County officials are looking for a new ambulance provider and have called a special meeting to discuss and approve a request for proposals, RFP, to be published stating their intentions. The called meeting will be held Thursday morning at 8 a.m.
This comes on the heels of notice being given to the county that AMR had intended to reduce the existing service from three to two ambulances in January, according to Supervisor Brian Kennedy.
At a recent meeting Kennedy suggested the board entertain offers to increase the number of ambulances to four rather than the existing three. The board agreed on a three to two vote.
At the board meeting, Jeff Layton, AMR employee and Simpson County resident, said Kennedy’s recomendation of getting a different quote caused AMR to give the county a 90-day notice of ceasing to offer service to Simpson County. Effective July 1 AMR will not offer service to Simpson County. Kennedy said that AMR was not interested in bidding four ambulances to service Simpson County stating, “It does not meet our, AMR’s, business model.”
The county had received a request from the City of Magee to cover half the cost of rip wrap in dealing with a culvert that was washed out at the end of 11 th Avenue. The county agreed. Now the city has come back and asked the county to make the repair and bill the city for half of the cost. This left the county in a bit of a quandry in that they agreed to pay part of the cost of the rip wrap and were now being asked to do the project and bill the city. Board members commented that the county had a lot of work that needed to be done and this would have to go to the bottom of the list. The board made the decision to table the request.
A glitch also came up when supervisors were informed there would be limited mileage that could be on the dump trucks they had planned on leasing and operating for a year before turning them back for new vehicles. The trucks were limited to 15,000 miles and the current trucks are averaging 25,000 miles a year. The extra mileage was estimated to cost between $1.25 to $1.50 mile. The idea was to get the vehicles and use them before maintenance issues started. The board agreed to readvertise for one and two year leases with a higher mileage option.
The board agreed in principal to using McGuffee Drugs to provide medical perscriptions because of the cost associated the current provider. In the figures the county used it appears as though the medical costs can be reduced by over 50 percent.
The board approved using Trustmark as the low bidder on a lease of computer equipment in the amount of $44,940. Trustmark also received the low bid on two Case backhoe loaders in the amount of $252,024.
The board approved the Town of Braxton moving of their polling place from the old Masonic Building to the new community center.
The board approved a renewal of insurance through the Mississippi Association of Supervisors Insrance Trust in the amount of $174,948.
The board approved the purchase of a 60 inch culvret for $8,300 for Coats Road. They also approved additional plastic culvrets in the amount of $6,003.
The next meeting of the board is a called meeting on March 19 at 8 a.m. April 6 will be the next regular meeting of the board.
