County road paving plans paused until spring
Due to cold and wet weather, paving plans for this year have been put on hold until spring, Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner reported at Brown County Commissioners meetings last month.
Before the weather hit, crews were able to pave portions of Lick Creek and Spearsville/Upper Bean Blossom roads along with Fruitdale Road from Hornettown Road to State Road 135 North.
“We have about seven miles yet to go,” Magner said at the Dec. 5 commissioners meeting.
“We had enough calendar days to get it finished, but we had a lot of rain there in October and November. Then it just turned below 40 degrees. We didn’t want to waste money putting something down that wasn’t going to hold up.”
The roads left to be paved are 1.25 miles of Sprunica Road, 0.25 miles on both Mt. Moriah Road and Redbud Lane, 4.10 miles of Christiansburg Road and 2.25 miles of South Grandview Road.
Magner said the plan is to finish those roads this spring with local money. The county will apply for Community Crossings grant money in January to do more projects in 2019.
Bellsville Pike, Greasy Creek Road and a portion of Nineveh Road are on deck to be paved next year with money from Community Crossings.
Depending on what is required for local match money for Community Crossings, Magner said it may be possible to do more local paving projects next fall, too.
Magner also reported on Dec. 5 that his crew had been hauling gravel to roads every day.
“We intentionally, sometime in the late summer, don’t put stone on the gravel roads because when they get hard-packed, people who drive 50 mph, all of the stone ends up in a ditch. If we have a lot of rain, they get soft, so we’ve been hauling a lot of rock,” he said.
“Some people have a misperception that if they don’t see a bigger rock, individual rock, that the road doesn’t have stone on it. They are harder than concrete when they’re packed down in the summertime. If you go out and sprinkle rock on top, it won’t fall into what’s there.”
Magner said the highway department also had been dealing with culvert issues on county roads. A family of beavers dammed up several culverts on Bell Road, and other culverts were clogged from leaves being washed in, he said.
At the Dec. 15 commissioners meeting, resident Sherrie Mitchell asked Magner if it would be possible to post his paving plans on the county’s website so residents are aware when their road may be paved. She mentioned Grandview Road being featured on a local news station due to its condition. County HR coordinator Melissa Stinson said she could work on getting the list posted on the county’s website.
County maintenance, technology work needed
The county will have to spend money on technology updates and repairs soon, reported Ric Fox, the technology and maintenance director, at the Dec. 19 Brown County Commissioners meeting.
The commissioners unanimously approved his recommendation to enter into a three-year lease, for $23,000 a year, to replace hosts in the county’s data center. The hosts are in the county’s virtual machine, or server that houses all of the county’s data, Fox said. He estimated they are about six years old.
“That was the first thing I did when I got here was to build that. They are getting some age on them. It’s time to get them replaced because I can lose one of those without any problems at all, but if I lose two of them at the same time, then I have some issues,” he said.
The three-year lease has a finance charge of $3,600, but the lease allows the county to pay for the hosts in payments instead of one lump sum. “That kind of spreads it out a little bit and softens the blow of that,” Fox said.
He said he has money left in his budget to pay the first payment.
Fox and IT assistant Laura Minett also spoke to the commissioners about the need to update their email system and Microsoft Office programs. She said county employees have trouble opening documents from state and other agencies due to the outdated software.
“It (Office 365) will keep us at the most current version of what we need for Word and Excel, Exchange and Outlook. We’re on 2007 now. It’s at end of life. It’s not going to be supported anymore,” Minett said.
Office 365 is a subscription service that would cost the county around $18 per user, per month. Minett said there are about 100 users who would have to have subscriptions in county government, which would equal about $1,800 a month for the subscription. But she said cheaper plans may be available.
“There are no other options. It is what it is. Trust me, if we could get around that, we would,” she said.
The county can’t use Google over Microsoft because of compatibility issues with programs that other departments use, such as the clerk’s office and sheriff’s department.
The subscription also will keep the county up to date on the latest Microsoft programming compared to buying the Office Suite 2016, which would put the county back in the same situation in another five years, Minett said. “If you do this monthly subscription service, then you’re always with the most current version,” she said.
The county’s IT department currently has a contract for engineering services that costs $2,200 a month. Fox said that contract could be changed to a per-call basis, cutting the monthly bill, to help pay for these other needs.
Fox said the IT department is also considering switching to a local printer and copier vendor when their current vendor contract is up.
Fox also said that the furnace for the Salmon Room at the County Office Building is failing and needs a control card replaced for $3,540.
“There’s no safety problems involved or anything. If it gets down to around zero (degrees) and everything that thing will be trying to kick on all the time. … I would like to get that replaced at the beginning of the year.”
Biddle said the commissioners may have enough maintenance money left to cover that cost in the 2018 budget.
Parks and rec gets grant for lighting project
The Brown County Parks and Recreation Department has received a $5,000 grant from REMC to go toward the lighting project at Deer Run Park.
Replacing light poles at Deer Run was one of the projects the county commissioners plan to complete using a $2 million capital improvement bond the county took out earlier this year.
At the Dec. 19 commissioners meeting, commissioner Diana Biddle reported that parks and rec Director Mark Shields had quotes from Wheeler Electric to do the work and Power Lines Supply for the materials.
Other projects for the county’s bond money include a new emergency communications tower and radios; replacing bleachers at the Brown County Fairgrounds; expanding the parking lot at Veterans Hall; restoring the bell tower, repairing bricks and adding security at the Brown County courthouse; installing security measures at the Emergency Management Agency office; building a new ramp and porch and replacing the siding at Sycamore Valley Senior Center; and doing various building improvements at the highway department.
