Board of County Commissioners of Lincoln County

Agenda for October 8, 2008

9:00 Call to order and Pledge of Allegiance

9:00 Open bids on reconstruction of the roof over the two north bays of the Union Pacific Railroad roundhouse

10:00 Social Services Director Colette Barksdale to give her monthly report

1:30 County Sheriff Tom Nestor to discuss the 2008 and 2009 budgets for his office

1. Approve additional expense vouchers

2. Approve the minutes from the September 30^th meeting

3. Review a letter from the Colorado Department of Transportation concerning their Maintenance Incentive Pilot Program

4. Review a letter from Jo Downey concerning $33,000 in Heritage Tourism Expansion Funds to be received by Prairie Development Corporation

5. Review the September report from the County Treasurer’s Office

6. Review and sign a letter to Ken Gabriel with the Office of Economic Development & International Trade concerning the deobligation of funds for Community Development Block Grant #04-081

7. Review and sign the Stormwater Annual report for Lincoln County

8. Review and sign the engagement letters with Gary L. Woodward to complete the audit of the county’s financial records for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2008

9. Review and act on a request from Roy Murphy for an exemption from subdivision regulations

10. County Commissioners’ reports

11. County Administrator’s report

12. County Attorney’s report

13. Old business

14. New business

The Board of Lincoln County Commissioners met at 9:00 a.m. on October 8, 2008. The following attended: Chairman Ted Lyons, Commissioners Steve Burgess and Gary Beedy, County Administrator Roxie Devers and Clerk to the Board Corinne M. Lengel. County Attorney Stan Kimble was present from 1:00 p.m. until approximately 2:00 p.m., and Kay Christie with The Limon Leader and Eastern Colorado Plainsman arrived at 1:30 p.m.

Chairman Lyons called the meeting to order and led the Pledge of Allegiance, and then the Board opened the two bids that were received for reconstruction of the roof over the two north bays of the Union Pacific Railroad roundhouse. Low bid was from Dave Divis at $180,760, but Ms. Devers said there is only $137,200 in their budget to cover temporary roofing, so they would need roughly $45,000 additional to accept the bid. Spectrum General Contractors, Inc. also submitted a bid, but it came in higher at $181,038. Mr. Burgess asked why the roof would be considered temporary, and Ms. Devers explained that it was because if they installed a permanent roof it would all have to be done at once and could not be done in sections, which would cost about a million dollars.

Mr. Beedy made a motion to table any decision until the county can obtain adequate funding and more information to complete the roofing project. Mr. Burgess seconded the motion, which carried unanimously.

Mr. Burgess made a motion to approve the minutes from the September 30, 2008 meeting, as submitted. Mr. Beedy seconded the motion, which carried unanimously.

The Board reviewed a letter from the Colorado Department of Transportation concerning their Maintenance Incentive Pilot Program, as well as a letter from Jo Downey concerning $33,000 in Heritage Tourism Expansion funds to be received by Prairie Development Corporation. The Board chose the Union Pacific Railroad roundhouse and the Walks Camp area as recommendations for the “Off the Beaten Trail” project.

The September report from the County Treasurer’s office was reviewed, and then Land Use Administrator Ken Morrison was called down to dispel rumors that Mr. Lyons had heard regarding the RES wind farm group discontinuing their project due to a potential railroad going through that property. Mr. Morrison said that was, indeed, a rumor. As a matter of fact, RES just requested an amendment to their current Special Use permit because the 2 megawatt towers are unavailable and they want to change to 1.5 megawatt towers. They would like to increase the number of towers from one hundred and seventeen to one hundred and twenty-six. They are still working on the purchase for power, but they have run into a problem because Excel Energy wants partial ownership in the wind farm. Mr. Morrison said they will discuss the amendment at the November Land Use meeting, adding that he had told Mr. Borgel that there would be no additional fee for the amendment.

Mr. Burgess wanted to know if they would start on the project next spring, but Mr. Morrison said he did not know.

Mr. Beedy said he’d received a phone call about cattle being chronically out, and wanted to know if there was anything that the county could do. Mr. Morrison said that statute provides that the sheriff can take possession of the cattle, but that he is then responsible for feeding and watering them, although he can charge the cattle-owner for that food and water. According to statute, sound fence is considered to be three-wire barbed-wire, and since Colorado is a fence-out state, if a landowner wants their neighbor’s cattle off their property, they are the ones who are required to put up the fence.

Mr. Burgess suggested that the complainant contact the sheriff each time the cattle are out, just to have it on record that there is a pattern, and Mr. Lyons added that the party could take legal action if their property was damaged by the cattle.

The Board reviewed a letter to Ken Gabriel with the Office of Economic Development & International Trade concerning the de-obligation of funds for Community Development Block Grant #04-081. Mr. Beedy made a motion to sign the letter to the Office of Economic Development & International Trade de-obligating $9,044.44 in CDBG Administrative Grant funds and $102,500 in CDBG Assistance Grant funds. Mr. Burgess seconded the motion, which carried unanimously.

The Stormwater Annual report for the county landfill was reviewed, which was completed by Landfill Manager Mick Jaques. Mr. Beedy made a motion to sign the report, Mr. Burgess seconded the motion, and it carried unanimously.

Mr. Beedy then made a motion to sign the engagement letters with Gary L. Woodward to complete the audit of the county’s financial records for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2008. Mr. Burgess seconded the motion, which carried unanimously.

Ms. Devers requested that they discuss Roy Murphy’s request for subdivision regulations when the county attorney was present, so the commissioners gave their reports.

On October 1, all three commissioners took a tour of the county with representatives from the railway relocation group, as well as Travis Taylor with the CARR committee, from the north end of the county to the south end. He felt they had a good trip and got a lot accomplished. Later that evening, he attended the COG meeting in Cheyenne Wells. On October 7, he attended the department head meeting and the railroad open house that evening.

Mr. Beedy attended the CCI legislative committee meeting on October 3 and the railroad open house the night of the Seventh. He also received a phone call from Shawn Boyd regarding cattle being chronically out. Shawn also asked where the county was in the process of enforcing noxious weed provisions, and told him that the soil conservation district would like to meet with the Board at some time to discuss it.

Mr. Lyons said that he and Chris Monks checked on things in District One on October 6, and on the Seventh he attended the department head meeting. He also received a phone call from Scott Ravenkamp asking if the commissioners had joined the Rocky Mountain rail organization, but Mr. Lyons told him they really hadn’t given it much thought.

At 10:00 a.m., Social Services Director Colette Barksdale met with the Board to give her monthly report. She provided financial reports which were reviewed, and then invited the Board to a legislative breakfast on November 14 in Akron.

In regard to the personnel policy, Ms. Barksdale said she has two employees who are related, but according to the policy, she could request a good cause exemption from the county commissioners. She explained that neither employee was directly supervised by the other.

Ms. Barksdale discussed the Agency Letter she received from the state regarding Foster Care Parent Fees, which shows Lincoln County being allowed to keep all $24,046.33 in fees. The fees help to pay for fingerprinting of foster parents, as well as training and other items related to the foster care program. She added that bringing back someone to work on child support enforcement has helped with the collection of those fees.

A new Policy Advisory Committee has been created through CDHS in order to alleviate some of the over two hundred monthly meetings that Social Service directors and employees have been required to attend. Four sub-committees were also formed, one of which Ms. Barksdale will be a member of. Some of the meetings are actually statutory, but forming this committee has helped to alleviate some of the meetings and work groups that are not mandatory.

Ms. Barksdale’s last item of business was an explanation of the Colorado Children’s Trust Abuse & Neglect Study, which is a study being done to determine why child abuse and neglect has exceeded the state average in eight counties in the state, one of which is Lincoln. Ms. Barksdale’s feeling was that it was not because those counties had done something wrong, but more likely that the agencies were well known in the communities and more cases were actually reported. Mr. Beedy commented that the percentage of population would certainly make a difference, as well.

Ms. Barksdale wanted the Board to know that her office would be closed on October 27 for the yearly staff meeting. They will have on-call coverage, but staff will review policies at May Farms in Byers.

Mr. Lyons asked about the Social Services department purchasing bottled water from Deep Rock, when it became county policy several years ago that departments could no longer do that because of the expense. Ms. Barksdale said she had been allowing an employee to get water at the grocery store, but that the cost was actually the same—about eight dollars a bottle—as she had purchased the dispenser. Mr. Burgess said that all departments needed to follow the same policy, and since it had been a commissioner decision, he felt she should discontinue purchasing bottled water from Deep Rock.

Mr. Burgess also asked if Ms. Barksdale had received any bids for a different attorney yet, but she said she had not done anything, although she was working on it. She did let Ms. Scranton Specht know that they would be requesting bids for the position.

Ms. Devers’ reported that she and Undersheriff Gordon Nall met with Steve Stedman with the Court Administrator’s Office, and Jennifer with Arapahoe County, on October 3^rd to discuss the Court Security Grant. The request for 2009 to fund the two part-time employees and the keyless entry system were approved. They discussed the four doors entering the courtrooms from the back hallway, and the amount for the work not completed will be added to the total grant that was approved, but the hardware already installed in the three doors cannot be included. Also, Kim Graham called Ms. Devers and asked that the courthouse paging not include the courtrooms, except in emergency situations, so Ms. Devers spoke to Gary Higgins and was told that zone paging can be done to alleviate the issue. Steve Stedman told her to get the proposal to him since they can add up to $2,000 to the 2008 grant, and he also told them about training for courthouse security teams to be held on June 11 and 12, 2009, in Montrose. The Court Security Fund will pay all of the expenses. However, only four people from each county the size of Lincoln County can attend the training.

Ms. Devers also reported that Jim Covington had talked to her about buying copy paper for the courthouse. There isn’t a problem for Social Services, the courts and the DA, but he runs into a problem with the county offices. Each department submits their requests, but he always orders additional boxes since offices don’t always know exactly how much they will need and he likes to have some in reserve. He and Ms. Thaller usually split the extra amount and pay for it out of their budgets, so Jim asked Ms. Devers if the cost of the paper could come out of the Administrative budget.

Ms. Lengel said that she had chipped in and paid for a third of the paper last year as well, and Ms. Devers felt there was no reason why a portion couldn’t come out of each budget, rather than from the Administrative budget, and the Board agreed that they would prefer it not be taken from the Administrative budget.

Ms. Devers said she’d spoken to Sandy Vana-Miller with the Fish and Wildlife Service about when a black-footed ferret survey might be done south of 40/287 and was told that aerial data had been used to determine that a survey wasn’t needed north of the highway, due to the limited number of prairie dog towns there. As a result, that area was block-cleared. That won’t happen south of 40/287 because of the number of towns, so she suggested that Ms. Devers contact Mike Yeary with Wildlife Services as she thought they might be willing to do the survey for the county. Ms. Devers called Mike and left a message, but he had not returned her call.

Ms. Devers reported that she needed to turn in the renewal for the county’s Cafeteria Plan and wanted to know if the Board would like to leave the maximum deduction amount the same as 2008. The Board agreed to do so.

Ms. Devers also said that she’d talked to Greg Etl about signing something with CAT to lock in the price on the loader that the county is looking at buying, hopefully through a DOLA grant, and explained there would be a 10% increase the first of the year, but he said it couldn’t be done as the auditor would say the county had entered into a contract prior to applying for the grant funds.

There was an incident the previous day with someone in a wheelchair accessing the Clerk’s office, and Ms. Lengel asked Ms. Devers if it would be possible to put a handicap accessible door in her office. Ms. Devers called Automatic Access and it will cost approximately $1,950 to put an automatic door opener on the door.

Discussion was held regarding purchasing handicap accessible doors for other county offices such as Social Services and the Assessor’s office, or just seeing if Travis Nall could loosen the doors to where they were not so heavy and hard to open. Ms. Lengel asked about just changing the door handles, which would help, but then no one was sure if the current door keys would work. Ms. Lengel said that since her vault is actually a polling place for early voters, they should probably go ahead and install the handicap accessible door to be in compliance with HAVA.

Mr. Burgess made a motion to install a handicap accessible door in the County Clerk’s office. Mr. Beedy seconded the motion, which carried unanimously.

Ms. Devers said she’d spoken to Matt Zahor with the CDPHE about the landfill needing a storm water discharge permit and that Doug Ikenberry had just inspected the facility and didn’t think one was needed. Mr. Zahor said there are two criteria that apply in requiring a storm water discharge permit: one, that the facility accepts more than just household waste and two; there is a potential to discharge storm water. He said the county could deactivate their permit by sending a letter stating that they don’t have discharge, but they must be absolutely sure that is true.

The Board agreed that the report should be done each year so that they don’t have to worry about the liability.

Ms. Devers also said that she had adjusted budget figures and should have the rest completed for the meeting on October 16. As for that meeting, she asked if the Board would like to schedule their meeting to begin at 10:00 a.m., since she has nothing scheduled at this point except the abatement hearing in the afternoon. The Board agreed to change the time.

There was no old business, but Mr. Lyons said he would like to discuss the flowers and plants out in front of the courthouse and the fact that when they are watered, the water has to be going underneath the asphalt. The decision was made to remove all the plants and Mr. Beedy suggested getting some large flower pots.

Mr. Burgess said he’d gotten a letter from Jo Downy regarding COG members being up for re-election and asked if there were suggestions for another representative. Del Beattie is currently a member and Mr. Burgess said that if there were other interested parties then the COG board would need to vote on one.

Also, Mr. Burgess asked Mr. Beedy if he would be able to attend the RSVP recognition dinner, as it has been re-scheduled for December 20 and Mr. Burgess will be gone.

Mr. Burgess said they had discussed flex time in the various departments at the department head meeting the previous day, and both he and Mr. Lyons came to the conclusion that the elected officials should be allowed to run their offices the way they wanted to, as long as the hours were well publicized. Mr. Beedy agreed, and Ms. Devers asked about the Social Services department. The Board felt that since they have control of that department, they would check with Ms. Barksdale to see how she is handling it currently, or if she even feels that she needs flex time for her employees.

Since Mr. Burgess had received an e-mail regarding the courthouse and hospital solar power feasibility study with Eco Sol, he provided a copy for the other board members to review.

Mr. Kimble provided a copy of the letter he had written to Linneburs regarding their noxious weed problem, as well as information he had compiled regarding rodents and predatory animals. The Board felt that the letter to Linneburs outlined the situation clearly, so they approved of Mr. Kimble sending out the certified letters. As for the prairie dog issue, Mr. Kimble said he simply had not gotten a good response from any of his colleagues. Apparently, there have been no cases or anything that he could research, so he felt that Lincoln County could interpret the statutes as well as anyone else until a judge said otherwise.

A brief discussion was held regarding the exemption from subdivision regulations that Roy Murphy requested. The decision was made to contact Mr. Murphy and possibly have him come back and meet with the Board again.

At 1:30 p.m., Sheriff Nestor met with the Board to discuss the 2008 and 2009 budgets for his department. First of all, the sheriff stated that C.R.S. 17-26-104.5 gives him the authority to assess a medical treatment fee to anyone held in the county jail who requests any type of medical assistance. That includes sick calls, doctor visits, hospital visits, prescriptions and dental care. He added that inmates are also responsible for self-inflicted injuries and pre-existing conditions. The sheriff felt that the problem with letting the provider know that the inmate was responsible for payment was that some facilities may then refuse to treat one of their inmate patients, thus causing an even greater liability. Sheriff Nestor said he would prefer to pay the bill and then file a restitution claim against the party. That way, if they did not pay the bill, they would end up back in jail. Mr. Kimble suggested he speak with the D.A. and the judges to see if that would be acceptable to them and asked if the county would need an ordinance to do so. The sheriff replied that it is in state statue so they would not need to adopt anything, adding that the only thing the county would be responsible for are trips to the State Hospital. He asked that Mr. Kimble research the issue as well, since he wanted to be sure before implementing anything new.

Sheriff Nestor provided a proposal from Consolidated Correction Foodservices for inmate meals, stating that they would be ninety cents per meal and they had guaranteed that price for five years. He felt they could not go wrong with the service, as the contract amount would also actually pay for a full time employee, including their benefits and workman’s comp insurance. Sheriff Nestor estimated a yearly cost of between seventy-five and eighty thousand dollars, which was a savings of at least twenty thousand dollars; probably more. He added that Prowers County has used the service for ten years and has had no complaints.

Sheriff Nestor asked if it would be acceptable to purchase some new computers, as he would really like to get his data off the ones that belong to Mr. Hagan in case he decides to come and get them. The Board agreed that the sheriff could use the money in the line item set up for computer lease agreements to purchase new computer equipment. Mr. Lyons suggested they send the letter regarding abandoned property once the sheriff gets the new units.

The Board began approving the remaining expense vouchers for the month of September, and Ms. Devers commented that she had spoken with Wally Piccone with GOCO about permanently affixing one of the mobile restroom units to a foundation, but he really could not tell her whether or not that would be looked favorably upon regarding a grant application.

Ms. Barksdale returned to the meeting and the Board asked what her current policy was regarding flex time for her employees, and she responded that she really doesn’t use flex time except for two employees who are exempt from overtime. She said she does not have anyone working four-tens, nor does she plan to allow that. At this time, they work out their comp hours by either coming in late or leaving early, but they try to get the time used up in the same month that it is accrued. The Board asked that she let them know if she decided to change anything.

Ms. Barksdale also asked if the Board would allow her to receive forty dollars for meals that she did not have receipts for, as she had attended a conference in which everything but four days of meals was included. She had purchased fresh produce at a roadside stand and did not get a receipt. The Board allowed Ms. Barksdale to turn in a voucher for forty dollars.

CLAIMS

With no further business to come before the Board, the meeting was adjourned until 10:00 a.m. on October 16, 2008.

________________________________________ ________________________________

Corinne M. Lengel, Clerk to the Board Ted Lyons, Chairman