Well, so much for better weather. We have been out in the weather however, repairing culverts that have not carried this much run-off since they were installed. We were able to overlay one section of CR 1312, another section of CR1475 and a section of CR1660 close to the old Greenhill Presyberian Church. They will be having their foundational worship service on this Sunday, October 25, and I'm sure they will appreciate smoother roads. We also installed a supplemental culvert on CR 1362 to assist the drainage of their road. CR1362 is in a Post-Oak flat that will not drain very rapidly, regardless of what we do, but we are willing to try this to maybe ease the problem. We also overlayed a section of that road while we were there.
As for the Courthouse, we are dealing with a request by local volunteer fire departments to fund the matching portion of two grants that were awarded to them. Our VFD's are very dedicated and valuable to our county, but we have no allocation in our newly adopted budget for the $30,000+ that they will need. Although we may opt to fund this request, I'm very concerned about the future applications for grants on which we have no input. The county budget was not lightly conceived and more pressure at this critical time in our local economy is very worrisome. On one hand, we welcomed the "Tea Party" to our budget hearings to address their taxation concerns and at the very next meeting, we are asked for a large budget amendment by the VFD's. I guess one thing is for sure: "Ya can't please everybody!"

In preparation for the construction of a bad weather storage bunk for our materials, I was stepping off the pad and found a treasure. Covered in briars and brush was a rusted old brush-hog. It had been there since Mike Price was commissioner nine years ago. Nobody could tell me if it was any good, so during one of these rainy days, I had the crew dig it out, clean it up, and hook it to a tractor. IT WORKS!!! We rewelded some damage to the frame, sanded out all the rust and painted it. Since we don't need it, I'm going to put it on the auction site along with other items that haven't been used in years and put the money into some extra road work.
We did get some half-way decent weather last week and got to scab some areas on CR 1475, CR 1550 (some of the rebuild was too rough), CR 1695, and CR 1660. We also got to pull some ditches on CR 1660 and help out a resident on CR 1670 with some trashy fill dirt she needed behind her house. Three disability residents also asked for help with their drives to accommodate the mail carriers which we were glad to do for free. Working on private property is generally a big NO unless the resident is documented as "Disabled".
This week we have been cleaning equipment, prepping and painting the precinct's treasure brush-hog, and cleaning some culverts for residents on CR 1362. Hopefully we'll have some better weather next week so we can get started on our building project.