I attended the February 22, 2024, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.
Commissioners Skelton and Gohagan were present.
The first three agenda items were for Sheriff’s grants. Two were MODOT grants for impaired driving for $10,747.20 and $73,219.46. The third MODOT grant was for Hazardous Moving Violations in the amount of $8,597.76.
A deputy from the Sheriff’s Office explained that they were going to make some changes to the second grant so he asked to take that item off the agenda. They planned to add a new vehicle into that grant so he needed to get a bid price before they submitted it to the Commission for approval.
The two impaired driving grants were for DWI enforcement. According to the deputy, this will take the form of extra patrol units saturating target areas, not stationary checkpoints. The grant also reflected a change to “double time” overtime from “time and a half” overtime to make it consistent with other Missouri agencies’ impaired driving grants.
I thought I would add some interesting statistics on this topic:
2023 County Health Rankings for Missouri for Excessive Drinking. Camden County features prominently. I did not modify the colors on these maps.:
Forbes Advisor ranked Missouri as the 9th worst state for drunk driving. Missouri has the 11th highest rate of drunk drivers involved in fatal traffic crashes and and the 11th highest rate of traffic deaths caused by drivers with a BAC between 0.01 and 0.07.
2023 County Health Rankings for Alcohol-Impaired Driving Deaths. Morgan County and Miller County are prominent:
In Missouri, Camden County from 2020-2022 ranked 12th in the state for total crashes involving alcohol (252). The county was tied for 14th in fatal alcohol-involved traffic crashes and tied for 5th in disabling alcohol-involved traffic crashes. If you examine the alcohol-involved crashes solely located in unincorporated county areas, Camden County is usually in the top five every year.
The third grant was for Hazardous Moving Violations. It turns out that this does not deal with hazardous material hauling. Instead, this grant pays for extra enforcement of traffic violations that Missouri labels hazardous: improper turns, following too close, failure to stop, failure to obey a traffic signal, failure to yield, careless driving, red light running, speeding, failure to obey school bus stop arm, etc.
The Commission unanimously approved the two grants that were ready for approval.
The fourth agenda item was 2024 Security Contract between Village of Four Seasons and Sheriff.
There was no change in this contract from last year. It is renewed annually. The Village will be contracting for exactly the same level of enhanced patrol services they received in 2023.
This contract was approved by the Commission.
The 5th agenda item was 5-Year Renewal of Time Clock Contract – Andrews Technology HMS, Inc.
This time system would use NovaTime. The County Auditor said they could elect not to use the facial recognition option when employees checked in. Instead, the system could be modified to use the camera to take a photo and the employees would enter a PIN or use a badge ID to check in. The system would not store any employee biometric data.
Commissioner Skelton stressed that he wanted to know when employees were checking in for work and where they were when they checked in. He said that it is an issue the county needed to address with Road and Bridge because in the past, employees were leaving work early and “going and doing their own thing” when they were supposed to be working for the county.
The Auditor said that the new system will allow the employees in the field to clock in with their cell phones using an App and would record their check-in location based on the location of their phones. Commissioner Skelton observed that this would mostly be used by deputies and road grader operators. The majority of county employees check in on their computers at work.
Commissioner Gohagan expressed disappointment that the vendor wasn’t present at the meeting to answer questions. He had concerns about some of the implementation and maintenance costs included within the contract.
The County Auditor said the company was planning on raising prices at the end of the year and this five year contract gave the county an opportunity to lock in current pricing before that happened.
(These words have come from the lips of every vendor since the beginning of time. I’m pretty sure this is why the Pharaoh signed a five year contract for his pyramid bricks.)
Laughlin further explained that the contract will provide updated software that will make it easier to input, process, and track the accrued time for the county’s employees.
This contract was approved unanimously by the Commission.
Presiding Commissioner Skelton summarized his recent experience while attending the National Association of Counties conference in Washington, D.C. He met with Representative Jason Smith and learned that deadlines for ARPA federal money would not be extended. In fact, that money needs to be spent because the federal government is eager to pull back unused ARPA funds. Skelton also spoke at length about his concern for protecting water rights, current large scale projects that will impact those rights, and other issues facing the country.
County Auditor Laughlin said that he had heard the same update regarding ARPA money. There will be no extensions for spending ARPA money. According to Laughlin, Camden County has $300,000 in ARPA money left, but some of that that money is earmarked to pay for the county’s security upgrades.
Presiding Commissioner Skelton mentioned that some of the money will also be spent on monitoring the county’s fuel tanks. They plan to move the road grader fuel tanks off of the property of employees and consolidate them in locations where “they can keep an eye on them.”
Skelton gave a recap of the week’s Commission working session with Frisco Fuel, the county’s fuel provider. The fuel monitoring systems are expensive, costing approximately $2,800 per unit to monitor a fuel tank.
Commissioner Gohagan added that the county’s current system has monitoring capabilities that weren’t being utilized previously. Commissioner Skelton said that the Montreal facility now has a gate installed that is locked every night and weekend.
According to Skelton, Road and Bridge Administrator Pat Wolf was at the Road and Bridge South Shed facility on a recent Saturday morning to unlock the gate and two former county employees showed up with a truckload of trash to throw into the county’s dumpster. When they saw Pat was there and the gate was locked, they turned around and left. He didn’t want to name names.
Someone in the audience begged him, “Come on! Tell us now!”
Skelton, like any Missourian telling a story, couldn’t help himself and dished, “Former Road and Bridge Administrator Gary Webster was one of the trucks full of trash.” The audience responded with gusto. He hoped that stricter security and monitoring of the county’s facilities would put a halt to such activities.
In Old Business, Commissioner Gohagan stated that the Village of Four Seasons had found a contract dating from 2011 between the Village of Four Seasons and Camden County that gave the Camden County Planning and Zoning Department the authority to enforce the Village’s flood plain management ordinance. According to Gohagan, Camden County has one employee trained as a flood plain manager and three more County Planning and Zoning employees are currently studying to pass the test.
County Attorney Jeff Green will review the contract and the Commission will address it next week.
And that was that.
Among the Dogwoods 
Thank you for posting the meeting events. ________________________________
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