Grovetown City Council, during its meeting Monday evening, approved a new contract with Reeves Construction Co. for an overlay project along Harlem-Grovetown Road.
Attaching to a contract the company won with Columbia County, Grovetown sought a cooperative purchasing agreement for over $1 million to pave Harlem-Grovetown Road, from the city limits at Caroleton Drive to the intersection of Wrightsboro Road and Robinson Avenue.
City finance director Bradley Smith explained to the councilmembers that Reeves’ contract with the county is to pave the road from Caroleton Dr. going toward Harlem, and that Grovetown requested that Reeves “just keep going.”
“Which is why we were able to procure the unit prices that we had,” said Smith to the council. “Had we gone out to bid on our own, we would have seen a marked increase per unit price.”
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The project is fully funded by available transportation special option local sales tax (TSPLOST) and SPLOST monies, Smith also noted, and the paving project is slated to begin in May or June.
In his financial report, Smith told the council that as of January, the remaining percentage of each of the city’s funds are above the ideal of 42%, with the water and sewer and stormwater funds currently “healthy,” but that the general fund may dip for a period.
This is due in part, he said, to the post-Helene cleanup efforts, which means FEMA is to reimburse most of those funds; and also partly because of the depot reconstruction project.
“We hope to start seeing some of those funds come in here relatively shortly as the cleanup is nearing completion,” Smith said. “And by nearing, I mean in the next month or two. So not tomorrow, not the next day, but we are getting to a point where we’re going to start announcing possibly our last round of pickups.”
As part of its monthly Vietnam Veteran Recognition, the council honored Spc. Larry Clifford McCarty. An Evans native and alumnus of Evans High School and what was then Augusta College, McCarty was trained as an infantryman after being drafted into the Army, though hearing loss caused him to support the war effort stateside.
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During his service he earned the National Defense Service Medal, Expert Marksman Badge for the M-16 Rifle and the Good Conduct Medal. After his honorable discharge in 1971, McCarty went on to have a storied career that included 28 years at King Mill and 16 at Bobby Jones Ford.
“I served during a time that soldiers were not honored, and at one time we were warned, ‘don’t even wear your uniforms in town,’” said McCarty, thanking the city for the recognition. “But we’re healing. We’re getting there.”
Skyler Andrews is a reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
