January 28, 2025, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the January 28, 2025, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

All commissioners were present.

Charlie Dickman was introduced as the new County Attorney for Camden County. He was born in Rolla, MO and graduated from law school at Mizzou. He is a specialist in employment law.

There is also a new Camden County Emergency Management Agency director, but he wasn’t present to be introduced so we’ll talk about him next meeting.

The first agenda item was “EMA – Annual Subaward Agreement – Generator Load Testing – $1,030.00.”

This expense pays for the annual load testing of EMA’s generator. It is funded by a Homeland Security grant.

The Commission approved this expenditure unanimously.

The second agenda item was “Budget Amendment – County Employee Health Fund.”

Commissioner Gohagan stated that the Treasurer informed the Commission that the county-funded health insurance plan has run out of money again. They expect to receive reimbursements from the county’s stop-loss policy for approximately $291,000 in claims that were submitted in December.

Four county plan members hit their individual stop-loss insurance deductibles of $67,500 at the end of 2024. The higher prices from the county’s previous prescription plan are also responsible for a portion of the unexpected costs.

(This usually means those four stop-loss people will be nicely asked to leave the county plan and join Obamacare and the county will pick up their Affordable Care Act tab. Just part of the shell game the medical plan uses to keep costs from expensive members from bankrupting the plan. Hitting stop-loss amounts will probably cause the stop-loss insurance company to raise premiums next year since insurance companies aren’t in the business of losing money.)

The Commission voted unanimously to transfer $400,000 to cover the additional expenses from the medical plan.

The third agenda item was “2025 MAC Dues – $9,488.00”

This was for payment of membership dues to the Missouri Association of Counties.

(MAC usually has at least one convention at Margaritaville every year. It gives the elected officials from the prairie counties an excuse to come to the lake and blow off some steam.)

MAC also has a very educational slide show called:

Staying Out of Trouble

Some elected officials might want to read it.

This was approved unanimously.

The final agenda item was “Maintenance to discuss parking for county employees.”

The Maintenance Department supervisor proposed converting part of the front lawn of the courthouse into parking spaces. According to him, the only room for parking on busy court days is in the very distant lots and people don’t want to walk that far.

Presiding Commissioner Skelton explained that the parking spaces currently in front of the courthouse belong to Camdenton, but the city was willing to give that property to the county to maintain.

There was a suggestion that better signage in the parking lot directing people to government buildings might help. Some observed that the front lawn grass has finally started looking good and it would be a shame to remove it. It was even discussed that the front entrance to the courthouse could be opened up and the deputy assigned to security at the back entrance metal detector might switch to more of a roving security assignment.

Presiding Commissioner Skelton proposed establishing a committee to discuss the issue and inquired if anyone would be willing to serve on it. A sudden silence fell over the room as if First Sergeant had announced at Friday formation that he needed volunteers for a weekend work detail.

In the end, County Clerk Rowland Todd stepped forward to head up the committee so hopefully he’ll get some help or those are going to be some really short committee meetings.

And that was that.