Overton Co. Sees Decrease In Bids For Yearly Supplies And Work

The Overton County Budget Committee saw a decrease in the number of companies bidding for materials and maintenance.

Members opened multiple bids Tuesday for numerous items mainly pertaining to road work. Chairman Darwin Clark said the county received single bids for tires, road tiles and piping.

“We usually get more providers bidding on our products,” Clark said. “We usually bid our asphalt products out. We do our grader blades. We do all the highway striping. We also bid out the type of people that are doing the paving.”

Clark said bids for fuel supplies, piping and road tile came in higher than usual. Clark said the committee will have to make adjustments for next year’s budget to accommodate the increase.

“Some of the bid prices on oil has gone up some, and that’s because of gasoline I am sure,” Clark said. “The driveway tile almost doubled. We buy two types it is usally the plastic or the metal pipe. Metal pipe went up about 50 percent higher and the plastic is about 40 percent higher than last year.”

Clark and Highway Supervisor James Norrod will bring their bid recommendations to the budget committee on June 15th to approve. Then, the County Commission will review the prices and make a final vote on June 28th.

“We do this every year,” Clark said. “We’ve been doing it for the past 20 plus years. We are required to bid out all of our big ticket items like asphalt runs into the hundreds of dollars every year. We bid out our pipe and our road tile. It’s a two fold reason, because we want to get it cheaper and get the local folks as much as we can like in the Upper Cumberland region to keep the money in the economy.”