Bridge to be closed for a couple of weeks
A bridge on Gold Point Road will be closed for the next couple of weeks while the Brown County Highway Department works to repair it.
Highway Superintendent Mike Magner reported during the Dec. 5 Brown County Commissioners meeting that the bridge was under a one year inspection due to its age and rust issues. He said he closed the bridge a couple of weeks ago due to rust on the older bridge beams.
“If you actually look at that steel beam it looks like Swiss cheese with all of the holes in it,” he said.
Magner said the bridge has older beams that continue to deteriorate and rust due to moisture.
“It looks they used the combination, at the time, some newer and older beams (to build the bridge),” he said.
Magner estimated the bridge may have been built in the 1960s.
“Unfortunately the older beams they used at the time have rusted away due to moisture,” he said.
“Our intent is to get something repaired, which will allow us to get to into next spring, summer.”
A possible solution would be to replace the bridge with a box culvert next spring or summer.
“It’s not a real big creek,” he said.
Commissioner Diana Biddle said she had been receiving a lot of phone calls about the bridge closure.
Final vote counts don’t change outcome of races
Less than half of the provisional ballots cast in the Nov. 6 Brown County general election were eligible to be counted.
The Brown County Election Board reviewed the circumstances of each one on Nov. 16 and decided that 17 of them were valid. Forty total provisional ballots were cast.
Provisional ballots are given to a voter if there’s some question about that voter’s eligibility to cast a ballot in that precinct.
In the cases of the 23 voters who weren’t eligible, two did not show ID; seven were registered in a different county; three were not registered anywhere in the state; six went to the wrong polling place to vote; two had moved out of Brown County after deadline but tried to vote here anyway; two completed voter registration after the deadline for this election; and one had been convicted of a felony, was removed from the voter rolls and did not properly re-register before the deadline for this election.
The 18 “new” votes — 17 provisionals plus one overseas ballot that arrived after Election Day — did not change the outcome of any races.
However, the percentage of voter turnout did change for the better.
A data entry error led to an incorrect number of total registered voters being reported in the unofficial results, said Brown County Clerk Brenda Woods. The unofficial report showed 12,905 being registered to vote in Brown County; the actual number of registered voters is 11,953.
Thus, the voter turnout for this election was 61.41 percent, not 56.74 percent.
The board acknowledged some technical problems during this election, with electronic poll books not being able to communicate with the “cloud.” This was the same program that Johnson County had, which stalled voting completely for more than an hour.
Without access to the poll book, poll workers weren’t able to create the electronic card to put in the voting machine, which pulls up the ballot, in the way they were taught.
However, Woods was able to find a way to bypass the problem and called every precinct to tell them how to fix it before voting was significantly impacted, board members said.
As fail-safe mechanisms, poll workers had access to a paper poll book and a handheld unit which could make voter “cards” for the machines, the board said.
Health board hears complaints from resident
The Brown County Board of Health has called a closed executive session to discuss concerns that were raised at the board’s Nov. 20 public meeting.
County resident Sherrie Mitchell read a two-and-a-half-page letter to the board detailing what she believes to be “failure of this board to regulate the BCHD” (Brown County Health Department).
She mentioned septic system lawsuits she believes to be “frivolous,” which are being handled by the health department’s attorney out of the health department’s budget.
She also brought up concerns about a lack of clear procedure for how septic inspections are conducted, and a “culture of fear” between the health department and the community. She told the board that 60 residents have signed a petition “to prohibit the admission of an employee of the BCHD on their properties due to a lack of confidence.”
Mitchell had encouraged residents who had “difficulty dealing with the Brown County Health Department and your septic” to attend the meeting. The audience contained about 25 people, including health department staff who were there for the regular meeting. No other audience members spoke about the issues Mitchell addressed.
The board admitted Mitchell’s letter into the record of the meeting, with some individuals’ names redacted, but did not address her specific concerns at that time because they involved personnel and ongoing legal matters. Board President Thomi Elmore said they would be discussed in an executive session. One has been set for Friday, Dec. 14 to discuss pending litigation and job performance evaluations of employees.
Elmore called Mitchell’s comments “very serious” and invited people to file any other written complaints they might have.
“We want to do our due diligence. We want to do our job appropriately. We want to act as a board in the best interest of all in this community. And if there’s oversight or if there’s something we’re not doing, we need to be made aware of that,” Elmore said.
