County EMA coordinator clarifies tower process

Order of operation to move forward with the communication tower project was the question before the Chickasaw County Board of Supervisors on Monday as members worked to make sense of advice from the engineer and bond counsel.The board voted last week to accept the engineering design fee down payment, hire the bonding attorney and set a public hearing to hear public input on whether or not to bond for the project.Several steps remain before construction on the county-wide communications tower system project can begin, said Emergency Management coordinator Austen Seely, heading the project, who was not at the meeting. The board will need to tentatively agree to bond, hold a public hearing, actually decide whether to bond or not sometime after the hearing, hire the engineering consultant or not, “then the project takes off from there,” Seely said.“It would be premature to contract with us prior to ensuring that the project funding is fully approved,” states an Aug. 22 letter from project engineering consultant Gary Therkelsen, GJ Therkelsen and Associates, handed out to the Board of Supervisors Monday.  “Our terms and conditions require 20 percent of the [about $163,000]-fixed-fee proposal to be paid on execution of the contract for mobilization expenses. It would be a waste of your money and our time to initiate a project like this if it was unable to be completed,” referring to the current unknown amount of support for the bond issue.