Mitchell County Commissioners
Monday, January 11, 2016
By Terry Bailey
The Mitchell County Commissioners met and conferred with a full agenda before them on Monday, January 11. All three Commissioners and the County Clerk were present for their first business meeting of 2016.
First on the agenda was Carol Torkelson from the North Central Regional Planning Commission. She was present to report on the initial response to the Handicap Accessible Home Renovation grant applications. The money in the grant was of such an amount to allow for about 16 renovation projects in the Dickenson, Ottawa, Saline, and Mitchell County area. At this point Torkelson has received only four grant applications. Three of these are from Saline County and one is from the Solomon area.
“The low number of applicants is quite surprising,” said Torkelson. “We were anticipating a larger number. We did have two applications that did not qualify because they did not meet the income guidelines.”
A family of one must have an income of less than $29,000 and a family of two’s income cannot exceed $34,000 to qualify for the project. Torkelson thought a potential sticking point may have been the fact that the homeowner must live in the home to qualify. This criteria would eliminate any rental properties.
It is not too late to obtain an application form, fill it out and turn in it to the North Central Kansas Regional Planning Commission office. With enough money to fund 17 projects in the four-county area of the grant and only 4 applications turned in, Torkelson would like to spread the word that money is available to fund these Handicapped Accessible Renovation Projects. Any persons interested in obtaining more information can contact Carol Torkelson at the NCK Regional Planning Commission at 785-738-2218.
Kelly Hawk and Eric Hamel from the Mitchell County EMS were next on the agenda. They gave the EMS report for the month of December and the totals for all 12 months of 2015. The ambulance made 59 runs for the month of December with all the runs being within Mitchell County. This gave the EMS a total of 642 runs for the year of 2015. This compares to a total of 527 runs for all of 2014.
The busiest time of the day for the EMS was from three to six p.m. Thursday was the busiest day of the week. The age group of 85 years old and older was the largest age category with 24% of the calls and the category of 75 to 84 years of age a close second with 22% of the runs.
In December the EMS billed a total of $51,576 for services rendered. Total collections for the month were $21.190.
Additionally, an EMT class will be starting this week. The class will be taught by Richard English.
Larry Emerson was on hand to discuss the activities in the Public Works department. The Road crews are attempting to spread rock and gravel on roads that need it. The rain has been problematic and causing considerable down time in working up the roads.
Emerson asked permission from the Commissioners to buy rock from Curtis May for the roads in that area of the county. They have gotten rock from May before. Emerson reported that May would have Monty Wessling grind the rock into the necessary size and stockpile it so the county trucks could haul it away. May would like to negotiate a contract setting the price at $3.50 per yard with him providing the rock and having it ground and stockpiled for that amount. Emerson said, “We can’t beat that price and it is in line with what it costs in other places.” The Commissions gave their approval for Emerson to proceed with signing a contract.
Before Emerson left, Rick Horn, Emergency Management Director stepped in to discuss storage facilities for two special Emergency Response Trailers. Currently Jewell County houses the Incident Management Team trailer. This serves as a central command post when critical incidents occur. Jewell County is turning over this command post trailer because it no longer has an Incident Management Response Team.
The other trailer is a Bio-Hazard Response Trailer containing equipment and materials to be used when responding to Bio-Hazard crisis situations.
The group discussed several possible buildings and locations to store these trailer in a secure fashion. Tom Claussen suggested that a Rural Fire District garage was empty in Scottsville and would meet all the requirements of an appropriate place for the trailers. The Commissioners and Horn will take action to secure the Scottsville location in which to store the trailers.
The Commissioners voted to approve a Neighborhood Revitalization Grant application from William Hanson for a machine shed with the dimensions of 54’x80’x16’ in the amount of $45,000.
A request from the North Central Kansas Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program for Mitchell County’s regular yearly contribution of $12,000 to the program was approved.
Commissioner Tom Claussen was reappointed for another three year term as the County’s representative to the North Central Kansas Regional Planning Commission.
Dave White, from Cunningham’s, was up next to make a presentation to the Commissioners regarding an upgraded telephone and internet system for the Mitchell County Courthouse. The current system is approaching it twentieth birthday. In technology years it is very old and well behind the state-of-the-art systems used by other businesses and government entities in our area.
After a flurry of bandwidths, megabytes, coaxials, PRIs and other important technological considerations, the Commissioners voted for the installation of a new phone and fiber optic network system. The cost for the new system is $11,000 for the setup costs and a monthly fee of $1,717. The end result is that the County’s offices in the Courthouse will have an up to date and greatly enhanced system with much great capabilities at virtually the same fees currently paid for the old system. Money to pay for the upgrade and modernization is in the General Fund.
The filing date for those wanting to run for City Council seats in Beloit and Cawker City is January 20th at noon on that day.
The final action of the day was the yearly reorganization of the Commission. The current Vice-Chairperson if the Commission, Mike Cooper, was elected to be the new Chairperson of the Council. Jim Marshall was elected as the new vice-chairperson.