Thursday morning the Commissioners Court reviewed capital outlay items requested from various departments at the courthouse. The Sheriff’s Office was expected to top the list as usual of requested capital outlay items at over half a million dollars. The Sheriff’s Office requested 15 Dodge Chargers as patrol cars to replace vehicles that have over 100,000 miles, in fact some with over 200,000 miles. The projected cost would be $538,000. Chief Deputy Clint Hodgkinson then made an additional request to the Commissioners to replace the fire alarm at the Orange County Jail. Hodgkinson said the new alarm would identify the exact location of any fire in the jail and greatly expedite the first responders to extinguishing it. The estimated cost of the new fire alarm is between $42,000 and $50,000. Not to be outdone Road and Bridge Engineer Clark Slacum requested new equipment for his department originally estimated at $227,000, but with updated costs would be over $784,000. That was before Slacum answered the question from Commissioners Court of the need to upgrade Road and Bridge’s maintenance facilities. Slacum indicated there is a welding building in Precinct 3 that could be torn down a new facility built in its place that would accommodate a heavy duty lift so work could be done on vehicles and equipment and then in another year or two they could do one of the other buildings. Commissioner John Banken requested Slacum workup an estimate of how much it would cost to do the project of a new maintenance facility for his department. It was estimated that Road and Bridge’s capital outlay requests could top one million dollars.
Social Media