“We are in the best financial shape we have been in the seven years I have been there, so I feel pretty good about it. We’re not rich or anything like that. But we’re better than we have been. I feel pretty good about out budget. It’s nice to have good equipment for our guys to use.”
“Caterpillar and John Deere have both come by and talked to us about buying two new road graders. We’ll trade in our old graders.”
“The new graders will have scarifiers (rippers) ahead of the blade so the operator can see what he is doing and will be able to cut out potholes. Then we can blade in gravel.”
“That’s the only way to get rid of a pothole. Otherwise they come back pretty quickly, after the next rain.”
“They are going to bring out a demo grader for us to try.”
“We’re also going to make a lease/purchase deal on a dump truck. We will get that before the graders. We’ve already made the deal on the dump truck.”
“They are going to give us $45,000 for our old truck in trade and they don’t care if we can sell it for more money. That’s just kind of a safety net. If we can do better another way, it won’t bother them at all.”
“We bought a new John Deere tractor with a side mount mower on a hydraulic arm for mowing roadsides and back slopes. I think we got that in April.”
“We actually still have the old tractor and the old mower. They are not in real good shape but we have been running them both this fall.”
“On Monday I told DJ I wanted to start running the motor grader 10-hour days, including Saturdays, starting immediately while the weather holds. I heard that next week will be wet. They have accomplished a lot this week.”
“We still have a lot of roads to be bladed but we got down the road a lot further than if we hadn’t done that.”
Q. With these scarifiers will you just be able to blade the spots or will you have to add gravel?
“We’ll probably have to come back in with some gravel.”
Q. How’s the sheriff to work with?
“Real good. Some commissions have trouble with their sheriff. We don’t. He saves money every way he can. He’s good to work with us.”
Q. How’s the rest of the courthouse office holders?
“Really good. We’re a team.”
“Everything at the courthouse is going pretty good.”
The jail turned a profit of $107,000 in 2019.
The county finished a 40 ft. bridge with in house labor on 480 Road and the state just certified it for loads up to 80,000 lbs.
The county plans to build a 125 ft. bridge at Bear Creek on 1620 Road with in house labor.
County Clerk Heather York told the Sun, “As 2020 is a leap year the County Commission increased salary estimates to support 27 pay periods instead of the standard 26 bi-weekly pay periods. This increase in the salary line items will not be maintained beyond the leap year. 2021 will return to the regular schedule of 26 bi-weekly pay periods. The County Commission did budget an increase of $.25 p/hour per person on most full time positions for the distribution to be assigned as the elected official chooses to offer to each employee. Due to minimum wage increasing again by $.85 from 2019 making the new 2020 state minimum wage $9.45, the commission added additional increases to LEST to bring several staff members up to just above minimum wage and officers new starting wage to be $10 p/hour. The commission agreed to increase wages to the deputies which will decrease the amount the DSSSF grant will fund per officer so as not to abuse the intent of the grant funding.“
She said, The county commission allocated funds to repair and stripe the parking area around the perimeter of the courthouse, to purchase financial software for the county clerk and treasurers offices, and to purchase a new repeater for the sheriff’s office.
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