A partial Washington County Board of Supervisors replaced the current county engineer with the former county engineer Monday morning.
While most of Greenville and Washington County’s emergency responders and workers were cleaning up after the Sunday night storm, with downed trees everywhere, the Washington County Board of Supervisors quietly voted to remove Lorenzo Anderson, and Integrated Management Services (IMS) as the County Engineer, and Engineering firm and replaced them with Hooker Engineering.
Because of the absence of District Two Supervisor Tommy L. Benson, who has been recovering after a stroke, and District Four Supervisor Mala Brooks, who was on her way to the Democratic National Convention, the vote was 2-1 in favor of the motion.
District One Supervisor and Vice-President of the Board Lee Gordon, and District Three Supervisor and President of the Board Carl McGee voted in favor of removing Anderson and IMS, and District Five Supervisor Jerry Redmond voted against it.
Several motions in the past failed on 3-2 votes with Benson, Brooks, and Redmond voting to retain IMS.
Brooks planned to join the meeting through a Zoom call but ran into problems because there was no internet at the Courthouse Monday morning because of Sunday night’s storm.
McGee said the concern about non-performance with the County Engineer as well as the Engineering Service, caused them to vote today to remove Anderson as the Washington County Engineer effectively immediately and to serve notice to IMS Engineering Service of the intent to terminate their contract.
Anderson, who works for the Jackson Engineering firm IMS has been under scrutiny since Harry Lee James, the State Aid Engineer, and Jay Richardson, the Central District Engineer, came to a board meeting back in June to explain why Washington County experienced the funding loss.
“The taxpayers of Washington County just lost over a $1 million because of the non-performance of Anderson and IMS,” McGee said. “I don't know where in the world, not just in America, you could lose over $1 million and expect to continue to be employed.”
Gordon said it’s no secret that McGee and himself have been unhappy with the performance of IMS in Washington County, and they have tried to replace the engineer several times in the past and go back to Hooker Engineering.
Gordon said In the four years of his and McGee’s first term on the board (two terms in the past), he thought Hooker had put in more than 20 new bridges, but IMS has only put in two new bridges, and one of those isn’t open yet.
“So, Carl added it to the agenda today, and we moved on it,” Gordon said. “We’re glad to have Hooker back, and hopefully we can get back to building some bridges with state aid funds.”
Anderson could not be reached for comment.
