Union County board renews casualty insurance, opens bids for road work

The Union County Board of Supervisors renewed the county’s property and liability insurance at its meeting Monday, September 26.

The total premium for these insurance coverages for county operations during the coming year will be $283,966, an increase of 14.7% over the previous year’s premium.

The board opened bids for signs identifying county roads for Emergency/E911 purposes. Riverside Traffic made a bid of $8,076. Vulcan Sign Company bid $7,309.22. The bid was awarded to Vulcan.

Larry Britt, the county’s consulting professional engineer, opened bids for labor only for laying asphalt on County Road 1. Gregory Co. LLC/Murphy Paving bid $221,375; Roberts Paving bid $94,555.50; Southern Paving LLC bid $89,250; and A&B Construction bid $84,500. Britt made a preliminary study of the bids and asked the board to defer awarding the labor contract so he could study the bids more carefully and assure compliance with all parts of the bid request. The board agreed and tabled awarding the bid until a future meeting.

At the request of County Sheriff Jimmy Edwards, the board approved the employment Kirklin Wayne Crutchfield as full-time jailer effective Sept. 26

Chief Deputy Sheriff Baron Baker told the board of a plan to acquire Kevlar protective vests for 25 county deputies and investigators. Baker said the total cost of the 16 vests would be $25,000. He said he had learned how to cover the entire cost by combining state and federal grants. The county will have to pay part of the cost upfront, but the amount would be reimbursed to the county by one of the grants, thus acquiring the vests at no direct cost to Union County general revenue funds.

The Union County Board of Supervisors will next meet at 10 a.m. on Monday, October 3, 2022.