County Business - Road & Bridge, Solid Waste, P&Z Reports
On Monday, April 29th the Adams County Commissioners met for their regular meeting. District 3 Commissioner, Viki Purdy, was absent due to illness. Building inspector, Kody Williams, spoke to the commissioners about the proposed new building department fees again. The commissioners liked the idea of keeping things simple for mobile homes, and charging per section, such as $300 per section, so $900 for a triple wide. Williams said in 2021 his hourly expenses were estimated to be $47/hour. Commissioner Daren Ward said he would really like to revisit that and see what it is today so they can keep up with costs and don’t end up being way behind in the future. The commissioners decided to wait until Purdy was back before making any final decisions.
Meredith Fisher, with Planning and Zoning, said that there was an inked agreement between Meadows Valley and Brundage for temporary services. The contract does have a hard end date of August, so they are hoping Brundage gets fully functional by then. Brundage would like to come in soon to talk to the commissioners. There were a couple updates about variances and re-plats for citizens, and Fisher wanted to know if they should schedule a visit about the phase two retention pond for Tamarack View Estates. Commissioner Joe Iveson said they really need Balderson from Road and Bridge to come and look at that with them. Iveson also mentioned he received a phone call about someone’s neighbor selling six acres of irrigated land off her property. Fisher said she thought she knew which one that was and she thought they were separate parcels but will double check. She said they have a good system now where things like that don’t really slip through the cracks anymore. This launched into a discussion about the proposed ordinance changes around splitting and subdividing. Commissioner Iveson said he didn’t really want to mess with it anymore. He said that we all think about our family and our children, but then get angry when a developer comes and does the same thing, and what’s good for one person isn’t necessarily good for the county. No matter what they do, it’s going to impact someone negatively and someone positively. Country Clerk, Sherry Ward, chimed in and said that some people aren’t blessed financially and land is the only thing they have to give their children. Adams County makes it very difficult, although she does understand the other side of it too. Iveson said it’s hard, he looks at the Treasure Valley and all their land that used to be farmland, and wonders how you are going to feed people. Commissioner Ward said it’s a balancing act, and how do you fault the farmer for taking the opportunity to make more in that sale then he can in his entire life of farming? Ward says he leans more towards the property rights side, but it is a tricky situation and how can you regulate it? “It’s a tough one.”
After this Steve Shelton with Solid Waste arrived. He said his crew would like to work on Memorial Day and take Tuesday off and have a three day weekend, and he thought that might be better for other people too because they had Monday off, but thought there might be an issue with payroll. Sherry Ward said yes, they have to get time and a half if they work Monday. She said this issue comes up a lot, and maybe they should switch their days off to be Monday and Tuesday since most of the holidays are on Monday. Commissioner Ward thought that actually made a lot more sense then having their days off in the middle of the week. Or they could change it to Tuesday-Wednesday and if Monday is a holiday get a three day weekend. Shelton said he would discuss it. Shelton wanted to get prices for a GPS for the CAT because he thinks that will help them get done faster and get rid of the CAT faster. It would also save them from having a stake crew come back to stake it all again. They got some prices from Republic Services, who would be telephoning in during the afternoon to discuss them. Shelton thought they looked like a lot more than they were anticipating. Republic was wanting $200 a trip to come up and Shelton didn’t think it was costing him that much, however, he was a little short on time right now.
Adam Balderson with Road and Bridge, discussed a problem with Whiteman Lane. The county does not currently have a deed or easement for a part of it and the owners of the road are concerned if there is an accident they will be sued. They were interested in deeding a section or writing an easement to the county. Commissioner Iveson thought if they could clean up this issue that would be great. They have considered going through all the roads and looking for problems like this in the past but it would be an enormous amount of work so they decided to deal with these sorts of issues as they come up. Iveson mentioned while they were speaking of easements, that he had spoken to the property owner of the road between Airport Rd and Ridge Rd about an easement through his portion and he had decided he wasn’t interested in doing one. Iveson told him he wasn’t sure what was going to happen, there was a lot of paperwork to show that there was originally intended to be an easement there and the county might not do anything, but if his neighbors were landlocked and can’t access their property the county might need to take some action. Commissioner Ward thought they needed to discuss the matter with Prosecutor Boyd. Balderson also mentioned that if there is another issue with Ashley’s Bridge in the future, like it ever needing to be replaced, they really needed access to a route going the other way. They decided to hold an executive session to discuss the matter with Prosecutor Chris Boyd during the next meeting. Commissioner Iveson also mentioned he got a call about an irrigation pipe on Missman that they were going to pave over. Balderson said they are replacing all the culverts on Missman. The project will be starting on the 8th.
Sheriff Ryan Zollman had a contract with the Forest Service to sign, it is the same as the one from the last five years. Next year will be a whole new contract. There are currently 21 state inmates and 6 county. Two of them are sentenced and serving their time. Casey Hunt, the IT Director, also came with Zollman to talk about a problem. The Sheriff department’s backup server is maxed out on space and they currently have no room to back up videos and files. It is four years into a five year replacement plan but they are going to need to update it sooner. Hunt had some prices for different options, none of them were appealing. She has already lowered the retention time and his team has been working to reduce and delete stuff where they can but it’s not really making a dent. The cheapest option to address their immediate needs would be around $25k. Zollman said his biggest concern is a cyber attack/ ransom situation. They have ten cameras that need to be backed up from body cams and car cams. Hunt said one thing they might consider doing is getting another server that all the video data can be replicated on and have that be their backup. It wouldn’t be backed up to the cloud but it would be cheaper. Zollman said they are looking into upgrading cameras with some other funds that were available and as part of that upgrade there might be a cloud storage option as well. It makes him a little nervous because the company that does it owns their data, but they are looking into that. Commissioner Ward thought he might talk to Valley County about what they are doing. Zollman said he looked into that and he is concerned about being locked into a contract with a monthly fee that might end up exceeding the other options, he said he will look into it again though. Ward said that the good thing about that was you own your data. There are certain requirements for where data is stored and if they meet those requirements they don’t take on liability. They can’t go to court without the data and meeting the public record storage requirements. Clerk Sherry Ward said she was looking at the budget while they were talking and she thinks there is the ability to utilize LAP funds. Zollman said his personal feeling is to do the less expensive option for now because things might change when he does the camera upgrade, the commissioners agreed. They said to also talk with Carol Walsh, Adams County Emergency Manager, who had grant funds that have to be used for cyber security, and this might qualify.
After this, the commissioners approved property tax exemptions and then held an elected official/department head meeting. Sherry Ward asked everyone if there were any questions about their budget. She said computers were to be budgeted into their own budgets, but IT would help organize it. Casey Hunt said if they can get total numbers at the same time she can get better pricing for bulk purchases. Treasurer Tonjua Spelman said there will probably be good interest rates through the next cycle. They are currently at 5.1%. Meredith Fisher said Brundage is getting ready to resubmit their phase 3 primary plat application. Assessor Stacy Swift said values aren’t really going up, a bit for land and a bit in the New Meadows area. Brundage will add value. Communication with the building department has been extremely helpful to assessing property values accurately. Adam Balderson said if anyone has anything they want to get rid of for the auction to let him know. Iveson asked if they were setting minimums on some items, Balderson said yes. They might also end up with another bridge from Wildhorse. Steve Shelton said he’s worried they’re going to run out of people doing the expansion, they have a lot of dirt to move. Sherry Ward asked if they were still on schedule to do the liner this year. Shelton wasn’t sure. Casey Hunt gave an IT update and told everyone that computers that are not able to be upgraded to Windows 11 will have to be replaced. Sheriff Zollman said they are getting their radios upgraded, which is good because they were used when the building was built. He also talked about AI and requested that the county start thinking about creating a policy on the use of AI. He also cautioned the other department heads to make sure their departments know not to put any personal information into AI systems if they are utilizing it, “What you put in goes out to the world.” He is working on a policy for the Sheriff’s Department but they really need one county wide. Dave Herold said the Weed Tour this year is scheduled for June 11th in Indian Valley. Commissioner Ward requested that everyone please contact the maintenance person through email instead of phone so there is a record. He asked if they could make a maintenance email for the county that he could be copied on as well. Commission Iveson ended the meeting by telling everyone to “always remember that we are public servants, we work for the people.”
