him yet and the Board will let City Engineer David Ball hold the topographic survey for the Jeff Davis Gateway project.
Before recess, City Attorney Simpson expressed that development in litigation against the city whereas the Board went into executive session with no action taken.
