January 11, 2024, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the January 11, 2024, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

All commissioners were present.

The first agenda item was Bid Opening -240111 Pest Control.

There were 6 vendors contacted for this bid. There were several bids received with a wide variety of pricing.

The Commission voted unanimously to table these bids so they could be reviewed by the Maintenance Department.

The second agenda item was Bid Opening- 240111 Annex Roof.

This bid was to replace the roof on the “historic” Commission Annex Building.

The Commissioners mentioned several of the bids. Admire Roofing was for $40,000 and another bid was for $24,000. I couldn’t catch the name of the vendor. (You get what you pay for, folks.)

This item was also tabled for review by the Maintenance Department.

The third item was Ratify December 2023 Tax Abatements.

The Commission approved the abatements unanimously.

The fourth agenda item was Discuss Use of County Owned Property/Buildings.

Presiding Commissioner Skelton stated that the Commission had looked at the county building in Montreal. It has three tall bays and four shorter bays. Skelton felt the three tall bays would be useful for the Road and Bridge Department. There is also a central building on the lot. Skelton asked Sheriff Helms if he planned to base the E-911 office out of that property.

Helms explained that it would be a good location for E-911 to store all of their sign equipment.

Skelton inquired if having E-911 in Montreal would hinder their access to the public?

Helms responded that they generally deal with the public by phone. The E-911 personnel are rarely at the courthouse because they are usually out in the field.

Sheriff’s Captain Bailey stated that the Sheriff’s Office had been using that building to store their excess vehicles and keep them out of the elements. The Sheriff added that the bays on the property were all filled with a variety of excess equipment. That has all since been sold or scrapped. According to Bailey, the Sheriff’s vehicles stored out in the Camden County EMA lot (a different parking lot) are older vehicles that are going to be sold off by Enterprise once the new fleet management program begins.

Commissioner Skelton said that Road and Bridge needs the three taller bays to store their road graders. It’s important to keep them in a higher operating temperature environment that will allow them to start up easier.

Sheriff Helms promptly informed Skelton that the road graders wouldn’t fit in the tall bays.

He stated, “They won’t fit. 6 inches. We measured.”

The Road and Bridge Administrator responded that the graders are a tight fit height-wise, but they can remove the lights off the top of the cabs to get them in there.

Sheriff Helms seemed skeptical.

Skelton was fine with the Sheriff’s Office using the smaller bays to store two vehicles each.

Sheriff Helms then mentioned that he had one more question if it “won’t upset the apple cart.”

(This is commonly heard uttered right before a person deliberately upsets an apple cart.)

The Sheriff asked if he would be able to recoup the money his office spent on the property? Or was the county just going to come in and take it?

Skelton answered that Missouri statute states that if property is purchased by the county, it belongs to the county. It doesn’t matter what fund the money came from. All county property can be used as determined by the Commission. Although the property was purchased in 2012, county money was used and there didn’t need to be any repayment of money for it.

Sheriff Helms retorted that when the property was purchased for the Sheriff’s Office, Road and Bridge paid $13,000 and the Sheriff’s Office paid $43,000. Sheriff Helms acknowledged what the statute said concerning county property, but he just didn’t think that it was fair that the Commission was taking a larger part of the property for Road and Bridge. He felt like the Commission had “come up out of nowhere” and wanted his building.

Presiding Commissioner Skelton objected to this and said it had been discussed throughout last year. This wasn’t a surprise. When Skelton went to the Montreal property this last summer, he observed that there was a great deal of personal property, scrap property, and pallets of wood pellets stored there. Since the county doesn’t own any wood pellet stoves, he felt this was not appropriate use of county property. Skelton’s perspective was that a more appropriate use of the property would be for Road and Bridge storage and the use of the bathroom facilities for both Sheriff and Road and Bridge personnel.

Sheriff Helms said that was fine and he was not going to argue with Skelton about it (Too late).

He said several times that it just wasn’t fair and he had his right to speak his mind about it. Helms offered the Sheriff’s Range as an example and wondered if the Commission would consider putting buildings out at that location and saying, “Let’s take that!”?

Skelton explained that it wouldn’t be a “taking,” but made it clear that in the future, if the Commission determined there was a need to put a building out at the Sheriff’s range property, they may do that very thing.

Commissioner Gohagan then spoke up to clarify that the Sheriff still intended for E-911 to use part of the Montreal property.

Sheriff Helms responded, “I don’t know if I will or not now. I don’t want to upset the applecart” (Way too late).

Commissioner Gohagan asked the Sheriff if he “was out” if he didn’t get the whole building? Gohagan then asked what part of the building would be fair according to him?

Presiding Commissioner Skelton said that they were trying to find a compromise on the use of the property between the Sheriff’s Office and Road and Bridge. Mike Lloyd from E-911 appeared like magic at the meeting. Skelton asked him if the Montreal facility would meet his needs? Lloyd said that the space there would be very useful for them.

Skelton also mentioned that there is a lot of property being stored on the Camden County EMA lot. I was intrigued to hear that there are two Coast Guard trailers parked there and nobody can get in touch with the owners (I think we finally figured out how the Coast Guard got their boats into the Lake of the Ozarks. One more Camden County mystery solved.).

A discussion followed about locations where the Sheriff’s Office could store evidence in the future. Ideally, such a location would be physically secure, under surveillance, and climate controlled.

Presiding Commissioner Skelton reviewed the plans for the Montreal facility and, after the back and forth, it seemed that both sides had come to some form of agreement about how its use would be divided between the two departments. There was also a discussion concerning utilities and other improvements that would have to be made to the buildings. Skelton suggested that the Montreal main gate would have a code panel that would require a PIN code to enter, and would take photographs of vehicles entering through the gate.

The conversation then segued into the fifth agenda item: Discuss County-Wide Fuel Usage, Expectations, Policies.

According to Presiding Commissioner Skelton, there is going to be an effort to better track fuel usage and vehicle mileage countywide. They are considering various policies to consolidate and secure the existing fuel points for Road and Bridge, possibly including a county fuel truck that would fuel the county’s road graders in the field.

Commissioner Gohagan read off the county fuel costs for the past four years:

2020: $286,000

2021: $481,000

2022: $651,000

2023: $703,000

Gohagan is going to try and get information for the gallons purchased by Camden County to get a better idea of how the county’s usage has increased. The Administrator of Road and Bridge said their current system is able to record mileage, but it isn’t currently set up to do that.

They are going to look into new systems that will let them track all of their vehicles through GPS.

The former Administrator of Road and Bridge, Lee Schuman, was at the meeting and he described the system they had a few years ago. It tracked fuel usage per vehicle, required a PIN entry, and recorded vehicle mileage when each vehicle was fueled. Fuel points had flow meters that recorded their use. GPS signals would track the use of equipment. For whatever reason, these systems fell out of use, the flow meters on the large fuel tanks froze and went un-repaired, and nobody ever followed up on them.

Presiding Commissioner Skelton stressed that it was important for the Camden County to establish controls and systems to track all of these aspects of county operations. They are the caretakers of the county revenue, and it is their responsibility to make sure that the county’s resources are being used responsibly and with integrity. Commissioner Gohagan agreed with this and said there is a lot of “tightening up” that they need to do.

And that was that.