The Mitchell County Commissioners spent a lot of their weekly meeting Monday morning in executive session with department heads on yearly reports on non-elected personnel. At the request of the commission each of the Department Heads is responsible for reporting the status of their personnel and their budget standing each December.
Becky Schaefer, Communication Director, Scott Davies, Emergency Management, and Tami Eck, Register of Deeds, each met with the Commissioners for a 15-minute executive session on non-elected personnel with no reports to follow. Chairman Mike Cooper reported no decisions were made during the sessions. Melinda Latham, Appraiser and Clint Offutt, GIS, met with the commissioners at their request with part of their session together and then separate. No decisions were made.
Larry Emerson, Public Works, reported he had finally received an answer back on the grant they applied for the new guardrail across the Waconda Lake Dam. The letter said the state had five million applications for grants and only five million dollars total to distribute. Mitchell did not get the grant they applied for this time but John Cashatt, County Engineer, advised him to try again next year.
Emerson said they finally got the new truck back that they sent to Wichita over two months ago to have a new bed put on and everything was just like they ordered. At that time Emerson went into a 15-minute executive session as requested by the commission to present his yearly report with a five-minute extension to follow. No decisions were made in the meeting.
Ed Debesis, Emergency Medical Services, brought in his monthly report. He introduced Amy Waterman who will be working part time as a paramedic for the present time and Richard Budke, long time Beloit EMS employee. Debesis reported the amount of user fee charged for the month of November was $34,850 and the total payment collected was $15,429.02 with a total debt write off of $4,553. Their total runs for the month were 40 with 35 runs out of Beloit; one run each out of Cawker City, Concordia and Hunter; two runs each out of Glasco and Glen Elder and seven out of Tipton.
Debesis also asked the commissioners for a cancellation of accounts received on all uncollectable debts from January 2010 through December 2012. Twelve of the debts are deceased and the rest they either can't find or are out of time to be collected according to Mark Noah, Mitchell County Attorney. He has tried to collect these accounts through the State of Kansas and also through Attorney Noah. Debesis said he was unable to discuss the names of people with outstanding debt due to patient confidentiality laws. The commissioners moved to cancel these past due accounts in the amount of $32,229.57. Debesis said this is the most he has had to write off since he became the EMS Director here. Commissioners approved this action.
The commissioners appointed Kathy Webster to serve another term on the Pawnee Mental Health Board. The commissioners voted to pay the dues of $344.91 to be members of the League of Kansas Municipalities for the coming year. A Neighborhood Revitalization Application was approved for Russell and Gina Luger to build a new home at 415 S. Cherry, Lot #4 in the amount of $219,616.