County engineer Les Dungan updated the Board of Supervisors about various road work and Chancery Clerk Melinda Bowman updated the Board on her office’s financials during Monday’s Pearl River County Board of Supervisors meeting.

Patching and leveling on FZ Goss Road in Picayune is supposed to begin later this week, Dungan said.

Sones Chapel Road is expected to be open to local traffic by the end of the week, Dungan said. The road still lacks guardrails leading up to the bridge, but work is expected to be complete soon, he said.

The gravel base on Oscar Smith Road in Carriere is complete and the road is open to local traffic, said Dungan. The road will remain open except for the forthcoming paving project, which will not begin for at least two weeks, Dungan said.

The county received an 80/20 federal grant for the bridge on Walkiah Bluff Road, Dungan said. That means 80 percent of the funding for the bridge will come from the federal government, while the other 20 percent will be provided by the state, he said.

Chancery Clerk Melinda Bowman also submitted an update on her office’s financials. She notified the Board that the office has turned over excess fees from 2018 to the county’s general fund totaling $270,908.

In 2020, the fee for a record deed will increase from $12 to $25, Bowman said, because of a new state law. The fee increase is designed to help smaller counties pay their clerk office employees, but in Pearl River County the increase will lead to an excess that goes into the county’s general fund, she said.

The next Board meeting will be May 22 at 9 a.m. in the courthouse on Julia Street.