Chilton roads big topic at meeting

Published 11:15 pm Monday, February 8, 2010

The condition of Chilton County roads dominated discussion at Monday’s commission meeting.

About 30 people attended the meeting, and the majority of those addressed the commission about road problems.

County Road 15 remains partly closed after portions of the highway eroded away Friday, according to County Engineer Tony Wearren.

A temporary solution should allow the road to reopen in a week to two weeks, Wearren said.

After that, a permanent fix will take somewhere between six and eight weeks. Six bridges were out across the county Monday morning.

County Commission President Tim Mims said with the current weather there is little the county can do to fix rain or flood related problems, particularly on the county’s 500 miles of dirt roads.

“As long as we are having this rain the way we are, there is very little we can do other than hopefully keep these roads passable,” Mims said.

Wearren said highway department crews are working 7 days a week, weather permitting.

Specific roads addressed by those in attendance were County Road 455, County Road 515 in Verbena, and parts of County Road 32.

In other business, the commission took the following actions:

Voted to hire to fill two positions in the tax collector’s office. One will work in the tag office and the other in tax collection.

Voted to look into fixing telephone problems at the tax collector’s office. Tax Collector Tim Little said people are having a hard time calling into the office.

Went into an executive session to discuss two pending legal matters.

Decide to remove windows from the probate judge’s and tax collector’s office in the courthouse. The windows were recently installed, but several people have complained that you can’t hear through speaker holes. The commission talked about installing microphones, but opted against that option.