September 7, 2021

Kiowa County Commissioners Meeting
September 7, 2021

John Bertram, David White, Bert Lowery, Kristi Cooper, Chay Howard, Jay Schmidt, Kendal Lothman, Theron McKinney and Matt Christenson attended the meeting.

Consent agenda included: Agenda, Payroll reports, Accounts Payable reports and Commissioner minutes of 08/02/2021 & 08/14/21.

After the prayer given by Tony Factor, John opened the meeting at 9:00. Bert moved to approve the consent agenda as presented and David seconded, motion passed unanimously.

Jay Schmidt came and presented updates for the Public Works Department which included payroll changes for Duane Maas(merit) and Wayne Burnham(merit), changing T St to an open range road from 55th Ave through 57th Ave, cleaning culverts at J St. and 45th Ave, grader maintenance cause road maintenance delays and N St. has been bladed and material hauled in since Mr. Dirks came in at the last meeting. Bert moved to approve the payroll changes as presented and John seconded, motion passed unanimously.

Kendal Lothman came to presented payroll changes for K Amaro, S Kost and Michael Tedder(merit) for approval. After review Bert moved to approve them as presented and John seconded, motion passed unanimously. Next he requested a 5 minute executive session regarding personnel matters. John moved to go into executive at 9:21 to discuss personnel matters for non-elected personnel for 5 minutes and Bert seconded, motion passed unanimously. Regular session began at 9:26 with no action taken.

Theron McKinney came to discuss setting chain of command for the fire department countywide and informed them that he will be holding a fire meeting this evening and explained how he is planning on setting officers.

Matt Christenson came to discuss the courthouse capital outlay fund which he will be using to purchase a test server platform. After some discussion it was by consensus to allow him to have authority to spend $5000 on a new test server platform.

Break called till 9:55

During Commissioner discussion Dave spoke about what they could do to help reduce any impact on insurance premiums increasing due to COVID-19. They discussed cash incentives, the federal approach, paid time off due to employees being quarantined, or don’t make any changes. After much discussion Bert moved to allow paid administrative COVID pay if an employee is required to be quarantined from COVID-19 who is unable to work remotely and those who can work remotely will receive regular pay during work hours and John seconded, motion passed unanimously.

Meeting adjourned at 10:38