Supervisors Approve Million Dollar Project
WATER VALLEY – Supervisors approved a $991,297.47 bid Monday to stripe and add raised reflectors on 74 miles of state-aid roads across Yalobusha County. The contract went to Riverside Traffic and came in well below the engineer’s estimate of $1,388,000.
Monday’s vote taps a large share of the county’s $1.422 million State Aid allocation that comes once every four years and coincides with supervisors’ four-year terms. This allocation covers the 2024–2027 term and is distributed to counties by the Mississippi Department of Transportation through the Mississippi Office of State Aid Road Construction.
Supervisors first set this plan in motion last November, opting to use the four-year allocation for striping after a recommendation from county engineer Karl Grubb. He explained the $1.422 million could either seal (resurface) about 10 miles on a single state-aid route or stripe almost all of the county’s state-aid roads, except County Roads 212 and 211, which were recently improved.
“Striping will change the appearance of these state-aid roads,” Grubb told supervisors in 2024. “We’ll install raised, two-way reflective markers so you can see at night. These roads are not safe to travel at night.” He had just inspected the system and reported most routes were in decent condition considering how long it has been since many were resealed.
“Some of these roads have not been sealed since 2001,” Grubb also said.
One exception is County Road 436, or old Hwy. 7 which runs from Coffeeville to Water Valley that county officials noted was in bad shape.
State-aid funds can be used for both bridge and road work on designated state-aid routes, a network of collector and distributor roads that connect to the state highway system or other major county roads.
In the 2020–2023 term, supervisors allocated just over $1 million in state-aid funding to resurface seven miles on County Road 211, the route connecting Coffeeville and Oakland.
State-aid money is separate from other road and bridge funding. In 2025, the county has received $1,335,060.06 in use tax receipts (collected by the Mississippi Department of Revenue on online purchases from out-of-state vendors) for road and bridge work. The county also levies annual road and bridge taxes and is expected to collect $1,124,355 in the fiscal year that started Oct. 1.
