Promoting economic development through site development at an industrial park off of the Interstate remains the priority of Lauderdale County supervisors heading into 2019, according to new board president Jonathan Wells.

Supervisors elected Wells, of District 1, as president at their first meeting of 2019 on Monday, choosing Kyle Rutledge, of District 5, as vice president.

Among board actions, the board decided to sign a letter of support for East Mississippi’s Business Development Corporation’s grant application to the Mississippi Development Authority for $250,000.

“In the grand scheme of things, $250,000 isn’t much,” Wells said. “But we hope to combine that with other state and federal grants.”

Wells said that the grant could reimburse the county for work performed to promote economic development such as site clearing, adding dirt or materials for site preparation. 

“We can make the industrial park more attractive and site ready,” Wells said. “So when companies see a new site – it’s all ready … they save months of work with a prepared site and this puts us ahead of other counties and states.”

Recently, EMBDC president Bill Hannah has pushed for site development off of Sweet Gum Bottom Road, which the county cleared of trees and the City of Meridian chose to reroute for site preparation. 

“One thing that people will not be able to say is that this board didn’t go after economic development opportunities,” Wells said. 

Wells said the board would also continue to move forward on finding a solution to the county courthouse, moving various county departments to different buildings and attempting to secure the federal courthouse on 9th Street. 

“We’re slowly but surely moving forward,” Well said. “We have the mentality of ‘How do we eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’ “

Supervisors voted to request proposals for a Comprehensive Exterior Condition Assessment of the courthouse again after receiving only one bid, from Waggoner Engineering. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History asked supervisors to open requests again since they only received one bid.

“Just another roadblock,” a few frustrated supervisors said, overlapping one another, at the Monday meeting.