County matters

The Commissions met for about three and a half hours oedn Monday morning in their June meeting. Near the top of the agenda were four public hearings. One was for a speed limit on a county road leading to Remington from the south and the other three were for vacating alleys and streets in the booming villages of Virgie, Asphaltum, and Kersey. When they were platted, their founders had high hopes that they would grow into substantial communities but they have not. The land set aside for streets and alleys is now farmed. By vacating the land, the County will be put it back on the tax rolls. A number of people attended these public hearings but no members of the public spoke.

The Commissioners approved use of the Court House lawn for Kids Night at the Tuesday Farmers Market on July 25. There was a long discussion of the Smallfelt Ditch. Landowners want to deepen it and that will require crossing County roads in three places. Their plans for crossing the roads were approved. The ditch was also on the agenda for the Drainage Board in the afternoon, but I did not find the topic fascinating enough to attend that part of the meeting.

The County IT guy wants to be able to junk obsolete electronics rather than try to sell them at auction. He argued that the costs of getting them ready for auction exceeded the revenue received. The matter was turned over to the County Attorney for research. A person from Honeywell pitched on energy savings; he offered a free preliminary audit that they accepted. The airport manager gave a short report on Aviation Career Day and announced that the date of the annual EEA fly in was July 8. The Health Department wanted a change in their personnel policy requiring some employees to attend their Board meetings.

In May's meeting there was an item in which a family was complaining about the behavior of a neighbor. June's meeting seems to have featured the other side of the dispute, with the roles of good neighbor and bad neighbor reversed.

At 10:00 bids for paving and road materials were opened. There were a number of bids and, as is the Commissioners' practice, all were accepted.

The Sheriff reported on the communications tower, stating that it had been in operation for several months and the the County Highway Department was also using it. Two representatives from Motorola were present and the Commissioners formally accepted the tower. (I am not sure exactly what that meant.) There was discussion of the costs and benefits of inmate catastrophic insurance (the cost of using the helicopter as an ambulance is about $60K) and more discussion of the need to repair the west wall of the northern annex.

The meeting ended with discussion of various matters that mostly affect the running of offices. There was a long and hard-to-follow discussion of road repair. The way that the state grant process will work this year has changed and the various people involved with roads discussed how the County should adjust to those changes.

The Drainage Board had a long agenda in their afternoon meeting, but only two of the items looked interesting to me. Pilot Travel Center of Remington will do a complete rebuild at the end of the summer (mentioned here) and they presented their drainage plan. Their retention pond will be bigger and configured in a different way. Currently water is pumped into the pond and drained by gravity. The new pond will fill by gravity and will be drained by pumping. The plan was approved.

The second item was a proposed Speedway on SR 10 at the I-65 intersection. It will be built on a property that has a drainage ditch. The proposed plan is to culvert the ditch in a 48 inch tile. The Commissioners accepted that but wanted the tile to be concrete, not plastic. There were also questions about the easement of the open drain and the Commissioners suggested that the best way to deal with this issue was to extend the tile. The Commissioners wanted to see a new plan at the next meeting (July 3).

In some other news, construction is evident near the intersection of Front and Washington. The "Top Secret" building is getting a new front. (Of course if it were really top secret, the business would not have a webpage.) The words "Miller Jones Co" are now gone. I do not remember was that was. Who can help?

Across the street Embers Brewhouse has been doing landscaping and is looking beautiful. A fence stops the inclination to stroll through the grounds. The fence is required because the plaza will be part of the cafe that serves beer. When the Brewhouse opens, it will not be serving beer it brews--the person who was to do the brewing has pulled out of the project. However, they will be serving various area craft beers.

Down the block along Front Street a new business will be opening in month. The old Longs will become a flea market called Endless Treasures.

Below is a picture of fencing being installed along Sparling Ave by Lake Banet.