News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Fentress County expects to begin the bidding process for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance updates this spring.
County Executive Jimmy Johnson said the county remains in the planning period for the major updates.
“The engineer won’t have all of his work done until probably April so it will be after April,” Johnson said. “We will have some figures we can go off of and start on.”
Fentress County plans to use inmate labor for updating the county buildings.
Johnson said inmates will primarily work on the smaller updates, like building ramps.
“We moved $20,000 into a line item to start this work with in-kind work from maybe inmate labor or trustee labor, however you call it, ” Johnson said. “Because the sheriff works real good to get this up here and he has some folks that can actually do that type of work.”
Fentress will hand off the larger aspects of the update to paid contractors.
“We will be letting other people outside do it. And when it comes down, we will be taking bids,” Johnson said. “It’s a big job, a major job. We will have bids on all that. ”
The ADA compliance updates will take place on all county buildings. Johnson said these updates began nationwide since the 1990s.
“The federal government says, ‘You will get this taken care of,'” Johnson said. “Or we will be withholding some type of funds that you may be needing.”
The pre-estimate for the county updates equals approximately $210,000.
