Police Jury OKs bridge repair offer
CLINTON — The East Feliciana Parish Police Jury voted Tuesday to accept a proposal to rebuild a bridge the state ordered closed on Carruth Road, a major parish road in the Wilson area.
Parish Manager Glen Kent said a company he identified as Parker Composite agreed to do the work for $38,850. The jury must supply the materials, which Kent estimated will cost between $10,000 and $16,000.
The company uses a plastic-like material to cover the wood used in the bridges, rather than using creosote timbers or other treated wood, Kent said.
The technique has been used with success in neighboring West Feliciana Parish, he said.
The jury has one other bridge — on John Thomas Road — the state Department of Transportation and Development ordered closed, and jurors accepted Kent’s proposal to have an engineer do a hydrological study of the stream the bridge crosses to determine if it could be replaced with culverts.
The jury tabled Kent’s proposal to do similar studies on about nine other parish bridges that are deteriorating to the extent they could be closed.
He said DOTD rates bridges with percentages, and the nine are hovering in the 50 percent range.
“Fifty percent is bad, and anything below 50 percent, get ready to work on a bridge,” the parish manager said.
Other topics before the jury included:
ZONING ERRORS: Jurors voted to amend the parish’s zoning ordinance to allow the Planning and Zoning Commission to recommend corrections to errors made when the parish zoning map was first drawn. The revisions will be done in groups at no cost to the property owners.
“It’s very obvious,” Building Inspector Larry Thompson said of the zoning errors.
FOUR-DAY WEEK: Jurors voted unanimously to allow jury employees to work four 10-hour days each week, with the understanding the jury office will remain open five days a week.