January 9, 2022 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the January 9, 2023 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

All commissioners were present. The meeting took place in the Commission Building’s conference room. There were five people present besides the normal Camden County employees who attend these meetings.

The first agenda item was road petitions.

The first road petition was for Elm Park Ln. The young couple who submitted this petition were in attendance with their cute baby girl. The Commission approved the petition unanimously and they left before their luck ran out with the little one.

The second road petition was to vacate Lakeshore Drive on Horseshoe Bend.

The Commission approved the petition unanimously.

The next two petitions were incomplete. One of them needed an amended legal description and the other had neither a legal description nor a petition attached. They were both tabled unanimously.

The next two agenda items were October and December Tax Abatements.

These were approved unanimously by the Commission.

The next two agenda items were the Sheriff’s Law Enforcement Agreements with Four Seasons and the Four Seasons POA.

Sheriff Helms told the Commission that these contracts were the same as last year’s contracts. The Camden County Sheriff’s Office is budgeted to receive a total of $227,500 in supplemental revenue from Horseshoe Bend in 2023.

These law enforcement agreements were signed by the Commission.

The sixth agenda item was a Board of Adjustment appointment for John Beckett.

Commissioner Gohagan stated that Beckett had performed well on that board before.

Beckett’s appointment was approved 2-0 with Commissioner Williams abstaining. Williams declined to explain why he chose to abstain.

The seventh agenda item for IT Services.

Currently, IT services for Camden County is supervised by the County Auditor. The Commission intends to assume the responsibility for supervising IT Services.

The County Auditor read from a statement that there had been recent insinuations that he had taken on tasks outside of his statutory responsibilities. He only assumed these tasks at the direction of the Commission. The Auditor explained that he was glad the Commission was taking over IT services.

The Commissioners expressed their concerns that the Auditor had become over-burdened with too many additional tasks. Presiding Commissioner Skelton stated that he intends to perform his duties as a Commissioner as a full time job.

This agenda item was approved unanimously.

There was then a conversation between the elected officials and the Commission about the Camden County employee handbook and how the new handbook handled the issue of closing the county buildings during inclement weather.

If the county closes the buildings, they have to give the employees compensatory time for that work day. (And it sounded like they still have to give additional compensatory time to the employees who would be required to work that day anyway?)

If they keep the buildings open, the employees would be given the option of using their saved time to not come to work due to bad weather. The downside of that is that the employees might all call out from work and citizens would risk their necks getting to the courthouse only to discover that nobody could make it into work. Should probably call first.

Hopefully, they’ll get it figured out.

And that was that.