February 4, 2025, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

I attended the February 4, 2025, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.

All commissioners were present.

The first agenda item was “Pass-thru for funding of CCAYEC grant money-$500,000.”

CCAYEC is an acronym for “Camden County Ag and Youth Enrichment Council.” This is the non-profit organization that has been raising money to purchase land for a Camden County fairgrounds.

CCAYEC recently received $500,000 from the Missouri Department of Agriculture. Laura Burns is a member of the committee and she wanted to clear up some confusion about the money. Initially, they were supposed to only receive $480,000 of the total amount until they could prove they had matching funds for the remaining $20,000. Unfortunately, when the County Treasurer’s office received the funds, they efficiently notified Burns that the check was available for her to pick up. It wasn’t until the check was deposited that she found out they were only supposed to receive $480,000.

Luckily, CCAYEC has been successful at raising money from other sources and they already had matching funds on hand. The Department of Agriculture didn’t seem to be too worried about it, but CCAYEC wanted to clear up any confusion about the funding. It sounds like they are moving forward and we can all look forward to a future that includes a Camden County Fair.

The pass-through transfer of these Department of Agriculture funds was approved unanimously by the Commission.

The final agenda item was “Accounting Policy/Procedures-meeting #1 – first section.”

This is the first of several(!!!) meetings where the Commission plans to read through and discuss the county’s Accounting Policy Manual. Commissioner Gohagan explained that they needed to go over it because there had been some confusion regarding the county’s use of three different versions of the same policy. The County Auditor then confessed that there was actually an additional fourth version of the policy so maybe it was a good idea to settle on just one. I imagine if we’d searched the Auditor’s pockets, we probably would have found a fifth version.

There are certain moments when you start to question your choices in life and spending my retirement listening to someone reading an accounting policy out loud really made me wonder where things had gone awry. There must be some poor soul who would be fascinated to discover if the county uses accrual accounting or cash accounting. Or if petty cash needed to be maintained by certain county departments. If so, they sure weren’t sitting near me, watching an hour of their life slip away.

And that was that.