Highway department plans to purchase Rigsby Roofing building
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The purchase price of $150,000 will come from the highway department’s current budget thus avoiding issuing capital outlay notes to finance the purchase.
Highway and Bridge Committee chairman Gary Prater says the highway department has been feeling cramped at its current location on Old Smithville Highway for some time, but options for expansion have been limited. At one point there was even discussion about taking back the land currently used for the fairgrounds convenience center, but the difficulty and cost of finding an alternate site prohibited that option.
“We’ve outgrown this out here,” Prater said at a joint meeting of the Highway and Bridge and Building and Grounds committees Tuesday. “It doesn’t look like we’re ever going to get the piece of property back from sanitation, so we need some place we can utilize to store some of this equipment. Rigsby Roofing has got one and a half acres with a building the size of 60×80 feet. It’s brand new. It has hardly been used.”
The building, located at 1678 Old Smithville Highway, is around an eighth of a mile from the current highway department building. According to Prater, the county has been offered the building at less than the appraised price, which is $172,000.
Through some judicious juggling of the highway department budget, Road Superintendent Harold Glenn and assistant Levy Glenn told Prater they would be able to handle the purchase without seeking financing from the county.
With the purchase already approved by the Budget and Finance Committee in a previous meeting, Building and Grounds was quick to back the purchase, voting unanimously to present the idea to the full county commission.
Prater said he feels the purchase will provide some much-needed storage space and reduce costs of maintenance on equipment currently stored outside.
“This equipment belongs to the taxpayers,” Prater said. “We need to take care of it.”