More County Records Being Made Available Online
September 30, 2020 at 3:47 a.m.
More County Records Being Made Available Online
By David [email protected]
County Administrator Marsha McSherry told the county commissioners Tuesday that the CARES Act Committee had another project come to their attention Monday and prepared a recommendation for it.
County Auditor Michelle Puckett explained that in the last two to three years, her office scanned in all the transfer books and historical plat books that used to be retained in her office. Researchers use them and the public uses them for genealogy research, she said. The books weighed about 30 pounds each.
“Our office worked, it took us almost two years to scan all that information in. So in trying to think of ways to better serve our public, our taxpayers, the businesses that we work with, we started working with Schneider (Geospatial) to see if there was a possibility that we could upload these files to the internet,” Puckett said.
People have requested to purchase the files but because they are so large, she said they weren’t interested in selling to people. However, they wanted to make them available to the public.
“Through Schneider, we worked with them and they gave us a quote and it’s about $7,500 total. Part of it is for creating the project in the Cloud and the other part is $2,500 yearly maintenance. They would be available on Beacon, which is where we kind of funnel all of our traffic for property taxes and GIS and they would be able to search that way,” Puckett said.
The public can still search the information at the auditor’s office, which has three public computers set up to access the data. “But now if we can post it there, then they can do that from the comforts of their desks or business or home if we’re closed,” she said.
“We’re kind of excited about this. It’s just one step further that we can service people without mandating they come to our office during open hours of business,” Puckett said.
Commissioner Cary Groninger said all the hard work of scanning the thousands of pages has been completed. People won’t have to handle the big books.
“This is kind of like icing on the cake in the end where we’ll allow people to have access to this from their office or wherever,” Groninger said.
McSherry said the CARES Act Committee reviewed and recommended the expenditure and the CARES Act funding will cover the cost.
The commissioners approved the project and cost.
Earlier in the meeting, Assistant Planner Matt Sandy updated the commissioners on the county’s efforts to put permit application forms online. In June, the commissioners approved a service agreement with Schneider Geospatial for the permitting software.
“As you know, we’ve started moving forward with our new digital permitting, which will be hopefully online and running sooner rather than later,” he said.
He said they’ve had two days working with Schneider on it and they were very productive and informative. The second day was Tuesday.
“There’s a lot to it. A lot of questions. A lot of thinking, making sure we get the flows down right,” Sandy said, adding that there’s nothing live online with the forms yet. “It’s moving smoothly” and “I’m thrilled with the project,” he said.
Groninger said not only will it be good for constituents to get their permits online and not have to come into the county offices if they don’t want to, but it’s helping the counties realize what chinks they have in their current processes.
The county’s website with links to various departments and information can be found at kcgov.com.
In another piece of technology business before the commissioners Tuesday, Bob Momeyer, county IT, said at the commissioners’ last meeting, they opened three bids for the new proposed phone system. Momeyer said the committee spent the last couple of weeks reviewing those and talking to vendors.
Their recommendation was that the new phone system bid be granted to New Paris Telephone for $129,257.07 upfront with recurring costs of $1,185.30 per month.
The project was split into two pieces, with the second piece being upgrading the fiber network to support the new phone system. The recommendation for that was to SDS Communication for $22,831.05.
McSherry said the CARES Act funding will cover the cost.
Groninger said the phone system will allow county employees to forward calls if they can’t be in the office. He made the motion to approve the recommendations and it was unanimously approved.
Puckett then presented a proposal to amend the county’s capital improvement plan.
“As we have been working through this budget season through the council, we also created a budget committee to further dig into this year’s finances and how we’re going to support the 2021 budget,” she said.
One of the suggestions during the committee meeting was to look at the funds available in the county’s Economic Development Income Tax fund. Typically, the EDIT fund helps support county general’s expenses by about $2 million per year.
“So going into 2021, the budget committee wanted the flexibility of possibly increasing that to $3 million for 2021,” Puckett said.
An issue came up when the committee realized the capital improvement plan caps that at $2.5 million.
“So in order for us to have that option at budget time, the capital improvement plan needed to be amended to increase that support to $3 million,” she said.
Puckett reached out to county attorney Chad Miner who worked on amending the current three-year plan that doesn’t expire until the end of 2021. The proposed amendment would only amend the plan for 2021. The commissioners have to formulate a new three-year capital improvement plan by the end of 2021 anyway.
“On Thursday, the council will meet again to discuss the budget. It’s not fully decided that that $3 million level of support will be completely needed, but they’d like to have that option,” she said.
The commissioners unanimously approved amending the plan for 2021 from $2.5 million to $3 million.
County Administrator Marsha McSherry told the county commissioners Tuesday that the CARES Act Committee had another project come to their attention Monday and prepared a recommendation for it.
County Auditor Michelle Puckett explained that in the last two to three years, her office scanned in all the transfer books and historical plat books that used to be retained in her office. Researchers use them and the public uses them for genealogy research, she said. The books weighed about 30 pounds each.
“Our office worked, it took us almost two years to scan all that information in. So in trying to think of ways to better serve our public, our taxpayers, the businesses that we work with, we started working with Schneider (Geospatial) to see if there was a possibility that we could upload these files to the internet,” Puckett said.
People have requested to purchase the files but because they are so large, she said they weren’t interested in selling to people. However, they wanted to make them available to the public.
“Through Schneider, we worked with them and they gave us a quote and it’s about $7,500 total. Part of it is for creating the project in the Cloud and the other part is $2,500 yearly maintenance. They would be available on Beacon, which is where we kind of funnel all of our traffic for property taxes and GIS and they would be able to search that way,” Puckett said.
The public can still search the information at the auditor’s office, which has three public computers set up to access the data. “But now if we can post it there, then they can do that from the comforts of their desks or business or home if we’re closed,” she said.
“We’re kind of excited about this. It’s just one step further that we can service people without mandating they come to our office during open hours of business,” Puckett said.
Commissioner Cary Groninger said all the hard work of scanning the thousands of pages has been completed. People won’t have to handle the big books.
“This is kind of like icing on the cake in the end where we’ll allow people to have access to this from their office or wherever,” Groninger said.
McSherry said the CARES Act Committee reviewed and recommended the expenditure and the CARES Act funding will cover the cost.
The commissioners approved the project and cost.
Earlier in the meeting, Assistant Planner Matt Sandy updated the commissioners on the county’s efforts to put permit application forms online. In June, the commissioners approved a service agreement with Schneider Geospatial for the permitting software.
“As you know, we’ve started moving forward with our new digital permitting, which will be hopefully online and running sooner rather than later,” he said.
He said they’ve had two days working with Schneider on it and they were very productive and informative. The second day was Tuesday.
“There’s a lot to it. A lot of questions. A lot of thinking, making sure we get the flows down right,” Sandy said, adding that there’s nothing live online with the forms yet. “It’s moving smoothly” and “I’m thrilled with the project,” he said.
Groninger said not only will it be good for constituents to get their permits online and not have to come into the county offices if they don’t want to, but it’s helping the counties realize what chinks they have in their current processes.
The county’s website with links to various departments and information can be found at kcgov.com.
In another piece of technology business before the commissioners Tuesday, Bob Momeyer, county IT, said at the commissioners’ last meeting, they opened three bids for the new proposed phone system. Momeyer said the committee spent the last couple of weeks reviewing those and talking to vendors.
Their recommendation was that the new phone system bid be granted to New Paris Telephone for $129,257.07 upfront with recurring costs of $1,185.30 per month.
The project was split into two pieces, with the second piece being upgrading the fiber network to support the new phone system. The recommendation for that was to SDS Communication for $22,831.05.
McSherry said the CARES Act funding will cover the cost.
Groninger said the phone system will allow county employees to forward calls if they can’t be in the office. He made the motion to approve the recommendations and it was unanimously approved.
Puckett then presented a proposal to amend the county’s capital improvement plan.
“As we have been working through this budget season through the council, we also created a budget committee to further dig into this year’s finances and how we’re going to support the 2021 budget,” she said.
One of the suggestions during the committee meeting was to look at the funds available in the county’s Economic Development Income Tax fund. Typically, the EDIT fund helps support county general’s expenses by about $2 million per year.
“So going into 2021, the budget committee wanted the flexibility of possibly increasing that to $3 million for 2021,” Puckett said.
An issue came up when the committee realized the capital improvement plan caps that at $2.5 million.
“So in order for us to have that option at budget time, the capital improvement plan needed to be amended to increase that support to $3 million,” she said.
Puckett reached out to county attorney Chad Miner who worked on amending the current three-year plan that doesn’t expire until the end of 2021. The proposed amendment would only amend the plan for 2021. The commissioners have to formulate a new three-year capital improvement plan by the end of 2021 anyway.
“On Thursday, the council will meet again to discuss the budget. It’s not fully decided that that $3 million level of support will be completely needed, but they’d like to have that option,” she said.
The commissioners unanimously approved amending the plan for 2021 from $2.5 million to $3 million.
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