News from County Commissioner District 2
By Monty Grider
District 2 County Commissioner
The McIntosh County 2024 – 2025 Estimate of Needs and Financial Statement of the Fiscal year 2023 – 2024 has been certified and approved. The report will be published in the newspaper in the Oct. 10 paper.
We were able to give a small raise across the board to all employees but with the pay increase, we are still well below the profession’s standard wage. McIntosh County will continue to struggle with retaining our valued employees due to other employers plucking them from us with higher wages.
On Oct. 7, 2024, two representatives from the McIntosh County Sheriff’s Department left for Florida in anticipation of Hurricane Milton reaching land. The county representatives are
S 4114 (AKA Bar Harbor) will be closed from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Oct. 17 to replace a 42-inch by 60-foot tinhorn. Unfortunately, there isn’t an alternate route to Patriot Pointe or Bar Harbor.
On another road project, while preparing S 4218 and S 4214 for paving we discovered another tinhorn with the bottom rusting out. Therefore, S 4214 will be closed on Thursday, October 17 from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. to replace a 42-inch by 60-foot tinhorn. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to reroute the traffic around the construction site. The area where the horn is replaced will need several days to settle before the construction of the five-inch turnkey paving project begins. This project is being funded and managed by Waterfront Group based out of North Carolina. Waterfront Group is the company that developed Patriot Pointe, a 257-lot gated community on the north side of Lake Eufaula.
Patriot Pointe generated approximately $247,000 of property tax of which 85% will go to the public schools and Vo Techs. The remaining 15% will be distributed between the libraries, the Health Department, and the county general government. The amount of property taxes will increase as the number of homes are constructed.
Unfortunately, none of the property taxes go toward roads, so this generous donation is greatly appreciated. The total cost of the +/- 1.8-mile project will be around $800,000. As mentioned before this project will be managed and paid in full by Waterfront Group. A Big THANK YOU to them!
I attended a round table meeting on Oct. 4, at the Sequoyah County fairgrounds to discuss how we can better spend money when it comes to roads. There were ten counties represented by one of their County Commissioners, a County Engineer, State Senator Tom Woods (Westville), Representative Jim Olsen (Sequoyah County), Oklahoma Department of Transportation Executive Director Tim Gatz, ODOT District 2 Engineering Director, ODOT Local Government, and the Cherokee Nation for a total of twenty-nine folks attending.
There were several topics discussed during the meeting, including Oklahoma’s savings account, road standards, band-aids vs total reconstruction, federal dollars, and the CIRB program. The conversations were very constructive, nothing tangible came out of the meeting except for getting the dialogue going and getting support from members of the State House, State Senate, and ODOT.
Everyone agreed that inflation is the largest problem with the ability to maintain our roads much less construct new ones, and even repair what needs to be repaired. You can look at our surrounding states and see the roads seem to be in a better state of repair than ours. In part, their road conditions can be attributed to a portion of their property tax being used for roads. But, take a look at the difference in how much surrounding states pay in property taxes vs Oklahoma. So, everyone must consider how much our taxes might/would increase if a portion of property tax would be used on roads here in Oklahoma.
