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The Butler County Commission recognized retiree Hugh Dean Thompson for his 65 years of service to Butler County during last months meeting.

Thompson started working with the Road Department in 1956 as a truck driver with a starting pay rate of 85 cents an hour. Thompson has seen the county change quite a bit since he first started with the road department.

“He was here during all the times that the budget was about a quarter of a million dollars. Now it’s over 15 million dollars,” said Commissioner Jesse McWilliams III. “When you talk about some of the roads around here, he was here when they were being built.”

When Thompson started, the only paved roads in the county were U.S. Highway 31, Alabama Highways 10 and 106 West, and a few county roads. Thompson has seen 550 miles of roads in Butler County paved and re-paved.

Thompson worked under six engineers throughout his time with the road department and worked on many projects. Some of the projects included:

• Operated the first hydraulic dossier purchased by the county
• Patched bridges
• Worked with the grinding crew to help build roads

Thompson received a plaque to commemorate all he did for Butler County.

In other business, the commission:

• Approve a resolution to transfer $2,212.26 in funds for the tax year of 2018 from excess land sales to the general fund
• Approved a 36 month Xerox copier lease for the Probate and Commission offices
• Approved the sales agreement for the new Express voting machines
• Pledged $30,000 to the Butler County Board of Education to aid Superintendent Joe Eiland in building the new playground at Georgiana school
• Approved a request of authorization from County Engineer Dennis McCall to purchase a Takeuchi TB240 excavator from Callan Equipment utilizing the ACCA joint bid program for $56,153.49