The Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors on Monday moved forward with a plan to resurface various roads throughout the county.

On the recommendation of Road Manager Rush Mayatt, supervisors accepted a $3,781,165 bid from APAC, which was the best and lowest of the three bids received. The second bid of $4,112,013.50 was received from Walters Construction, and a third bid from Falcon Contracting was rejected due to missing documents.

The paving package includes about 17 miles of asphalt overlay throughout the county, Mayatt said, and had an original estimated cost of $4.7 million.

The paving package is being paid for with a combination of bond funds, use tax funds and American Rescue Plan Act dollars, all of which have different restrictions on how they can be used. When dealing with multiple funding sources, he said, things quickly become complicated.

When bidding a paving package, contractors give a lump sum price for the work, Mayatt said. The hard part, he said, is calculating how much each road costs and making sure the money comes from the proper source.

“There’s no way to say, ‘Hey, this road only costs this much. Pull it out of use tax,’ or ‘Hey, this road only costs this much. Pull it out of bond funds,’” he said. “That’s something we have to kind of do internally or after the fact.”

This past year, Mayatt said, has been awash with different pots of state and federal funds, which has enabled the county to make a lot of progress on infrastructure improvements. Unfortunately, he said, it has also made it exceptionally difficult to get a clear idea of the road department’s financial status.

“Use tax, ARPA, all those things have made it really very difficult to manage and just to understand where we’re at,” he said.

After working with the county’s financial analyst Cheryl Polk, Mayatt said the best plan appeared to be to deplete Bond Fund 384, which the county uses for road and bridge projects, and then pay the rest of the project from Use Tax 165.

Although there are pending expenses for both funds already in the works, Polk said she has looked over the numbers, including the $3.7 million paving package, and confirmed the money works.

While much of the funding information is internal, Mayatt said he wanted to be transparent about where the money was coming from and what he was trying to do to balance the various funding sources.

In other business, the Board of Supervisors:

•approved purchasing two transit vans for the IT department at $41,068.25 and $40,834;

•accepted the lowest and best bid of $75,541 from Filing and Storage of Mississippi for four-post metal storage shelving; and,

•approved the purchase of furniture for the new government complex from Southern Business Supply at an estimated cost of about $500,000.