16 March 2010 Dearborn County Commissioners Meeting Notes

16 March 2010 Dearborn County Commissioners Meeting Notes

Present: Ralph Thompson, President, Tom Orschell, and Jeff Hughes
Also present: Mike Witte, Attorney. Auditor’s meeting duties covered by Cathy from Planning dept.

NOTE: Cary Pickens, Auditor, passed away earlier this month.

OLD BUSINESS:
Purchasing agency ordinance- Mike Witte- County Attorney- submitted 2 separate proposals after last meeting- received no critique from anyone yet. Here to take questions. Alternate version gives discretion to officeholders or dept. heads to negotiate contracts for 1 year or less. Hughes likes checks and balances to have it come before the commissioners. Any contract longer than a year is only binding with a bond or if there is language saying it is contingent on funding by County Council. Witte advises signing off on written contracts for services. Hughes questioned the $25,000 limits too. Tabled so the commissioners could review it.

NEW BUSINESS
Treasurer – Gayle Pennington- Ordinance for Real Estate Companies – TABLED at Pennington’s request

PAWS – Sandy Carly- Discussion on refund of $1million plus interest donated from Lawrenceburg as they are using it for their shelter. Commissioners approved the transfer of the money back to PAWS.

Reaction PC – Maintenance Contract- Mr. Wyly’s proposal for additional function that was requested. They are in their 3rd training session for the county website over in the library. Adding logging of user changes so that all changes are documented. Takes about 8 hours to set this up- $480. Adding user permission pages to the site- so that only certain pages are allowed to that person. This would make it so users only see what they are able to access. This is more intrusive to fix. After discounts this is about 15 hours work for $900. Could also have multiple permissions this would take about 20 hours 4 weeks time and $1200. Access permissions can occur overnight- not much delay for new people.

Maintenance contract is their commitment to the county- host it, make sure it’s up and running and make back-up. Use brinkster so they have a 99% uptime rate except for maintenance times. Daily back-up of the site. You can recover that for up to 3 days and then that is gone. At most you could lose 3 days worth of data. No charge if it is their fault- if it’s something the county user did- there is a $250 charge per instance. Premium support package unlimited phone and email support during business hours and response within one day. Will do extra training and new employees. $120 per hour for major changes and $80 for minor ones. Can get analytics on usage and hits per page. Base support is $1500 per year and the premium is $3,000 per year. If there is a termination they will give them DVD etc.

Have been supporting the old site during the upgrade for a little over $700- that would be included if they use the premium support package.

Commissioners opted to do the premium maintenance package for the first year (running from Feb 1st so that commissioners decide each Jan on their renewals) due to the number of questions employees will have with training. There will be a 2.5 year pay back even with additional features compared to the old system. Cost is $3000 per year. They also decided on the increased level of security and logging in user changes for $1680.

Terry Lyons – 17543 Ellinghausen Rd.- Manchester- Feb had 2 major snows- wife had to leave to be sure she could get her mother to hospital for surgery. Snow came that Sunday night. By Tues neighbor got stuck, mail lady got stuck, and wife couldn’t come home 2 county plows stuck on that street. By Wed his wife came home- got stuck- but they got her out. Still no road plowed. By Sunday still not plowed. More snow. All streets clean – even side streets except theirs by then. ( 11 days) Life squad couldn’t get back that road- when the baby had accidentally swallowed pills. They had to get out with a neighbor on the fire squad. Called dispatch and Grieve and it was cleaned by the next day then. Todd Listerman will look into it.

DCRSD – Steve Renihan- High Ridge plant is substantially completed. Request to go to Council for 2 change orders directly related to project $2,600 for collection system to TV it. Should last monger than they had originally thought- it’s a 30 year old system. $2500 to extend fence around the shed because of the types of chemicals stored there- as kids in neighborhood play there. Keystone billing- recommended by state board of accounts. They need checks and balances in place due to staff running it. This will serve any future sites as well. $10,400 seed money for High Ridge for Operations and Maintenance acc’t. After 6 months this money will pay back and they will send it back to council ( it’s a loan). Estimates $2000 for property insurance on the actual plant. Eventually that will be under O&M. Renihan needs a bond as he is also signing on accounts with the treasurer being ill.

Second phase of High Ridge will be done by mid to end of April. By May when Council meets this should be done. Todd Listerman said Highway signed off on permit to go ahead out there yesterday. Commissioners approved Renihan to go to Council for DCRSD for $22,060 total.

ANIMAL CONTROL – Marlene Underwood- passed out numbers of animal in – 93 dogs in Jan- 14 euthanized- adopted 66. Cats 40 in 17 euthanized and more adopted than came in. ( 2009 numbers)

Jan Dogs 77% adopted 18%euthanized. Cats 135% adopted 12 %euthanized
Feb Dogs 48% adopted 11%euthanized. Cats 81%adopted and 12% euthanized
Have not euthanized for space in a long long time.
50% dog and 75% cats in Butler County euthanization rate.

Last couple weeks had issues with kennel cough. Separated cats with respiratory ills.
Brown Mackey College came out to test animals.

Bites: 3 dog to dog and 7 dog to human and one cat to human
Current population 55 dogs and 27 cats.
Kitten season is coming up.

HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT – Todd Listerman gave a15-minute report.
Gave card to Mr. Lyons to call him if any problems on Ellinghausen Road.
Checking on salt program again- did find a Bloomington supplier thru Grieve for past snow. Will sign vendor in Bloomington and also with the state.

Working with Barth and assoc to get a contract to resurface North Dearborn road in case stimulus will come up. Big question if Stimulus II will go up. Cost is max $2500- no more. Talked to others at road school- many are paying $15-20,000 because they are hiring consultants to do ALL the work. Listerman has already done the leg work- so it only costs us about $2500. This will still be able to be used in the future. Commissioners decided to back off on this for now- due to uncertainty about stimulus.

Need to have inventory completed by 2011 on signs for the state. Will hire another intern this summer to complete this work. To stay in compliance they will redo signs on road sections every 10 years. Already in process on this for past few years.

Speed limits are 30 mph urban sections and 55mph on non-urban if not posted. These can be changed if traffic studies have been done. Will hopefully have an ordinance on these, stop signs, signals etc. next year. School zones will rise to 30 mph per state code. Only one traffic light in county inventory at Stateline and Stephens by HVL. It has been adjusted for timing also.

Met with Rohe asphalt- $450 per ton was estimated. It is now $525 and may go as high as $600 per ton. May not be able to buy as much asphalt as we’d projected.

April 2- trucks will be parked for summer- so none will go home with employees for snow emergencies.

Plan to go to 10 hour days after school lets out- from Memorial day to Labor day.


AUDITOR – Thompson said: Cary Pickens has passed- after many years of service to the county. He’d been looking forward to retirement. He will be sorely missed.
Greendale Ems contracts $40,000 signed.
Minutes signed with corrections. Claims approved.
Connie in auditor’s office was named acting charge for Pickens at special meeting..


ATTORNEY- Mike Witte- discussed the difference between uniform traffic from police versus an insurance form which is simpler. Witte to investigate to protect county.
No new tort and litigation.

Seibert case in litigation – when real estate was sold at tax sale and owner was not notified, even though they had sent change of address notices. This was from late tax bills time period. Court ruled in Seibert’s favor. (in West Harrison)

Met with DNR – assignment of Old Cole Lane portion of Hartford Ford will be assigned in about a month
Kent Irwin wanted to submit a sample ordinance on policy manual issues. That will be checked to see when that is.

Juvenile center contract on doctor has not come back to commissioners- Witte to find this.
Treasurer’s fee increase ordinance- he’s still working on this.

Mr. Fellers- Guilford on ROW- whether it was county or private. Todd Listerman- said Ron Barnhart P/Z and Art Wenzel- this is not well described as to what it is for. It is not a ROW- it is an easement- so that means it’s a private easement issue. Barnhart may have contacted him. Todd will make sure that happened.

Witte meeting with P/Z to decide whether to pursue sugar Ridge legally.

County Coordinator – Bill Ewbank- Community Mental Health service wants to do Clothes Line Display for Court House Lawn on Friday April 9th for Victims of sexual Assault. Commissioners granted approval.

Indiana Mutual Ins has done an assessment of our dept’s for risk management. Want to elect motor vehicle reports on an annual basis for all employees who operate a county vehicle. This include their operation of a their own vehicles. Driver training safety program and documentation required more for Highway dept.

Veterans Officer had 40 applicants and 5 will be interviewed this afternoon as finalists.

Review all our regulations on animal control so we can work with PAWS eventually. Working session to brainstorm what is on the books and look at other options. They will try to set a common date to do this- in public session.

Witte and Ewbank will get together on incident reports for insurance.

COMMISSIONER – Jeff Hughes – Federal gov’t said state is not legal on liability issues with Region 9. This may cost us something down the road in liability insurance

COMMISSIONER – Tom Orschell- use his time to take a moment of silence for the late Mr. Pickens our auditor for his untimely death.

COMMISSIONER – Ralph Thompson, Jr.- nothing to add.

PUBLIC COMMENT- none

ADJOURN 10:55 AM

Christine Brauer Mueller
Lawrenceburg Township