Commissioners deal with roads, memorial issues

The Chase County Commissioners had plenty on their plate at their April 25 meeting.
Bob Thomas and Eric Gonzalez represented the veterans. The pair said the hard water from the courthouse sprinkler system is leaving stains on the memorial, including the statue, as it waters the grass in the middle of the memorial.
The Veterans Memorial Committee would like to cap the sprinkler system around the memorial and possibly install its own system that would use soft water.
Since the memorial was dedicated in 2021, the memorial committee has requested the county remove trees around the memorial to help solve the buzzard problem and planted new trees.
Discussions began about the water system last summer. The Veterans Memorial Committee had the statue cleaned last year to remove water spots, but wrong acid was used, damaging the statue. Thomas and Gonzalez presented maintenance bills for cleaning the memorial. The committee would like to use money from the original $75,000 the county donated to pay for the current repairs.
No action was taken at last Tuesday’s meeting.
The board also continued their discussion with Bart and Ryan Stromberger about hard surfacing Road 734.
The Strombergers would like to use roller compacted concrete on the road, but Highway Superintendent Toney Krajewski and the commissioners are slow to jump on the RCC bandwagon.
Krajewski would rather see the county use something with a past history, but also said the county can’t go wrong hard surfacing the road.
Strombergers have tracked down grants to help pay for the project.
Commissioner Duane Dinnel was concerned that paving the road would take up too much of the road budget, saying other roads need work, too, and this project would take a huge chunk out of the budget.
The commissioners did approve moving forward with drilling boring holes to study the base of the road. Strombergers will pay a part of the project to keep the cost down for the county.
After recently approving a rate increase for Imperial and Wauneta EMS crews, the commissioners reviewed a request from Imperial EMS to pay squads when they are on standby, such as at fires, the fair, motocross and football games.
The commissioners took no action at the time after discussing the differences between volunteer crews like ambulance and fire departments.
In other business, the commissioners discussed changes to the county’s employee handbook concerning a shared vacation time and sick time policy.
Bernhardt and Brown approved the change, while Dinnel voted no saying he wanted to include that employees using the policy had worked for the county for at least one year.
Discussion was also held concerning County Assessor Tori Mueller’s proposal to hire an outside agency for appraisals.
Mueller said previous valuations are not coming close to current sales for houses or property. Because she just took over the position in January, Mueller doesn’t feel she’s prepared to perform the valuations.
Dinnel said he’s worried the county’s current bid is too much money to spend on what should be the assessor’s job.
All three commissioners agreed to put out for more bids for the project.
The next meeting of the commissioners will be May 9.