"Smokin' Hawgs BBQ" Owner Asks for Reimbursement Due to S Main St Construction

The Commissioners Meeting held on September 2 had two main points of interest. The first being the previously discussed issue regarding the elimination of the fairgrounds groundskeeper position held by Randy Lee, and the second revolving around how the road construction on S Main St has impacted businesses. Specifically, the placement of barriers and construction stoplights in front of “Smokin’ Hawgs BBQ” located at 406 S Main St.

Darrell McGuffrey, owner of “Smokin’ Hawgs BBQ,” took the stand following Lucy Brenton’s remarks about Randy Lee.

Darrell McGuffey, Smokin' Hawgs BBQ

“My name is Darrell McGuffey. I’m a resident here in Washington County, business owner, and pretty much a lifetime resident of Indiana. The reason why I’m coming here today is to ask for some kind of compensation or reimbursement for all of the road work that has been going on down in front of Smokin’ Hawgs restaurant. I’ve lost a tremendous amount of business over this, and I want to know what I will be reimbursed for the loss of business,” said McGuffey.

“It’s a hard answer,” began Commissioner Phillip Marshall. “I talked to Floyd County and different cities, and April [Geltmaker] suggested this morning, one of the things is basically – I talked to the mayor, and we all drove through the mess… It’s a touchy situation. I’ve been in business myself, and it’s sometimes a struggle, and you don’t need no help like that. But then on the other hand, I can understand when counties are limited to the resources we’ve got. You can’t start with one [business reimbursement]. If we did, we’d be going all the way down the line. I’m not trying to be hard, but have you checked with your insurance company to see?”

“I shouldn’t have  to turn it into the insurance company because, you know, I understand work had to be done, but at the same time, everybody that was working didn’t have to use my parking lot to park all of their vehicles in to where nobody could get in,” replied McGuffey.

“I didn’t know they were doing that,” said Marshall.

“Yes,” said McGuffey. “The stoplight that they put in, they placed it right in the middle of the entrance, right off Main St where nobody could get in. I had said something from day one about moving it toward the corner so that it would open that opening up. People would not turn in there because the tongue of that stoplight was sticking out six feet. Either they were afraid to turn in there, or they were afraid they were going to hit it. Like I said, I said something from day one about them moving that down so it would open the entrance up. All I got was, ‘you need to talk to this person.’ You’re  the one that’s in charge of this project. You’re  the one I need to talk to.

“Finally,” he continued. “On the very last day when they got done doing the striping on the roadway and paving the curbs, one of the gentlemen went over and pulled the tongue out of the cotton-picking stoplight to open that entrance up. Now, why couldn’t they have done that prior to that?”

Marshall then called Rick Voyles to the stand to elaborate.

“First of all, I’d like to apologize to Mr. McGuffey,” began Voyles. “I know none of us like detours or road construction and aggravations including myself. It’s just sort of a necessary evil if you will.”

Rick Voyles, Highway Department

Voyles then handed out a map of S Main St to the commissioners.

“You’ll see there, that’s a map of Main St,” continued Voyles. “The X’s mark the barricades and the stoplights that were installed, and you’ll see the arrows, those are the second entrances to all businesses. The original plan for the bridge project was to barricade the road and close it, and have a detour on High St and come out of the old Cheese Factory down there. We thought that would have too negative of an impact on businesses. By having stoplights, you still have flow of traffic. Anybody that wanted to get in there still could, and in Mr. McGuffey’s case, he still had the same amount of entrance as the entire shopping center across from KFC. One entrance was closed, but one entrance was left open at both locations. It was a cost of about $5,000 to install those stoplights as opposed to just going with barricades. So as far as that, I feel like the county kind of went above and beyond what we would’ve had to do to minimize the damage.”

“Were people parking in his parking lot?” asked Marshall.

“If they were, they would have been the contractors,” replied Voyles. “You might check with Paul [Eckart] because I don’t know where they parked their vehicles. But it was a hired out job, so it would be the contractor’s vehicles, not the county’s. There’s no reason we should have ever had the second entrance blocked. I’m not saying it didn’t get blocked by someone, but it shouldn’t have had anything to do with our project.”

“They were parking halfway up the hill blocking where nobody could get in,” said McGuffey. “I had to park in front of my van in order to even be able to get in, and then I had to come out and say something to the gentlemen to move their vehicles so people could get in if they wanted to.”

“That would’ve been the contractors,” said Voyles.

“I’m not pointing fingers or naming names on who it was or nothing. I’m just saying that it was blocked off where nobody could get in,” McGuffey remarked. “This has put a tremendous financial burden on me right now, and I’ll be doing good if I can pull this out and keep going.”

“As far as the [front] entrance there being blocked off, we couldn’t have traffic coming in behind the stoplight into the work zone due to safety concerns,” commented Voyles. “Like I said, had we closed the road, the barricades would have probably been in place 30 feet from each end of the bridge to allow room to work and get your trucks in there… So that would have completely shut that down, and the traffic coming west on Old 60 would have had the entrance blocked probably all day long every day as they detoured. So, we thought this would by far minimize the damage.”

“Let me do some more research on this,” said Marshall.

Commissioner Phillip Marshall

“When do you want me to check back with you?” asked McGuffey.

“Let me talk to some different people, okay? Thank you.” replied Marshall.

While the commissioners acknowledged the challenges raised by “Smokin’ Hawgs BBQ” owner Darrell McGuffey, they emphasized the limitations of county resources and the complexities of contractor work. The matter remains unresolved, with Commissioner Marshall pledging to further investigate the situation.