Panola County’s road department is expected to turn about 44 miles of gravel roads into paved thoroughfares by the fall of the year.

The county has budgeted about $1 million to pave the gravel roads and reseal about 15 miles of paved roads.

County road manager Lygunnah Bean said an eight-man crew is tasked with the road paving work, which will begin July 5 and will continue until wet weather arrives in late fall.

The county supervisors released their individual road paving lists over the last week, responding to a public request from The Panolian to do so.

This summer, the planned road paving per district is as follows:
  

The paving process is known as DBST. It involves dispensing two coats of white rock mixed with an oil base.

The labor and materials for road paving cost between $21,000 to $22,000 per mile, said Perkins, who serves as president of the Board of Supervisors.

"We’ve got a good program going, but it takes lots of money to do it," Perkins said. "Without raising taxes, we’ve got to go at it slow."

The paving monies include $750,000 from a five-year road department loan and about $650,000 in FEMA natural disaster money, said County Administrator David Chandler.

The FEMA funds are coming to the county after county roads were damaged by severe weather about two years ago, Chandler said. The first payment, which will be approximately $300,000, is due in a couple of weeks.

"We’re doing this with no tax increase," Chandler noted, adding that the county’s road department funding is in "excellent shape."

The county has paved about 200 miles of county roads in the past few years, meaning the number of to-be-paved roads is dropping while the number of paved roads that need maintaining is increasing each year.

The county supervisors are responding to the apparent change, Perkins said, most recently by pulling two road graders out of service in order to pour more resources into maintenance of paved roads.

"If you don’t maintain what you’ve got, then you’ll go back to where you started four years ago," Perkins said.
 

Panola County state legislator Leonard Morris says he will support Gov. Haley Barbour’s Momentum Mississippi plan today, but he hopes the governor will stick by his word and consider other bond projects, too.

Barbour officially announced the second special session June 3 after hinting of a session in May when legislators adjourned without passing the Momentum package.

The Republican governor has publicly promised to include the bond projects if legislators pass the Momentum package.

Barbour introduced Momentum Mississippi in the first special session, where House members tacked on more than $100 million of bond projects to the $27 million Momentum plan, The Clarion-Ledger newspaper reported.

Barbour complained that the bond projects amounted to political "pork," and wrangling between the House and Senate over the projects ended with an adjournment and a dead bill.

Morris, a Democrat from Batesville, said the bond projects tacked onto the Momentum bill passed through the Economic Development sub-committee he sits on in the House.

"I know there was some so-called ?pork’ in there, but there were also some projects for economic development that are as important as Momentum Mississippi," Morris said.

The special bonds included an expansion in Cleveland at Baxter Pharmaceutical and an expansion at Northrop Grumman, the shipyard in Pascagoula.

If Momentum Mississippi passes, it would aid new high-tech businesses and existing companies, allowing both to be eligible for loans and grants for the first time, Morris said. Momentum would also pour more funding into existing economic development programs, he said.

With those exceptions, Morris said, the governor’s Momentum package is largely a continuance of former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove’s Advantage Mississippi.

The governor’s Momentum package will once again pass in the state Senate, said Democratic Senator Nolan Mettetal of Sardis.

"I’m not concerned about it. It will pass quickly," Mettetal said when reached last week.

Momentum has passed twice in the the state Senate, where Republican Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck and the Republican-led Senate are closely aligned with Barbour.

Panola County legislator Warner McBride could not be reached for comment by press time Monday.
   

Approximately half of the attendees for last Thursday’s Northwest Mississippi Area Job Fair could be employed by one of the 50 companies with openings over the next year.

Cindy Martin of the Batesville Win Job Center said more than 2,000 people actually attended the fair held at the Batesville Civic Center, and more than 2,700 resumes were submitted to the employers.

Kristle Steward was looking for a current job until she passes the state nurses aid exam. She came to the Thursday June 23 job fair with her brother, Drew, who works at Appleby’s in Oxford. He was checking out other opportunities for employment.

Charlette Harris of Quitman County wanted to put in an application with Batesville Casket Company, but while at the job fair she would shop around looking for other opportunities.

Martin said she felt like the job fair would have a good turnout, but didn’t expect it to be as large as it was.

"The companies who had booths at the job fair were very happy with the quality of applicants we had seeking jobs," she said.

"Everyone who was involved with this job fair has been more than impressed with the turn out we had from both employers and job-seekers," Martin added.

Of those job seekers, 525 participated in on-site interviews and 804 left the job fair with job offers.

"That doesn’t mean that 804 applicants received a job offer," she said. "We believe there were several applicants who received more than one offer."

Joe Buckner, director of the Governor’s Job Fair Network, last week estimated that 1,130 people could be hired from this fair within the coming year.
Martin said she hopes this kind of success will translate into more participants in next year’s event.

"An event like this has to grow every year," she said. "We got off to a good start with this kind of success, and I believe that will get more employers interested when we do this again in 2006."