JERRY FINK
MANAGING EDITOR
Soon the public will be able to search a website that includes information about all of the McIntosh County departments.
The county commissioners agreed at its Monday morning meeting to sign on the Kellpro, a database and accounting systems company based in Duncan.
County Clerk Deena Farrow said it will cost $7,000 to set up the system and then $3,800 a year.
Farrow said they have wanted to have a county website for years, but it has been too expensive.
“When I first contacted another company sometime back, they wanted like over 20 grand a year. I was like, we absolutely cannot afford something like that,” she said. “I didn’t even think that was in the ballpark, so I didn’t look any further because of the cost.”
She said recently she was asked again about a website.
“I had heard about some other counties using Kellpro,” she said.
She found the cost to be reasonable and presented the proposal to the commissioners and they agreed.
Moratorium
At the commissioners’ July 14 meeting they passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on overweight trucks using county roads, causing expensive repair work.
The moratorium focused on trucks that might be using materials for wind turbines and solar panel construction.
Monday, District 3 Commissioner Bobby Ziegler asked about expanding the moratorium to include dump trucks, gas trucks, oil trucks and any other vehicles carrying overweight loads on county roads.
Assistant District Attorney Greg Stidham said that was possible.
“The problem is enforcement, dedicating a full-time deputy to enforce the regulation,” he said.
The cost is not only for a full-time deputy, but for proper equipment and a vehicle.
“You can say a truck is overweight, but what’s the weight? We don’t have a set of cables, like the OHP does, to determine the weight,” Stidham said.
Scales to weight a vehicle maybe in the range of $6,000.
Chief Deputy Jared West noted that the State Department of Environmental Quality issued a grant to the Sheriff ’s Office to hire a person to monitor environmental concerns.
He said about 2/3 of the DEQ person works on environmental issues and 1/3 of the time he is used as needed by the Sheriff ’s office.
West will look into that option.
Another issue is signage, displaying load limit signs on the bridges and roads.
Ziegler and District 1 Commissioner Loyal Dean Taylor both said people are always tearing down road signs, stealing them or disposing of them.
“Without the signage, you can’t write a citation,” Ziegler said.
It’s a complicated situation the commissioners will continue to work on for answers.
“I was wanting to get it to where we could force them to pay for the part of that road they’re destroying,” Ziegler said.
FEMA nixes grant
application
McIntosh County Emergency Director Leslie Phillips reported to commissioners that FEMA, the federal agency whose job is to help communities hit by major disasters, declined the county’s application for assistance to mitigate the cost of recent storm damages.
“This last week, we found out we were denied by FEMA. I have started the appeals process,” Phillips said.
He said FEMA lowballed the damage.
“They accounted for damages of $10,000. We can document half a million dollars,” he said.
