LaGRANGE – As Thursday’s county commission work session drew to a close, the group discussion turned to the Georgia Department of Transportation’s progress repaving Ga. 14/U.S. 29, more commonly known as West Point Road, which is expected to end sometime in the next month.

“There has been a lot of progress all the way up (the road) down there,” said County Engineer James Emery. “Coming through the road last Thursday afternoon, there were three separate crews with three separate one-lane flagging areas between here and West Point.”

According to Emery, lines and reflectors should be installed on the roads soon, but that part will also be up to GDOT because it is a state road. The county has no control over the direction of the project.

“That is the state paving – it is not us,” clarified County Commission Chairman Patrick Crews, who has received complaints about the traffic delays the project caused.

While the county does not have control over the actual paving process, they have been allowed to help the project along by providing the flaggers to direct traffic.

“We have constant training going on for flagging because most of the flaggers that we use are the prison inmates, and with the turnover that we have with prison inmates, that training has to happen very often,” said Emery. “We don’t have them flagging unless they’re trained for flagging. That is a certification that they’re required to go through before we put them out there.”

The training comes at no cost to the county and is done locally.

The Troup County Board of Commissioners plans to meet on Tuesday at 9 a.m. at 100 Ridley Ave.

Reach Alicia B. Hill at alicia.hill@lagrangenews.com or at 706-884-7311, Ext. 2154.