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Commissioners Had a Busy Day Monday

The Mitchell County Commissions started their day yesterday morning with their regular weekly agenda before going on to host a four-county commission meeting at noon and followed by that a entities business meeting and going on to give the visiting commissioners a tour of the new Law Enforcement Center located at the North Campus.

Commission Chairman, Tom Claussen, opened yesterday morning meeting by extending condolences to the Bill Zachary family. Zachary was a lifetime resident of Beloit and a well-known businessman here for many years. Chairman Claussen said he would be greatly missed by the community.

As advertised, the sealed bids for the service contract on the county's five waste pickup containers were opened at 9 a.m. This includes dumpsters at the Mitchell County Court House, the county shop, the LEC building on the North Campus, the EMS building in Beloit and Cawker City. Representatives from the two firms placing bids, Dunstan Trucking LLC and Hiserote Trash Removal were present for the bid opening.

Since the bids received were for different lengths of time and number of services provided the commissioners had to work out how to make a fair decision between the two. Dunstan's bid was for $150 per container a month on a five-year contract and Hiserote's bid was for $100 a month per container on a three year contract. This made an overall charge of $30 a month from Dunstan and $20 a month for Hiserote. The contract was awarded to Hiserote, the company that is presently doing this work for the county.

Commissioner Mike Cooper reported on the hot water system at the LEC Building. There are still some issues that will have to be worked out before they can start the placement of prisoners in the building. Cooper said, they had tried to "retro-fit" the old water heating system and this gave them hot water for the commercial washers and dryers but not enough hot water for showers for the number of inmates that will be housed in the building.

Tim Watts, of Watts Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning Inc, is presently redesigning a completely new system, which Cooper said should have been done in the first place. They will need 300 gal of water an hour during the 4 and 1/ 2 hours a day showers will be taken. They are installing 2 - 205 gallon commercial tanks in order to do this. These will be installed in the same area of the building as before.

Cooper said they are having issues with enough hot water being provided by the two large hot water heaters that were purchased for this task. They put out enough hot water for the laundry but not for the showers. Tim Watts will talk to Sheriff Daugherty today about a system he has designed to take care of this problem.

The new system will cost $28,000 to completely rebuild the system and make the number of changes that will be needed to complete this project. No inmates can be housed in the facility until this is taken care of. Watts thought it would take about 10 days to complete the work so they hope to be ready to start taking prisoners next week.

Commissioners discussed the cost to run natural gas lines up to the campus but it would be pretty expensive to do that so they are not going to peruse doing that at the present time, Cooper said.

Chairman Tom Claussen and Commissioner Virgil Palen attended a meeting of the Mitchell County Fire Chief's Assn. last Thursday. They explained the new licensing procedure that is taking place at the present time. They also said Fire Chief Larry Heidrick is scheduling several important meetings in the coming months to provide hands on training on fire safety and new fire fighting techniques.

Dan Streit, County Weed Department, gave his annual report to the commissioners on the department's income and expenses for the past year. He also discussed the number of acres that were treated during that time. Streit said the drought this year has cut down on the number of sales of chemicals they have had and they have more chemicals stored in the warehouse right now than usual. They had to take one landowner to court this past year over musk thistle removal and won that case.

Commissioner Cooper asked if the county is in the 911 sign business yet. Streit said they ready to put up all the signs on the Tipton blacktop at the present time. They are going to have to replace signs that have been vandalized in recent months. Three signs were knocked down in one night, he said. These replacements are very expensive for the county. They plan to replace all of the old signs in the near future. Commissioner Palen reported there are a number of signs down in his area around Tipton that have been knocked down and need to be replaced.

The regular meeting was adjourned to allow Commissioners and County Clerk, Chris Treaster to get ready for the Multi-County Meeting the Commissioners were hosting for Commissioners from Smith, Jewell, and Osborne Counties at the Plum Creek Restaurant yesterday noon. A group of around 20 people were present for the dinner meeting. Sherry Koster, District Sanitarian, presented her bi-annual report. Koster is in charge of seven counties including Republic, Phillips, Jewell Mitchell, Rooks, Osborne and Smith County.

Koster told those present her department is in pretty good shape financially. There had been some question of whether the Governor would authorize State funds this past year but the NCKLEPG received $24,549 after the fiscal year started. Total income from July through December for registration fees, city assistance fees, waste water permit fees and well permit fees brought in a total of $17,783. The total expenses were $190,097.27 for July through December. This leaves her department with a total of $ 23,234.73 and there will be more funds coming in January from wastewater permits, well drilling permits and contractor/pumper registration fees. Each county pays $1200 to be a part of this district. If any county drops out the total amount of the fees will be redistributed between the other six counties. She needs to know by April if the counties want to join the district association for the next year It is not known what the Governor will do about providing State funds this year but the Sanitation Department should still be in pretty good shape for the next year or two, Koster said.

Following the meeting the Commissioners took the visiting group on a tour of the new Mitchell County law Enforcement Center facilities at the North Campus.

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Beloit, KS 67420, USA