Staff writer
County Road and Bridge Department personnel will be meeting with commissioners Monday to discuss strategy for the upcoming year.
Road and Bridge Superintendent Randy Crawford was not at Monday’s commission meeting, but commissioners planned with Jesse Hamm, of the road and bridge department, to hold the workshop.
Commissioner Randy Dallke said the meeting would be to discuss policies, including how the county builds its roads.
“We don’t have meetings like this very often, and we need to probably,” he said.
Dallke said main gravel thoroughfares would be a focus of the meeting, citing specifically Diamond, Yarrow, 120th, and 90th Rds. as roads that need to be well maintained.
“When we mention these main roads, we’d really like to see the ditches pulled, and instead of putting a little top layer (of rock) on, we’d like to really get some work done,” he said.
Commissioners will consider allocating more of the budget to provide higher-quality repairs to higher-usage roads.
Dallke was complimentary of the work road and bridge employees have done, but he said it was important for commissioners to meet and “get everybody on the same page.”
In other business:
- EMS Director Brandy McCarty met with commissioners in executive session for 35 minutes to discuss non-elected personnel. No action was taken out of executive session.
- Health Department Administrator Diedre Serene briefed commissioners on the policies and legal liabilities of the Marion County Board of Health.
- Transfer Station Director Rollin Schmidt presented recycling figures from 2014 and inquired about accepting chemical bids from outside the county. Schmidt said the county could save money from purchasing directly from the distributors, and commissioners asked Schmidt to get a round of bids from out-of-county chemical producers.