State Senator Shane Wilkin talks Wednesday from an entrance to the county commissioners’ offices.
Jacob Clary | The Times-Gazette
The purchase and upgrade of multiple Multi-Agency Radio Communication System (MARCS) radios in Highland County was approved at Wednesday’s Highland County Board of Commissioners meeting.
Last week, the need to purchase and upgrade all of the MARCS radios in Highland County was discussed, and reportedly the total cost was going to be around $290,000. However, the commissioners said that between this week and last week, a new count was made and that went down significantly, allowing for a full purchase to be made.
Commissioner Dave Daniels said that the full purchase was able to be made with the more than $40,000 available from the Highland County Emergency Management Agency and the Highland County Sheriff’s Office TCAP funds. The only purchase Daniels said was still to be made was the 911 console, which the commissioners are still working on finding a solution for.
In other news, Ohio Senator Shane Wilkin attended the meeting. Daniels thanked Wilkin for his work in helping the county gain funding for the Highland County Engineer’s building and its capital budget projects.
“Happy to do it,” Wilkin said. “It’s nice to be in a position where we can send some tax dollars back to the district throughout. So, 9.5 counties. There’s a lot of requests. I think for the one-time funds, we had $350 million available that the Senate was going to hand out. And of that $350 million, just in my district, so in my nine counties, my requests were $382 million. So there’s 32 other districts that probably wanted a little bit of money as well.”
The commissioners recognized multiple interns from the Highland County ACCESS Program at the meeting, thanking them for their work with the county in multiple areas. One of those was Janyia Hudson-Childers, who worked with the Economic Development Department on getting itswebsite online, and the other was Halle Jones, who worked on helping get records storage in order alongside Julie Wallingford, the records manager.
Julie Bolender, Highland County Economic Development director, said she wanted to report that Tara Campbell at Ohio Means Jobs has said that there is a summer youth program for internships. She said summer jobs are available “to every youth” in the county and all they need to do is call Ohio Means Jobs and they would work on getting them an internship.
The board of commissioners also approved multiple bids, which are as follows:
* Flooring for the Highland County Administration Building by Spectra Contract Flooring for $124,015.
* Vegetation control for the Mowrystown Sewer by Tru-Quality Services, LLC for $1,650.
* Landscaping services at the new OSU Extension Building at the Highland County Fairgrounds by Parry Landscapes and Lawncare for $1,850.
* Painting for the Highland County Courthouse Conference Room by Ultra-Pro Painting for $1,243.
The board of commissioners also approved one authorization to execute, that being the appointment of Kathy Faulconer to the Paint Valley ADAMH Board.
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
