Bus Garage/Highway Building Among Capital Projects For Putnam Next Year

Putnam County considering a potential $11 million in capital projects for next year’s budget.

County Mayor Randy Porter told the commissioner’s budget committee meeting last night, $2 million to replace the school bus garage and county highway building among the priorities.

“We know that we’ve got to build the building first down on Tennessee Avenue,” Porter said. “Once we get it built then we can sell the land out there. I’ve already been contacted by a person, and you never know what’ll happen in the next year or two, but they want half of it already. So I don’t think we’ll have any problem selling.”

Other big ticket items include $600,000 for new ambulance cardiac monitors, $450,000 to replace the roof of the Cookeville Community Center and $250,000 for new emergency department radios.

Porter said the cardiac monitors and emergency department radios were both approaching ten years of use, and needed replacing.

The proposed capital plan includes preliminary work on the new fairgrounds site on Tennessee Avenue as well.

Porter said it appears that some school capital projects, such as replacing Upperman High School’s roof, could be covered by ESSER funding.

“That’s going to lower our amount that we’ve got to take out of debt services by about $3 million,” Porter said. “So it would be really good. That would mean three more million we’ve got in debt services to either look at other capital projects, or future capital projects, or debt services, or whatever else we need to do.”

Porter said that after finishing the roofs at Upperman High School, the county won’t have major new roof projects for the next five years.

The County Commissioners agreed earlier this year to explore selling the Jefferson Avenue school bus garage. Sitting in a prize commercial zone adjacent to Wal Mart, the garage is also severely outdated and too small. Combining it with the highway department, which currently resides near the Cookeville Community Center, would allow for shared resources.

Porter said projects carried over from this year’s budget include some $600,000. These projects include the new Archives and Veterans Building, two fire station replacements, and work to expand the Sports Complex. Porter said work would potentially start in July, and ideally complete in October.

Porter said the capital projects schedule continued the work to try and stay ahead of the county’s growth.

“If you had not done all of these, we could be in dire straits trying to do everything now after the growth is already here,” Porter said. “We all knew this was coming some day, and I think we’ve done a really good job preparing for it.”