Fair board bills, Champion property, salaries on commissioners’ agenda

The Chase County Commissioners quickly moved through agenda items at their regular meeting Tuesday.
Commissioners Jacci Brown, Duane Dinnel and Dennis Kunnemann reviewed Chase County Fair Board bills with fair board treasurer Alex McNair.
Work was done to the Eagles’ concessions area under the grandstand and pipes were replaced that froze going into the new fair board building built last year near the arena.
The county board has not heard back from Engineering International’s Jeff Tidyman concerning possible action for property in Champion.
RD and Debbie Teply’s house partially sits on the county’s right of way. They would like the road at Champion Mill platted and would deed a corner of their property where the road would be to the county in exchange for a resolution giving them the property their house sits on.
Vacating an alley on the east side of Teply’s property is also under consideration, but the county will wait for Tidyman’s recommendation.
Deliberations continued on salaries for elected officials for the years 2023 to 2026. The process was last completed in 2018.
Brown presented salaries since 2011 and their increases, along with projected salaries with 2%, 4% and 6% raises.
The Social Security Administration shows a 6% increase in living expenses.
Most raises in the past have been between 4-5%.
Sheriff Kevin Mueller would also like his salary for running dispatch to increase from $6,000 to $10,000. Perkins County’s sheriff receives $15,000 to run their dispatch, but Mueller felt like that would be too much of a jump.
The commissioners also debated how much to decrease their salaries if a road foreman is hired. At this time the commissioners are each monitoring their own district road shops while they consider hiring a road foreman or appointing shop foremen for each district.
In other business, Billie Muehlenkamp was appointed to the zoning board to replace Clint Johnson.
Weed Superintendent Brandon Beard presented his annual weed report to the board.
The next meeting of the commissioners will be Dec. 28 at 8 a.m. in the courthouse.