The jail project, American Rescue Plan Act, and a quarterly budget update are among the items on the Saline County Commission agenda for Tuesday.
About the meeting
Saline County Commission is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Tuesday in room 107 of the City-County Building, 300 W. Ash Street. The meetings also can be viewed on Saline County’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwwZp_cTSJ3Nepp_5rOGevA.
To participate in the meetings, citizens will need to use the Zoom link. Use the following link and put in the Meeting ID and passcode:
https://zoom.us/j/96835819901?pwd=bUEvaExUb2ppMEFaUnd6cUd6MmNMUT09
Meeting ID: 968 3581 9901
Passcode: 144636
For further information, contact the County Commission’s Office at (785) 309-5825.
Agenda items
Commissioners are scheduled to consider the second guaranteed maximum price contract amendment for the Saline County Jail project. The amendment is for $53,755,096, and includes all remaining construction work that was not included in the first guaranteed maximum price contract amendment, according to information in the commission meeting packet. If approved, the amendment would bring the agreement with Turner Construction Company to $78,790,596.
The project is still scheduled to be completed by Sept. 25, 2023, according to information from the county.
In a related matter, commissioners are being asked to consider a request from the City of Salina for two permanent easements at the new jail site at 800 E. Pacific Avenue. One easement would be for site drainage and the other for site utilities (water and sewer). The easements would conform with the jail project design.
Commissioners also are scheduled to consider additional programs to be funded with money the county received because of the American Rescue Plan Act. The funds, a total of $10,532,376, came to the county through the through the Coronavirus Local Fiscal Relief Fund (CLFRF). Programs commissioners are scheduled to consider include the following.
County Cash: Through this program, the county would partner with an app developed by Colu that would allow residents to invest their own money at local businesses, earn points to be known as "County Cash," and use those points as rewards at other businesses, according to information in the commission meeting packet.
"CLFRF dollars would be used to fund four distinct parts of this: the cost of Colu’s software, the cost of promotion of the program (including staff at the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce to promote the app to area businesses), a 'rewards and incentives bucket' to fund the cost of reimbursing local businesses for the products or services redeemed by residents as well as incentivizing behaviors such as buying from businesses that are having particular challenges, and a per-business-per-month fee for a third party payment firm to transmit the rewards and incentives money to local businesses," according to information in the commission meeting packet.
Similar programs have been successfully used at other locations, including Boston, Mass., and Akron, Ohio, according to information from the county.
Increasing the pool of commercial truck drivers: For this program, the county "would partner with the Salina Salina Area Technical College to increase the college’s ability to train Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) candidates. This would directly benefit local employers (including Saline County) who face a shortage of CDL drivers and would also help local residents who have been impacted by pandemic-related lay-offs or reductions in hours to reskill for an indemand occupation," county staff noted in the meeting packet information.
Advanced education for law enforcement officers: The county "would partner with Kansas Wesleyan University to provide 45 hours of credit-bearing classes to 25 sworn officers of the Saline County Sheriff’s Office and Salina Police Department. This would allow those officers to get as much as three-quarters of the way to a Bachelor’s degree with no tuition cost. This would serve as a recruitment and retention tool for our local law enforcement agencies as well as provide officers of those agencies advanced skills that would benefit the community," according to information in the meeting packet.
Cope Notes: In this program, the county "would contract with an app called Cope Notes which provides daily text messages to users that offer supportive mental health messages. While a text messaging app does not replace therapy or medication, it has been developed using cognitive science to reframe a person’s state of mind to be more positive and resilient in the face of challenges such as a global pandemic. Up to 200 subscribers could be added to Cope Notes in Saline County," according to information in the meeting packet.
Other items on the county agenda for Tuesday include the following.
●Consider a resolution that would appoint Robert Exline, Jr., as a county representative to the Salina Community Economic Development Organization, Inc.
●Hear the idle fund and jail idle bond report from County Treasurer Jim DuBois.
●Hear a human resources update from Marilyn Leamer, human resources director.
●Hear a quarterly budget update from County Administrator Phillip Smith-Hanes.
To see the full Saline County Commission packet (135-page pdf), click here.