January 18, 2024, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the January 18, 2024, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

All commissioners were present. The first two items were for bids that were received at a prior meeting.

The first agenda item was Bid Award – 240111 Pest Control.

After a careful review, the Commission unanimously approved the bid from All American Termite and Pest Control.

The second agenda item was Bid Award – 240111 Annex Roof.

This bid was to re-roof the roof on the historic Commission Annex Building. The bid was for $24,820 from The Wright Roofing Company.

This bid was unanimously accepted by the Commission.

The final agenda item was Presentation by Physical Security Vendor – Justice Center/Sheriff’s Office.

This was a presentation by Mike Buydos from Elliott Data Systems. He was a physical security vendor with a proposal to upgrade the camera and door systems at the county administrative center.

Buydos told the commissioners he had performed a walk-through with the Sheriff’s Office and the Maintenance Department. His proposal planned to add one camera, but would otherwise use all of the existing security equipment. The card readers would be replaced and moved over to the Mercury system. Buydos recommended that the county migrate to a smart card system for its access control.

Customer support from Elliott would be Monday through Friday during normal office hours. Pricing was based on standard state contract pricing.

The representative from the Maintenance Department explained that the previous security work had been done by a little company in Lebanon, but their customer service had been inadequate.

The proposed cost for the work would be $85,000. Commissioner Gohagan asked where the money was coming from? Nobody seemed to know the answer to that question.

Presiding Commissioner Skelton inquired if Elliott Data Systems could also establish a security system at the county’s Montreal facility? Buydos responded that they could do that.

Skelton mentioned that County Road and Bridge grader operators have 500 gallon fuel tanks that are used to store county fuel at their houses. The Commission plans to reduce the number of those fuel tanks and Skelton wanted to place surveillance and access control equipment on the remaining tanks.

(I think we all know what this is about. It will be interesting to see what the county’s fuel usage numbers will look like once Commissioner Gohagan gets the annual gallon report from the county’s fuel vendor.)

Commissioner Skelton explained that while he wants to put more security in place, he understood that it’s important to not invest too much money into security. The money sunk into security needs to be proportionate to the value of the losses it’s preventing.

Buydos explained that the access systems they provide can have access cards and PIN numbers or just the access cards. It’s just a question of what features have been activated.

Commissioner Williams did not have any further questions.

Commissioner Gohagan again asked where in the budget the money for this security proposal was going to come from? He inquired if the Auditor could come into the meeting and answer some of his questions.

Jordan went next door to find the Auditor, but she came back empty-handed. The Auditor was not in the building that day.

(Maybe he was auditing something.)

The commissioners voted unanimously to table this proposal so they could review it.

And that was that.

So we learned at this meeting that Camden County Road and Bridge employees had 500 gallon fuel tanks installed at their houses that were used to fuel up their road graders with county fuel. One can infer from the Presiding Commissioner’s evident urgency to establish access controls and accountability over the fuel stored in these tanks that this arrangement was not working very well.

When were these fuel tanks installed and who approved their installation? Is there any evidence that the county’s fuel was being used for personal use or sold to private parties? Hopefully, we will soon learn the answers to these questions.

The insidious thing about corruption is that it always starts with the little things. Left unchecked, it never fails to grow and expand.