Members of the Valley Grande City Council met Monday evening to discuss a variety of topics, one topic of much concern being a recent “driveway scam,” targeting many residents within the community.

Valley Grande Mayor Tom Lee said he received complaints from many residents who were approached by what appeared to be construction workers, to asphalt their driveways. Residents would have to first sign a contract before other workers would later come back to complete the job. Upon completion, Lee said, residents would have to pay thousands of dollars.

Lee said this type of scam has occurred in the area before.

“Our driveway scam is back,” Lee said. “(Recently) One of my neighbors had a guy stop by who had a little bit of asphalt left off a job. Rather than haul it off … they wanted to know if they were to dump it out in his dirt drive and roll it out nice, would that be okay … he said sure.

“Half of his driveway — two or three hundred feet or more, paved asphalt and a beautiful job,” Lee said. “Problem is, it wasn’t where they told him they wanted it, and it was a couple hundred times more than they indicated they had to do it with … so the price was $7,000.”

Lee said a similar situation happened two years ago when a resident called Lee after seeing some suspicious activity in her residential area. Lee later investigated it with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department.

“We went over there and sure enough there were some guys that were taking used concrete from a demolition job, having it crushed and reconstituted,” Lee said. “Dry cement was added to it … pouring an inch and an inch-and-a-half thick into driveways, called it concrete driveways.”

A cross between crushed rocks, gravel and concrete, Lee said, workers would spread the mixture up and down residential driveways for a fee. The equipment used, Lee said, was also registered in other states.

“Basically what they were in violation of was our business license ordinatnce, they didn’t have a license to operate here,” Lee said. “The tractor was registered in Texas, the other piece of equipment was registered in North Carolina (and) the guy had a Florida, Baldwin County license tag. Two days after that, the attorney general put out a statewide bulletin … that there was a statewide driveway fraud (and) to be on the lookout.”

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