Election certified, speed limit changes north of Webster City
Salary increase denied during meeting
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The Hamilton County Supervisors met Tuesday morning with a brief agenda that included the certification of election results, a change in the speed limit north of Webster City and a personnel action.
Usually decisions from the supervisors are unanimous decisions, approving contracts, requests, and other issues.
This Tuesday, there was a unanimous decision to deny a raise for a supervisor in the Hamilton County Jail.
There was no discussion as to why the request was denied.
According to Hamilton County Sheriff Alex Pruismann, the request was due to an effort to reward and retain a supervisor for the work done to raise revenue in the department. This revenue stream is a line item in the jail budget.
According to Pruisman, the annual revenue budgeted for the jails is $35,000. Last month their revenue was $13,715, and is projected for over $20,000 for the month of September, which is nearly the entire income for the year.
Pruismann says that additional income is due to work that has increased with more individuals coming from Polk county. This also involves more workload for those working in the jail.
"We are busier than we have ever been," he said, "It's a slap in the face, when we are being asked to make more money to offset the budget."
Pruisman said the increase requested would put the supervisor just slightly over the hourly rate being paid to the staff she supervises, who are guaranteed wage increases through a union agreement.
Hamilton County Supervisor April Ely said in an interview after the meeting that the request for the increase should have been handled during the budget meetings earlier in the year.
"I'm not saying no forever," said Ely, "There is an appropriate time for this."
The departmental squeeze comes at a time when the Supervisors agreement with the Briggs Woods Conference center caterer, Schonert Corporate Caterers, begins a $10,000 management fee agreement, a fee that will be paid each month, according to the bills approved by the Supervisors in August which was published in Tuesday's Daily Freeman Journal.
Ely responded that this is still saving the county money. "We don't have any employees any more, we don't have any cleaning, the set-up or responsibility of the management of the facility," she said. "He's functioning as a department head."
In other business, the Supervisors certified the two referendums held earlier in the month regarding the work needed by the High School.
According to Kim Schaa, Hamilton County auditor, the only incidents establishing a final count was when two ballots jammed in the machine.
"Since we knew it wasn't a machine error, it didn't change the numbers," said Schaa
The total numbers for Hamilton, Wright and Webster County were:
Public measure JC vote to levy a PPEL tax of .57 for 3 years: 870 yes, 558 no;
Public measure JD vote toto continue for 10 years a levy of $1.34: 828 yes, 600 no
Public measure JE vote was to authorize the use of the Advanced Vision for Education fund for the building or infrastructure: 890 yes, 542 no.
The County Supervisors voted to certify the election.
Also the speed limit was reduced on 210th Street, north of Webster City from 60 mph to 50 mph based on a study which was requested by a private citizen.
Hamilton County Engineer Ryan Weidemann reported to the county that the study was completed and made the following recommendations.
"We have conducted an engineering speed study on 210th Street (D20) from Fisher Avenue (R27) to White Fox Road (R33). We evaluated the geometric makeup of the road, traffic characteristics, intersection sight distances, crash history, and measured the 85th percentile speed using a traffic / speed counter borrowed from Webster County," said Weidemann in his report.
"Based on a combination of the prevailing speed chosen by the vast majority of drivers and sight distance concerns at Blueberry Hill Road and 212th Street, my recommendation is to establish a 50 MPH speed limit on this entire 2-mile portion of road," he continued. "This resolution establishes this speed limit. In addition, we recommend moving the 45 MPH speed limit on White Fox Road approximately 500 feet north near the 210th Street intersection, because the current sign location partially obscures vision to the south.
Two appointments were also made to the Veterans Affairs Commission. Those appointments were Troy Duffy and Tim Zahn