August 16, 2022 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the August 16, 2022 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

All commissioners were present.

The first agenda item was the Assessor Bid – Assessment List Printing and Mailing. There was one bid for the property assessment mailing for $35,934. This bid included the first mailing and the second mailing for people who don’t send in a response to the first mailing.

This bid was tabled so the Assessor could have time to review it.

The second agenda item was from Page Office Supply for $6,223. This bid was for office supplies and office furniture. Commissioner Hasty was surprised there was only one bid for this item.

This bid was approved unanimously.

(Just for information, the bids arrive in sealed envelopes. They are opened and read during the Commission meeting. It’s not unusual for the bid requestor to ask the Commission that their bid approval be tabled so they have time to look over the bids, evaluate them, and make a recommendation to the Commission at a later meeting.)

The final agenda item was for ARPA funds.

Osage Beach sent a representative from their police department to make an ARPA request.

They requested 11 new laptops. 9 of them would be assigned to the police vehicles and 2 would be assigned to ambulances. The laptops are used to write reports, receive dispatched calls, and run records checks. The current laptops are outdated and need to be replaced. This equipment would cost $34,900.

Osage Beach also needs new iPads for their city inspectors.

The total cost for all of this new equipment would be $46,830.26.

The Auditor told the commissioners that ARPA funds were available for this purchase.

The Commission approved this ARPA request unanimously.

A member of the audience asked the Commission why they weren’t using BKD to provide a summary of the current ARPA expenditures to the public? Are they using BKD for all of the services they promised to provide Camden County in their contract? (BKD is Camden County’s paid ARPA consultant.)

The commissioners and the Auditor responded that BKD is helping them with reporting requirements and filing procedures for ARPA funds.

She asked if she could get a copy of the contract with BKD?

The commissioners agreed to send her a copy. They also agreed to publish a report from the county summarizing the ARPA expenditures for Camden County.

She then asked the commissioners when Camden County would be publishing an “Earned Value Analysis” for the Camden County Courthouse renovation project? Nobody (including me) knew what that was. She explained that it is a periodic (often monthly) analysis that compares the spent project money versus the earned value of the project as it progresses.

Commissioner Williams stated that Brian Willey will put out a report tracking labor and materials costs on a weekly basis.

She responded that the Earned Value Analysis is usually published monthly. It sounded like this analysis is more than a simple statement of current total expenditures. It is more like a progressive comparison of what the county is getting in return for the money it’s spending on the project.

The final item was Old Business for the Commission. There were some ARPA denial letters that needed to be signed before they were mailed out to those heartbroken ARPA requestors who weren’t able to get a slice of the ARPA pie. Commissioner Gohagan asked that the letters be tabled until the Commission received written justification from BKD on why the requests were inappropriate for ARPA funding.

The Commission voted unanimously to table the denial letters.

And that was that.