County ups current budget by $550,000

Posted 3/29/16

On March 15, commissioners increased the current year’s budget by roughly $550,000 with six projects that range from starting to straighten a crooked South Fork road to replacing Park County Sheriff’s deputies’ aging radios.

Five of the six …

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County ups current budget by $550,000

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Before starting some potentially steep budget cuts for the coming fiscal year, Park County commissioners have approved more than a half-million dollars in additional spending for this year.

On March 15, commissioners increased the current year’s budget by roughly $550,000 with six projects that range from starting to straighten a crooked South Fork road to replacing Park County Sheriff’s deputies’ aging radios.

Five of the six were either approved for more funding than originally budgeted or were new requests.

The projects — totaling more than $1.24 million — will generally be paid for with state dollars known as consensus funding.

The county had planned to use its general funds on the projects that had been in the budget; paying for them with state dollars should allow about $600,000 to stay in the county’s accounts.

Commissioners had expressed some unease about whether the state could potentially decide to take back the consensus funding, approved in 2014.

“I would rather the money be sitting in our reserve account, in cash, than (as) a promise from two years ago from the state,” Commissioner Loren Grosskopf explained earlier this month.

However, a couple commissioners objected to spending so much of the state money.

“I don’t think the state’s going to rush in and take money that’s allotted to us. It seems like we’re just grasping at ways to spend this money,” Commission Chairman Tim French said at one point.

Commissioner Joe Tilden wondered if the county should be saving more of the state money for future projects.

The majority of the commissioners, however, saw these six projects as necessary:

• $594,000 to remove a part of a hill on the Southfork Road (County Road 6WX). That’s roughly $250,000 more than had been in the road and bridge budget, said Park County Engineer Brian Edwards.

The project serves two purposes: first, contractor AM Dirtworks will grade the hill and clear the way for that section of road to be straightened out. It lies about 16 miles outside of Cody, on Andy Martin Hill, and “when the snow and ice get bad, it’s a pretty bad hill,” Edwards said.

Secondly, he said the soil being carved out of the hill will net the county about 128,000 tons of crushed gravel and chips — likely enough to last for a few years.

The county has agreed to realign the road by 2019 as part of a deal with a neighboring landowner.

• $301,821 to convert the county’s old paper and microfilm records to digital and electronically searchable ones. The project has ended up well over the budget estimate of $170,000.

In January, the county signed a $211,320 contract with the Minnesota-based firm ArcaSearch to convert some 400,000 old pages and microfilm images to digital records. However, it was later discovered that the county had mistakenly left out the records from 1976 to 1995 — some 250,000 more pages. Adding in those records will cost an extra $90,501.

When the county explained the project to ArcaSearch, “we basically went with what the last administration put together and I should have started over from scratch,” Clerk Colleen Renner said of leaving out the documents.

County officials believed the revised price was fair and that ArcaSearch remained the best and cheapest contractor for the job.

• $120,000 to re-do the deteriorated employee parking lot south of the county courthouse. A total of $100,000 had already been budgeted.

Commissioners all agreed the project needs to be done, but differed on whether to budget another $20,000. That’s to potentially reshape the lot to allow it to be more easily cleared of snow.

Commissioners Lee Livingston and Tilden wanted to leave the funding at $100,000, but commissioners French, Grosskopf and Bucky Hall wanted the option to potentially reshape the lot.

• $100,000 to replace the radios in Park County Sheriff’s deputies’ squad cars; the new equipment hadn’t been in the budget.

Park County Chief Information Officer Mike Conners said the 20 current radios “have been failing and are continuing to fail” with replacement parts no longer available. They’ve got an estimated life of seven to eight years and are now between 12 and 14 years old, he said.

Grosskopf said it could become a safety concern.

“I want to get it done before you have a radio that fails when you really need it,” he said.

Livingston and Hall were also supportive, with French and Tilden voicing opposition that it wasn’t a need.

“I don’t think we need to rush in and buy $100,000 worth of radios,” French said.

• $80,000 to repave the asphalt at the Park County Fairgrounds.

The project had already been in this year’s budget, but Tilden suggested taking it out.

“We had money then (at budget time). We don’t have money now,” he said.

Hall was among those who voted to go forward.

“We’re almost there on the fairgrounds, and I’d be supportive of continuing to upgrade the fairgrounds,” he said.

• $50,000 for a new back-up system for the computer network. The new request drew universal support.

“With all the problems we’ve been having of late, this is something that we desperately need,” Tilden said.

Malicious software known as ransomware slipped onto the county’s computer network last month and required the county to restore some of its data from backup. Conners called the incident “a really rude awakening.”

The only project to be rejected by commissioners was a request from District Court Judge Steven Cranfill to spend $80,000 upgrading the courthouse’s security measures. They said the judge hadn’t spoken to them about the proposal.

If all the projects cost as much as expected, the county would still have a few hundred thousand dollars of state consensus money remaining.

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