Fireworks permits accepted at courthouse
David Brazil told Marion County commissioners Monday that the county's Comprehensive Plan, updated for 2003, with changes commissioners recommended, is about ready for perusal.
He will bring it to the county commission meeting June 30, then take it to the Marion County Planning Commission meeting July 24 for their review and approval.
It will then come back to the county commission for final approval.
Brazil is director of planning/zoning/transfer station and sanitarian for the county.
Commissioners approved two conditional use permits, approved by the planning commission at its May 22 meeting. They were for a church school a mile west and a mile south of Hillsboro, and a sporting-goods retail facility one-eighth of a mile west of U.S. 77 and 2 1/2 miles south of Marion, for Michael and Cindy Ragland.
Brazil said insurance costs are up for the transfer station. He and commissioners agreed that the new scales at the station are to be used only for transfer station-related items, and road and bridge vehicles and their loads.
The transfer station passed a recent inspection by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Brazil said.
Sondra Mayfield, representing the county health department, presented an agreement between the Centre, Peabody, and Goessel schools, with the county, for nursing services.
Commissioners approved it, along with the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) budget for 2003.
County Clerk Carol Maggard, on behalf of health department director Jan Moffitt, presented budgets for 2003 and 2004 that Moffitt had prepared, reflecting varying reduction amounts.
Collett and fellow Commissioner Leroy Wetta discussed prioritizing for a few minutes. Collett said prioritizing various county departments might be "opening a can of worms."
He felt it might be construed as judging one county department to be more important than another, and would "set departments against each other."
Wetta said he agreed, but added that ambulance and dispatch (communications) are both absolutely needed. But "we don't have to grade the roads every day," he said, by comparison.
"We don't HAVE to write that speeding ticket," Wetta said.
Maggard said the county's budgetary shortfall is about $50,000 less than had been estimated. It's about $280,000 for 2003, now, instead of $330,000 or more.
This is because of a demand transfer of about $50,000 the State of Kansas was expected to make to Marion County this year but did not and will not, because of the economic/fiscal "crisis."
Since the $50,000 was budgeted, but not spent, this allows for a subtraction of this amount from the county's shortfall.
If a department's 2003 budget is cut by 10 percent, those funds will carry over into the county's general fund for next year, Maggard said.
