Commissioners discuss emergency system

At the Hot Springs County Commissioners meeting on February 16, the commissioners voted and approved the COVID Charitable Organization Funding Requests for HOPE Agency, Sleep in Heavenly Peace, HSC 4-H, Gottsche Foundation, H Diamond W, Hunting With Heroes, Friends of the Library and the VFW.

Chairman Tom Ryan added to the requests that they send a letter for their awards that they are relying on them that their application with the state is correct and that they would be responsible for repayment and not the county if there is an issue in an audit. 

Also on the agenda, the commissioners returned $138,000 to the Rawlins Municipal Airport for money borrowed for projects involved in their master plans. This falls under the HSG Transfer of Entitlement Funds. 

County Sheriff Jerimie Kraushaar presented an updated medical services agreement for the Detention Center. It’s the same contract with Hot Springs Health as before, but with the change of language that the Detention Center follows the CDC guidelines for COVID response. Kraushaar noted that they do not follow local and state guidelines, but they do for the CDC. This addition was for line 14 of the agreement. Kraushaar also told the board they added Teledoc to the agreement. The commissioners voted and passed to accept the updated agreement.

County Assessor Dan Webber presented a tax rebate for Merit Energy Company for $3.54. This amount was discovered in an audit as an error in their accounting at the state for tax year 2018. The commissioners voted to accept the rebate.

County Nurse Manager Tricia McPhie presented the memorandum of understanding for the COVID vaccine. There was a need for hiring a person that would handle office work on this matter. The question was should the new hire be a contract employee or a county employee and that the person must be covered for liability. It was determined for the need of liability coverage, the hire must be a county employee. The commissioners voted and approved the memorandum agreement, which ends December 30, 2021.

County IT Professional Dean Peranteaux presented a cost and feasibility matter of adding non-network locations to the emergency dispatch notification system.

This involved asking whether the county should add a panic button service to non-county entities for security purposes and what about liability.

There were some technical issues about the notification system if an entity’s internet was down or not and who would be a liability if there was an incident or death in a crisis situation. Also, would it be considered a service and would there be a fee or not?

Peranteaux discussed multiple angles of the issue and tried to weigh the issues. It ultimately comes to the question, does the county connect the other entities? An example of some of these entities would be HOPE Agency or Common Grounds.

Chairman Tom Ryan said that the county assumes some kind of liability. Commissioner Jack Baird said that this system would be used at your own risk and should be understood that it would not be operational 100% of the time because of internet connectivity versus the courthouse network. A question of a waiver was also brought up. Chairman Ryan asked county attorney Jill Logan to research the liability issue. 

Barb Rice gave the Youth Alternative monthly report and said that things have gotten back to usual in spite of the flu season and COVID.