Waggoner gets Cotton Blossom road work
Madison County supervisors had very little public discussion Monday morning before awarding a contract to Waggoner Engineering for the Cotton Blossom Road Project, which some officials have estimated to cost around $60 million.
The Cotton Blossom Road Project generated some scrutiny two weeks ago when supervisors held presentations with Waggoner Engineering and Stantec before going in to executive session to discussion the matter further. It was at that point District 2 Supervisor Trey Baxter left the executive session, calling it improper and illegal.
The Mississippi Open Meetings Act does not list discussion of professional services as an exemption for executive session and the Mississippi Ethics Commission has ruled in the past professional services contracts must be discussed in open session.
The discussion in open session on Monday was limited to a handful of supervisors, with the three supervisors voting for the project completely mostly silent.
District 5 Supervisor Paul Griffin brought up the motion to hire Waggoner for the project under old business and was seconded by District 4 Supervisor Karl Banks. When Board President Gerald Steen asked for discussion, only Baxter and District 1 Supervisor Sheila Jones offered comments.
“I think we need to give some work to other firms,” Jones said, adding that Waggoner already had plenty of county work on their plate right now.
Baxter said he “wasn’t clear” how the board ultimately decided on Waggoner but said he thinks the county should choose the firm with the best hourly rate given Steen, Griffin and Banks praised both firms two weeks ago.
“That being said, we’ve got a motion and a second,” Baxter conceded before the vote.
Jones and Baxter ultimately voted against the project, with Steen, Banks and Griffin voting in favor.
The Cotton Blossom Road project is a proposed project that would ultimately connect Mississippi 43 to Sowell Road via Cotton Blossom Road and create a new east-west corridor north of Deerfield.
Cotton Blossom Road runs between Highway 43 and North Old Canton Road.
Two weeks ago, supervisors questioned both firms, praising both for the work they’ve done for the county.
Steen repeatedly said he was going to vote for the firm that could help secure the most state and federal funding for the project, despite that not being listed in the RFP the firms responded to, and something that Board Attorney Mike Espy addressed in a response to questions of the legality of the executive session.
“The funding issue was not a part of the RFP, and the question would have been improper in open session, but quite appropriate in executive session where discussions are normally held on the strategic questions of how the county would endeavor to finance a costly and protracted infrastructure project, about how to pay for land and of right-of-way, and the cost of moving utilities, and about whether this landowner or that landowner would donate his or her land, or whether the county would have to ‘take’ the land by eminent domain,” Espy said in an email to the Journal.
Editor's Note: District 1 Supervisor Sheila Jones and District 2 Supervisor Trey Baxter voted against the awarding of the contract. The story said they initially voted in favor of it.