Wayne County residents will soon be able to receive weather alerts, Amber Alerts and other county- and city-wide notifications through an online system that the County Commissioners approved at Tuesday’s meeting.
Emergency manager Nic Kemnitz presented the board with information on Civic Ready, a product of CivicPlus, the company that manages the county’s website, as well as the City of Wayne. The Civic Ready program allows dispatchers at the Wayne Police Department to send out notifications via cell phone, e-mail or landline phone services to residents who sign up for the free service.
Residents who sign up for the service can designate not only which notices to receive, but at what time of day they can be sent and by which medium they choose to receive them, whether it’s e-mail, cell phone or landline telephone. The county opted to buy into the system and include all communities in Wayne County, including the entire town of Wakefield, which is split between Wayne and Dixon Counties.
The county board will sign up for the service, which includes an $800 setup fee, a $2,495 annual system maintenance charge, and a $500 per year additional fee to include National Weather Service and Amber Alert notifications, which would come automatically into the system. Signup for the system will be available on the Wayne County website in the near future.
The county board received its preliminary tax requests from various entities and approved all but one.
The Wayne County Ag Society asked for $95,377,68, an increase of $14,877.68 over what they were given last year. Ag Society board members Dave Jaeger, Kevin Davis and Travis Topp spoke with the board, indicating their plans to use more of the material from the old Nebraska state fairgrounds to finish up the sheep building next year.
Future plans the Ag Society are considering include the pavement of the area that has been designated as part of the city’s second phase of the walking trail, for which the county could possibly be reimbursed for in the future if and when the city moves forward with the project. They are also looking at replacing the grandstand, which has slowly moved forward due to the growing root system of the shade trees located behind the grandstand to the west.
The county board approved $90,000 of the Ag Society’s request, along with requests by the county libraries ($13,000), Wayne Fire District No. 2 ($66,950), Hoskins Fire District 3 ($110,000), WInside Fire District No. 4 ($40,712) and Wakefield Fire Distirct No. 5 ($113,000). No action was taken on the Carroll Fire District request of $73,869, as the board wanted to confirm some information before approving the request. The board recessed its meeting until next Tuesday, Aug. 23.
The county board will hold a work session to finalize numbers for its 2016-17 budget on Tuesday, Aug. 23 at 9 a.m. at the Wayne County Courthouse.
