By John Howell Sr.

Owners of property on Tubbs Road whose land adjoins a pending drainage improvement project must sign easements to allow the work to begin, city officials determined Thursday.

Batesville’s mayor, aldermen and other city officials met with City Engineer Blake Mendrop and assistant city engineers Keith Quick and Brad Griffin to discuss progress on several pending and proposed infrastructure projects.

Mendrop described the arrangement of the bid that gives priority to the work most critical to improved drainage. According to the bid language, construction segments less critical to the drainage will be let if available funds allow, Mendrop said.

“If we have a specific scope of work (and) we have money — if the bids come in under the estimated amount of money — we can always have additive alternates to add a portion to the scope, too, and that would be the way I’d recommend to set it up,” Quick said.

The engineers described the hydraulic studies and surveys that were used in the design of their plans. Anticipated construction includes replacing current driveway bridges over the large ditch on Tubbs Road’s north side.

“Can we make it so that it never floods, never gets into these parking lots?” Mendrop asked rhetorically.

“No, not at this location; it is what it is,” the engineer continued. “We can make some improvements to it.”

The work extends from Tubbs Road’s east starting point at its intersection with Pearson Street, west to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Cooley.

The $848,000 is funded through a $414,000 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) matched by a like amount of city funds.

“We’re going to have to get easements … all the way down the north side and probably need to do it on the south,” Mendrop said. The engineer said that most property lines extended onto Tubbs Road. He said that Tubbs Road was once the route of Highway 6.

Griffin said that he contacted the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT), whose spokesman told him that their records “… went back to 1940, he said we didn’t keep records any further back than that,” Griffin said.

“It would be good to let the property owners know. I’m sure that some of these with a lot of these bridges that need to be replaced anyway are not going to mind, … but some of these homeowners with these decorative headwalls … we need to be upfront with them and say this is what we’re looking at putting back in place of what you have here now just from a size and capacity standpoint,” Quick said.