County Council passes budget

The Dubois County Council passed the budgets for 2017 during Monday night’s meeting.

The budgeting process begins in July each year and the council is responsible for assembling the County General Fund budget ($21,989,386.00), the Dubois County Solid Waste District ($237,018.00), the Northeast Dubois School Corporation ($10,357,672.00), the Northeast Dubois Fire Protection District ($112,000.00) and the Jasper library ($1,888,394.00).

Each budget was passed by individual votes.

Also in the meeting the Council took the following actions:

• Approved an expenditure of $36,169.00 for a new water heater system at the request of Jerry Gramelspacher with the maintenance department of the Security and Community Corrections Centers. He asked the council to add $11,965.00 to the base bid of $24,240.00 to add a storage tank to the system.
• Approved an appropriation for a new high-definition camera system at the Security and Community Corrections Centers. Gramelspacher told the council he contacted a few companies in the area for the new system, but only one – Astro Security – submitted a bid. Doug Fischer, owner of the company told the council that new IP based cameras would allow the best control and access to the cameras throughout the facility, and would include two new HD monitors and wiring for all of the cameras. Adding 10 new cameras to bring the total to 52.
• Listened to Dubois County Highway Engineer Brent Wendholt ask the council to appropriate the money from the INDOT Community Crossings Grant of $952,612.44 to the fund that will allow the money to be allocated to six road projects which will be started in the spring of 2017. The request was approved.
• Passed a request by Wendholt to replace two trucks. One is a tri-axle truck, that after pumping around $60,000.00 in repairs and obtaining two 12 month extensions on the warranties, it was determined that it was no longer worth repairing. The second is a single axle truck that has reached its end of life. The council passed the appropriation of $210,000 out of the cumulative capital fund to purchase the new trucks.
• Passed an amendment to the salary ordinance for the remainder of 2016 for four employees going to the new salary threshold for the exempt employee status. The Chief Deputy in the Sheriff Department, the EMA Director, the 911 Director, and the Health Department Director will all will be placed at $1,826.00 bi-weekly salary level.