BELLE — Mayor James (Pudd) Mitchell said on Friday that he was able to make contact with a local crew recovering a parking lot and obtained 18 tons of asphalt for free.

“It got give to us,” Mitchell said. “But I don’t do nothin’. We put some over on Barcliff, we went over by Mace’s and put some, up here on Mitchem (Avenue). We’ve got some that’s gonna go to waste, but they would have took it back to Rolla and dumped it, it would have been wasted. I talked to the owner of the company and said, ‘hey, if you’ve got extra asphalt, we’ll help you get rid of it. We had two places dug out on Barcliff and one on Rosenbiar. We filled them, tamped them all down, and now they’re headed for Maces.”

Mitchell said he realizes that the city was criticized in the past when a public works employee was paid to fill patches in a parking lot, but the product was free. He added that the company delivers the asphalt where it’s needed and doesn’t charge the city for diesel.

“He even grabs the shovel, helps us shovel it out and helps us level it,” Mitchell said. “He did that up here on (Highway) 89 and on Linn Avenue, too. He’s probably given us 50 to 100 ton of free asphalt. Hopefully it’s a busy year.”