Douglas County Board approves agreement for county road maintenance
By Kendra Hennis
It was business as usual at the meeting of the Douglas County County Board on Wednesday, February 16. Order was called at 9 a.m. with all members present.
During approval of the consent agenda, the board approved an intergovernmental agreement for geographic information system services between Champaign County GIS (Geographic Information System) Consortium and Douglas County. This agreement will allow CCGIS and
Douglas County to cooperate and provide Douglas County with GIS services through June 30, 2023. These services will include geodatabase scheme and structure changes, cadastral maintenance, GIS layer maintenance and creation, custom map production, GIS data distribution, public web map, web hosting and maintenance, GIS data hosting, backups and archiving, and quality control. It was explained that this agreement has been previously approved and must be renewed every two years.
The board then approved the renewal of agreement for the maintenance of county roads with the County and Road Commissioners. The agreement begins April 1, 2022 and is for a one year term at the contract price of $1,600.00 per mile for a term. It was noted that this was raised from the $1,300.00 a mile it has been since 2011 due to the rising costs of things.
Amanda Minor, Douglas County Health Department Administrator then gave her report to the board. Minor stated that thankfully COVID numbers throughout the county were dropping, but sadly the county still had some cases and had two deaths occur. She also stated that the Douglas County Health Department was still completing vaccination clinics as well as COVID testing by appointment.
The board then discussed new business throughout the county. It was stated that things were moving along with the new water pipelines, and that Arcola and Tuscola had approved their intergovernmental agreements at their earlier city council meetings. The board was working with the City of Newman to get a document drafted for their needs for the water tower to be approved at a later meeting. It was then stated that the remainder of projects were mostly on hold as they are currently using a lot of revenue to work on these projects. They hope to be able to get a few more completed over the year.
The board also:
* Approved the minutes of the January 19 regular board meeting minutes and the January 27 special board meeting minutes.
* Approved the payments of the county’s financial obligations.
* Approved the reports of fees of county offices.
* Approved the reappointment of Judi Pollock to insurance administrator liaison to Douglas County for a one-year term.
* Approved the annual stipend for payment and reconciliation of payroll deducted insurance benefits. This stipend is to be used at the employee’s discretion.
* Approved the supervisor of assessment salary for fiscal year 2022.
* Approved the public defender salary for fiscal year 2022.
* Approved resolution 22-R-4 issuing a declaration of emergency due to COVID-19 for 30 days.
* Approved the purchase of a new flagpole for Douglas County Courthouse and contract electrical work for lighting of flagpole by Douglas Electric. Board member Luth stated that this was a part of the overall project of cleaning up the outside of the Douglas County Courthouse.
* Adjourned until March 16, 2022 at 9 a.m.
