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Though Kosciusko County Clerk Sharon Christner asked for two new employees for her office, the Kosciusko County Council Thursday approved only one for now.
Christner told the council she wants to add a small claims clerk and a file clerk. Currently, her office is falling behind the new filings and the courts have her clerks pulling files for trials, a responsibility they didn't do in the past, she said. One reason the clerk's office has taken on that responsibility is because the courts and the clerk's office are on separate floors.
When council president Jim Tranter asked county administrator Ron Robinson if he had "looked into this," Robinson said he would support a new file clerk. As for the small claims clerk, he said, those involved need to sit down and look into it.
Based on what Christner and Robinson said, councilman John Kinsey said he thought the request for a new file clerk was reasonable and he made a motion to allow Christner to hire a new file clerk.
The council approved the new position unanimously.
In other business, the county council:
• Approved a transfer of $173,350.05 for the county commissioners from the cumulative capital development land and improvements fund to the orthophotos fund.
• Approved a transfer of $110,000 for the commissioners from the CCD land and improvements fund to the Western Route Project.
• Approved a transfer of $4,000 for the county auditor's counter deputy account to the overtime and part-time accounts.
• Approved a transfer of $700 for the clerk's office from the election board operating supplies fund to mileage and $1,200 from operating supplies to the legal notices account.
• Held a capital projects hearing for Bell Memorial Library, Mentone. There were no remonstrators.
According to library director Lorna Klein, the library is planning a building renovation and can't touch the money in the capital projects fund until a new plan is in place. The new building will have a senior citizen center on one side and a licensed day care in another area.
The council approved the capital projects plan as presented.
• Approved the annual County Option Income Tax and Economic Development Income Tax rates as required. The form must be signed and sent to the Indiana Department of Revenue. The rates will remain at 0.007 for COIT and 0.003 for EDIT.
• Approved the budget hearings as follows: July 11, nonprofit organizations in the commissioners' budget; Aug. 5-6, budget hearings; Aug. 8, regular meeting and first budget reading; Sept. 12, regular meeting and budget adoption.
• Tabled a request by the Warsaw Community Public Library to appoint someone to the library board. Caroline Nye does not want to be reappointed and the library board did not submit any recommendations.
• Approved the Center of Hope grant renewal request. The grant allows for a female nurse to do medical evaluations on rape victims.
• Kosciusko County Coroner Larry Ladd told the council that when he took office in 1997, he was covered under the Public Employees Retirement Fund. At his request, however, he had asked that he be discounted from that because an employee had to have 10 years to get vested into the program. However, now the law has changed to allow a person who has been in office for eight years to be vested.
He asked the council to reinstate his PERF contributions from September 1997 to the present. "It's not new monies," he said.
Kosciusko County Auditor Sue Ann Mitchell said the county's share would be less than $3,000. The council approved the reinstatement of Ladd's PERF contributions.
Members of the Kosciusko County Council are president Jim Tranter, vice president Brad Tandy, Tom Anglin, Harold Jones, Larry Teghtmeyer, John Kinsey and Maurice Beer. They meet at 7 p.m. in the county courthouse, Warsaw, on the second Thursday of every month.
