Ballfield brawl, budget woes, courthouse hours top topics at elected officials meeting

By RANDA WAGNER –

Monday’s Elected Offi­cials meet­ing was well attended and had a lively and long dis­cus­sion over bud­gets, con­tracts, cour­t­house and a week­end inci­dent in Sparta.

Mor­row County Sher­iff Steve Bren­ne­man reported he was noti­fied Sat­ur­day of a ’30-person brawl’ at the High­land ball­park dur­ing an adult soft­ball tour­na­ment. Every avail­able offi­cer in the county responded to the inci­dent, he said, and Mor­row County EMS was dis­patched because one per­son had been ‘choked to the point of unconsciousness.”

When offi­cers arrived, the crowd was dis­pers­ing, but vehi­cle descrip­tions and plate num­bers were recorded. It was Brenneman’s under­stand­ing the tour­na­ment was cancelled.

Pros­e­cu­tor Charles How­land reported his office is frus­trated in their efforts to make con­tact with the EPA over the HPM site but they will keep pur­su­ing the issue. When asked about the KOA camp­ground prop­erty on State Route 95 that failed to sell at the last auc­tion, How­land said the prop­erty would be for­feited to the audi­tor (becom­ing the county’s prop­erty) and it would be listed for sale the same way pri­vate prop­erty would be sold. After four efforts to sell it at two-thirds of its appraised value, How­land believes prospec­tive buy­ers are wait­ing for a ‘fire sale’ that he doesn’t think would be in the county’s best inter­est (due to its loca­tion near I-71).

“I thought at $200,000 it was a great price, but no one came up with the money,” How­land said.

Clerk of Courts Vanessa Mills said there were a num­ber of inter­ested par­ties, but the prob­lem was the banks were not offer­ing loans on that prop­erty because of the fed­eral liens and con­di­tion of the property.

“All liens would be clear if they bought it,” said Tom Harden.

“There’s some­body out there who will think $250,000 or what­ever we offer it for prop­erty next to an inter­change is a heck of a buy,” said How­land. “I don’t want to reap­praise it – there’s no rea­son to do that. I don’t want to give it away.”

Com­mon Pleas Court Judge Howard Hall said the courts are as busy as ever and the hope is to get the new court­room fin­ished as soon as possible.

“Judge Hick­son has been on the bench five and a half years and still doesn’t have ade­quate facil­i­ties,” Hall said. “The bud­get is always an issue and we’re try­ing to work with the com­mis­sion­ers on that.”

“The car­pen­ters said they have two or three more days of work,” Com­mis­sioner Olen Jack­son said. The painters will be back to fin­ish paint­ing and it should move more rapidly now. They’re putting light fix­tures up and floor­ing in. Hope­fully it will be done by the end of the month.”

Munic­i­pal Court Judge Lee McClel­land said muny court has a lot going on. The court admin­is­tra­tor moved on to another job and a new employee has been hired.

“Most of our time and effort right now is in ‘com­put­er­iz­ing’ the court,” McClel­land said. “This means not only scan­ning cur­rent doc­u­ments but going back and doing older documents.”

Muny court is also imple­ment­ing a pro­gram to auto­mate jury selec­tion, rota­tion and doc­u­men­ta­tion. The first test of the sys­tem was to be Tues­day, Aug. 7 and it should elim­i­nate a lot of work employ­ees had to do man­u­ally in the past. A pro­gram to han­dle the elec­tronic fil­ing of traf­fic cita­tions would prob­a­bly be the next project, McClel­land said. Those cited can pay online to avoid a court appear­ance, if they choose to do so. Case loads are up at this time, he noted.

Sher­iff Bren­ne­man said his new cruis­ers should be in at any time now. Mt. Gilead has received theirs. The MARCS radio mobile units and acces­sories are in and are being pro­grammed. They will be going in the new vehi­cles when they arrive.

The num­ber of ICE detainees at the jail is down to 40 out of 86 inmates at this time, Bren­ne­man said. Those 40 would prob­a­bly be ship­ping out Aug. 7, but he said ICE offi­cials are want­ing to increase the Mor­row County Cor­rec­tional Facility’s num­ber of detainees and make this loca­tion a ‘hub,’ of sorts, for these detainees.

“If we do that, though, it means we have to ship our females out,” he said, “We can’t house females, which means pay­ing for their hous­ing. We’re try­ing to work out a deal with inmate ‘trades.”

Bren­ne­man also reported the jail is going to elec­tronic mon­i­tor­ing for work-release inmates. He said the mon­i­tors work quite well and they may be using them for other pur­poses as well.

Bren­ne­man asked about the sta­tus of the sheriff’s office park­ing lot project in which the lot is to be repaved, sealed and striped. It was his under­stand­ing grant monies ear­marked for the project had been trans­ferred to help with another project in Cardington.

“The bid came in for less than [Pat Davies] set aside for the project,” Com­mis­sioner Tom Harden responded.

“But the project isn’t done, and you know how ‘over­runs’ go,” Bren­ne­man said.

“But that’s a guar­an­teed set amount they’re going to do it for,” Harden said. “That includes the strip­ing and the sealing.”

“But you know how bids and con­tracts go,” Bren­ne­man said. “Why not wait until after the project is done and see what’s left, then trans­fer it?”

“CDBG money has a lot of strings attached to it with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment,” Jack­son said. “Once you’ve put down “X” num­ber of dol­lars for that project, she explained to us what it would take to change that. I asked her to use the money for curb­ing and some addi­tional things, and that wasn’t approved. We were assured there was enough money to do the project at the jail.”

Jack­son said the com­mis­sion­ers would sit down and go over it again with the sheriff’s office.

On another note, he also said Ver­i­zon informed him that Mt. Gilead, Chester­ville, Marengo and I-71 near Water­ford are now ‘4G’ areas (a 4G sys­tem pro­vides mobile ultra-broadband Inter­net access).

County Engi­neer Randy Bush said the ques­tions his office gets most often is when work on the CR 9 bridge will start. They are work­ing with the OPWC to get the notice to pro­ceed. U.S. bridge will start the demo­li­tion when that notice comes in. The engineer’s office is hop­ing to com­plete the project by Novem­ber. There is an issue with the elec­tric line runs along one side and a crane can’t be used in the area as it is – the line will have to be moved.

Bush also reported a hail­storm last year dam­aged the rub­ber­ized roof on the county garage and an ini­tial appeal to CORSA for finan­cial assis­tance was rejected for a num­ber of rea­sons. CORSA finally allowed for $65,000 (toward a $110,000) for a new roof. Bush is hop­ing to get a Dura-Last roof­ing sys­tem through a state-approved contract.

Recorder Dixie Shin­aberry said things are pick­ing up at her office though no new oil and gas leases have come in yet. She would like to see her office go back to being open five days a week.

Olen Jack­son said he had been going over the bud­get and he doesn’t see the county reach­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (all antic­i­pated sources of income com­ing in) until some­time in December.

“The sales tax is run­ning a bit ahead but not far enough ahead to cover every­thing that’s run­ning behind,” he explained. “Con­veyance fees are way behind; about the only thing that’s run­ning accord­ing to sched­ule are munic­i­pal court fees, but not enough to carry other things. The invest­ment income is just absolutely killing us.”

“Prop­erty taxes are up a lit­tle,” said Trea­surer Dan Green, “but not enough. But when it gets down to the county share, it’s min­i­mal. Lat­est thing is some of our state peo­ple want to start cut­ting local gov­ern­ment funds by what­ever we get from the casi­nos. So we don’t gain any­thing there. We aren’t get­ting another casino pay­ment until October.”

Jack­son said though the last check from that source was about $30,000, the county is behind $270,000 on Children’s Ser­vices expenses alone.

“The bill has been intro­duced to change the for­mula for the local gov­ern­ment fund,” Jack­son explained, “and the for­mula is being changed because the gen­tle­man who wrote the bill feels sorry for the town­ships and munic­i­pal­i­ties — because we’re get­ting casino money and they’re not get­ting any­thing, so he feels this would bal­ance them out.”

This would mean another reduc­tion in the local gov­ern­ment fund.

The sher­iff asked if any money was being saved by clos­ing county offices on Fri­day. Harden and Jack­son said the only sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings was through util­i­ties by hav­ing the Com­mu­nity Ser­vices build­ing closed on Fri­day, Sat­ur­day and Sunday.

“Can we go back to hav­ing those other offices open in Fri­days?” asked Bren­ne­man. “It causes us prob­lems when cer­tain offices aren’t open and we’re doing business.

Dixie Shin­aberry said her office and the treasurer’s office made employee cuts and closed on Fridays.

“The rest of them went to four ten-hour days and that’s not sav­ing money,” she said. “Plus they gave raises and bonuses. So how’s that help­ing Dan and I to get our offices opened back up when there’s raises and bonuses being given out of the other offices?”

“But is it being taken out of the gen­eral fund?” asked Vanessa Mills.

“It does not mat­ter what it’s being taken out of!” responded Shin­aberry. “It’s still taxpayer’s money! That’s what peo­ple don’t under­stand! It’s taxpayer’s money! They’re abus­ing it no mat­ter which way you look at it.”

“One of the things we said all along was the only county that’s cho­sen to do any­thing about it is Cuya­hoga County,” Jack­son said. “How many times have you heard me say local gov­ern­ment can­not con­tinue to exist the way we are right now because it’s up to every elected offi­cial to spend their bud­get. How they spend it and the money they have right now is their responsibility.”

Harden said Mar­ion County is propos­ing to raise their sales tax another half per­cent, but Mor­row County is at their max­i­mum limit on sales tax. He related sto­ries of other loca­tions in dire finan­cial straits and how every com­mu­nity has its problems.

“We put five levies on for the upcom­ing elec­tion in Novem­ber,” Harden said. “I think there’s two emer­gency school levies being voted on tomorrow.”

“We all know how that’s going to go out,” Mills said. She asked Bren­ne­man which closed offices were affect­ing his oper­a­tions. He responded some­times it was the auditor’s, recorder’s and others.

Dan Green said to open on Fri­days would increase his costs by 25 per­cent. “We were down to four days a week, six hours a day when the prob­lem first hit,” he said. “We finally got back to eight hours a day. We’re down to bare bones and I’m glad just to keep our heads above water. “

Harden said he’s never heard any­one com­plain the cour­t­house isn’t open on Fri­day, and that peo­ple like it because it’s open a bit longer Mon­day through Friday.

“There’s at least ten peo­ple com­plain­ing every Fri­day to us,” said Vanessa Mills. “If there’s any way that we can sup­ple­ment or take in what they’re ask­ing for, we’d do it.”

Harden main­tained the com­mis­sion­ers have not received com­plaints and every­one should be able to get their busi­ness done Mon­day through Fri­day dur­ing those ten hours.

Glenda Wil­son asked if the four-day a week arrange­ment was orig­i­nally the com­mis­sion­ers idea.

“Not really,” Jack­son responded. “We met with the state auditor’s office after an audit, and we had to show them what each office was doing to reduce spend­ing. We made the deci­sion on the com­mu­nity ser­vices build­ing, but each elected offi­cial was told to do what they had to do to oper­ate within their budget.”

“Did you cut your staff, or are you still on 40 hours?” Wil­son asked.

“We’re still on 40,” Jack­son said.

“Which says you could open back up to five eight-hour days and do the exact same you used to with­out any changes as to what you’re doing now?” Wil­son responded.

“We’re just donat­ing our sav­ings,” said Jackson.

“Well, I still know a lot of peo­ple were wait­ing to fol­low your lead,” Wil­son said. “If you’re not going to show any difference…”

With that, Jack­son ended the meeting.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.