VIDALIA — A federal U.S. Department of Energy grant should help cool off the Concordia Parish courthouse and cut down on its bills, Police Jury President Melvin Ferrington said Tuesday.

The Concordia Parish Police Jury agreed to advertise for construction bids to modernize the air conditioning system at the courthouse at Monday’s jury meeting, Ferrington said.

A $120,000 grant from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program will pay for the new system.

The courthouse’s current air conditioning system still works but is outdated, Ferrington said.

“(The current system) is just old, all the stuff is obsolete,” Ferrington said.

“(A new system) will help with energy costs on the utility bill substantially,” he said.

The energy efficiency grant program represents an effort to deploy the cheapest, cleanest and most reliable energy technologies available, the USDE website says. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funded the grant.

The Adams County Board of Supervisors received a similar grant last year to update air conditioning units at the George W. Armstrong Library.

Also at Monday’s meeting:

4 The jury agreed at the meeting to apply for $100,000 from the state’s Local Government Assistant Program to put toward an upgrade of the courthouse phone system and build a truck maintenance unit to be located in the barn, Ferrington said.

“We receive these (grant funds) every year,” Ferrington said.

LGAP is managed by the Office of Community Development through Division of Administration and provides funding to local governments for a variety of needed infrastructure projects and longterm capital improvements in rural areas, according to an LGAP grant application.

4 The jury denied the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office request for additional funds to buy a radar unit, Ferrington said.

Ferrington said the jury has purchased radar for the sheriff’s office before. The jury turned down the sheriff’s request, he said, because a new radar unit was not included in the sheriff’s office current budget.

Ferrington said the jury would likely approve the sheriff’s request to purchase more radar for fiscal year 2011-2012.