At Tuesday's meeting, the Wayne County Commissioners received updates and approved some proposals.
Greenwood Cemetery representative JoAnn McKenzie gave updates and discussed an exchange of pauper grave sites. She first notified the Commissioners of the recent board member changes that have happened.
McKenzie is currently going through software updates and upgrading with GIS mapping. She found that there are 33 unoccupied graves that Wayne County owns. In 1885, Wayne County purchased 18 lots for $250.
Next the Clerk of District Court, Deb Allemann-Dannelly, asked the Commissioners if they could buy a new desk for the District Judge office along with painting the room. The reasoning behind the need of a new desk is that the State gave the judges a two-screen computer making the current desk too crowded and providing little vision of the rest of the room for the judges.
She offered an L-shaped table that they have found that would fix the problems that they are facing. The Commissioners agreed to this change as long as the money was coming out of the judge's budget of $1,700.
County Attorney Amy Miller brought forth the Settlement Agreement and Release between Herbst Construction Inc. Funds were through federal grants and the Nebraska Department of Transportation as the county just had to sign-off on the document and Wayne County will not lose any funds or have to pay anything.
Emergency Manager Nic Kemnitz told the Commissioners that Nov. 4 through Nov. 7 will be the Eastern Nebraska Wildland Fire Academy taking place at Ponca State Park and he will be attending this event.
There will be a communications exercise at 10 a.m. on Thursday before the Northeast Planning, Exercise and Training Region will be conducting their Communications Exercise from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday. Next Wednesday, Nov. 10, Kemnitz will also be working with the Plum Creek Windfarm to observe their Emergency Response Exercise. There will also be a Traffic Incident Management Training event from the Pilger Fire Hall on Tuesday, Nov. 23 between 6 and 10 p.m. If a certain number of individuals attend, there would be an opportunity to receive grant funds for equipment.
The Commissioners started discussing their proposed commissioner voting districts but decided to table the discussion after Miller found a few problems with the plans. She worried that there may be questions of gerrymandering, or the manipulation of bounders to favor one party or class, with how they splitting everything up. The group will look to work with the company who is designing the voting district map and a public hearing will eventually be set for the proposed voting districts.
The Wayne County Board of Commissioners will next meet in regular session on Tuesday, Nov. 16 at 9 a.m. in the Wayne County Courthouse.
