Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome,
and it's time now for our community connection right here on K one,
the one you trust and we have with this yere Commissioner Mike Bouvier And Commissioner,
how are you doing today? Very good? Thank you? How are
you? I'm doing great? I understand this is your your last year in
office. You know it's been a pretty good run, hasn't it for you?
Yeah? Twelve years and I haven't had a day that I didn't want
to go to work. Well, that's awesome. Now. One of the
things that a lot of people know you for is that you restored the the
the graveyards and cemeteries in the area. Some of them had been neglected for
a good long time, and you really kind of put that on your shoulders
and said, this is gonna be a little bit of a mission here,
and you've got these things cleaned up and looking good. Yes, thank you.
It was a mission of love. I think, you know, I
just felt that, you know, we need to respect our are passed and
the people who have passed on before us and get it cleaned up and so
that other people can come and view their loved ones and their stones and look
at the history behind a lot of the graves and everything. It's quite interesting
too. You know, Commissioner people often wondered, you know, a commissioner
has a great deal of authority for the districts in which the serb and represent
and a lot of it it's the roadways. Let's face it. Everybody has
something to say about the road. I got a great road, or hey,
what can we do about this road? It's usually the road they live
on. I figured that one out tell us about the responsibility a commissioner might
have for the roadways in their district. Well, about safety. I think
most of it is that, you know, I tried to ride the roads
quite a bit to see. We got about one hundred and fifty five miles
of road each district. And I like to try to write roads and see
it myself. When I see something that's uh, you know, that can
cause a problem sooner than later, we like to try to take care of
it. And you know, we only have a certain amount of money,
so we're kind of limited to what we can do. And I always give
praise to the Cherokee tribes and the Delawares that have helped us out in the
past to give us money to refab these roads, rehab the roads, and
it's they've helped us out a lot. Always for them, we wouldn't be
nearly as have nearly as good as roads that we do. As far as
Blacktop goes, I think we've done a pretty good job here, and I
think our commissioners have been taken actually staying on top of it best as they
could with the limited resources that we have. That's correct. We look for
grants and like I said, we talked with the Cherokees and try to get
money where we can to help with you know, these roads to surface resurface.
The be nice to have all the roads blacked up, but that's probably
never going to happen, not in my time, well not probably not till
maybe the end of the century for that matter. And that's just that's just
hard to It becomes more and more expensive each year too, even the chip
and seal, it takes a lot of time, it does. It's it's
incredible the cost of not only the material, but buying equipment to do the
chip seal and stuff like that. You know, some of our equipment is
just real old. Because you're talking some of the equipment could cost up to
six hundred thousand dollars and you know you got to put that on a bank
account and pay so much money month or whatever. It's just crazy. And
that's just for one piece, you know, it's just ridiculous. Yeah.
Boy, Now you were telling me before we went on the air that you've
got a couple of road projects that are underway and you're working on. Can
you bring us up to date on the ones that are happening between rainstorms?
Right later this spring when the temperature warms up, we will be rehabbing the
nineteen hundred which is east of Bison Road, and we'll take care of that,
and then we get eleven hundred road that will be blacktopping then out there
on in Dewey. But you know, that's basically about all we got ready
to go. This year. We have I say, I can only spend
half the money that I'm allotted as a commissioner for whatever, so I have
to leave it during a year where we have well we got to the thought
election years. Election year, we have to only spend you know, half
of the money. Wow, So it's really limited, yeah, it is.
So we'll just do our regular maintenance and then fixing potholes and chip sealing
and you know, trying to get stuff, taking care of them, watching
out for emergencies and so forth like that. Speaking of emergencies, this is
something that the commissioners were looking at several months ago. And I'm just recalling
the story. You're looking at getting some redundancies to make sure that the function
of county government would continue should we have an ice storm, quake, tornado
or things like that. How's that coming along. Yeah, we we have
to keep on top of all of that because you know, we would just
be able to stand still if that, if we didn't take care of that,
that's the worst place to be during an emergency. Still, yeah,
we've got it laid up pretty well. Well, that's good. I mean,
it's good to know that we have backup systems in place, nothing's going
to be lost and we can continue in the throes of something horrible, God
forbid it ever happened. Right, We've got a couple of new buildings going
up on Bison Road for emergency management, so that's going to be a nice
thing when they're all finished. So we'll have a command center there and Terry
Cox does a super job at taking care of all that. And we've got
one building up and I'm not sure exactly how far there along probably sheet rocking
and pain pain now. But then when that's done, phase two will be
there to put up another building and you'll have a landing pad for a helicopter
and all all that kind of stuff. Got nice. That's great. You
know, we're thankful for the space that we had out there by the DSR
building, but it was a little compact. There's get a little tiny.
Yeah, that's kind of back there, stuck in a limited of what equipment
you can have. And ye, you know, we've got big trailers,
you know, and there's for and we can use them buildings. Therefore the
new buildings for forever. In a COVID situation again where people can come up
and drive through the building, you can get their COVID tests and whatever.
However they're going to do it, and it's probably going to be called something
else. Yeah the next one, give it a hundred years. They usually
go one hundred year cycles. Yeah, something different, But that is that
is really good. You know, a lot of forward thinking by the commissioners
that to help out with the Washington County Emergency management, getting them what they
really need to take care of us. I should should danger call What would
you say is the highlight of your career as a as a commission? What
would you say that your your shiniest moment, You're you're proudest thing that you've
done to help out the community. Oh boy, Well, as you know,
I tried to get god get it off the ground for a new fairgrounds
and for whatever reason it didn't go through. Kind of disappointed into that,
but that would have been a great highlight for my career. But probably the
cemeteries because I hear so many people say we've done a good job on the
cemeteries and also taking care of the roads. I we hardly get any calls
on District twos roads. You know, we may not do it like they
want us to all the time. You know, sometimes I have to tell
them, well, we don't have the money, and they'll say, well,
how come you did that road. Well, when you spend three hundred
and fifty thousand dollars in that road, you only got six hundred thousand less
for the year, or three hundred thousand dollars left for the year. You
can't do another road. Yeah, you just can't you have to do We
have to put out do the roads that take care of the most wow,
and that would be you know, we put down things that tell how many
of what the traffic is across these roads, and we count the traffic and
we'll work by that and by how much traffic that is, and then we'll
do that road first. See, folks, there's always a little bit of
math and everything. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, whether it's counting
cars or counting dollars. So we've got to do the math. You've got
to make sure that the dollars make sense. Yeah, Oh my goodness.
So what's a what's what's you going to do after post commissioner work. Well,
I still have a plumbing company. I might just go around and you
know, make sure the jobs are being done, and probably spend a little
time traveling a little bit. But you know, I like to keep involved
with rotary and maybe a little bit with the high school students. With rotary,
I do a lot of that. It's called interact at the high school,
and so I really enjoy the kids and I'll probably try to stay active
doing that kind of stuff. I want to let folks, you know,
at home that just because you retire from a position doesn't mean you've retired from
everything. It just means we're turning the page and getting into a brand new
chapter, and usually an exciting one too. Right since time, you know,
I've been doing it twelve years and I'm old enough that needs do young
blood. You know, we have Mitch Chandle, which is a younger man,
and that man is just incredible. I mean, got a lot of
energy, doesn't he He's got a lot of energy, and he's been here
for a long time, you know, through the for county government, and
he just knows the ins and outs and just does He's phenomenal. And get
another couple more like him, and there wouldn't be another county in the state.
It could be equal us here. Wow, sounds good. Well,
I want to wish you the best when retirement comes. But in the meantime
I know you're going to be working hard, because that's the only thing you
really know how to do is work hard. You got one speed, don't
you get her done? That's a charge charge Bunker Hill Commissioner movie. Thank
you for spending time with us, Yes, thank you, folks. You've
been watching and listening to our community connection