County gets $28,000 workman’s comp credit

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Safety poli­cies and loss con­trol played a big part in a nearly $30,000 return from the county’s workman’s com­pen­sa­tion fund county man­ager Carl Row­land said at Thursday’s reg­u­lar meet­ing of the Brant­ley County commission.

Late last month the county was noti­fied by the Asso­ci­a­tion County Com­mis­sion­ers of Geor­gia (ACCG) that it would receive $28,135 from the group self-insurance work­ers’ comp fund in the form of a credit because of a low inci­dence of on-the-job acci­dent payouts.

The money goes toward the county’s 2013 pre­mium accord­ing to infor­ma­tion released from the ACCG.

Fol­low­ing the pas­sage of a bill in 1982 at the request of var­i­ous county gov­ern­ments in Geor­gia, coun­ties have allowed coun­ties to pool resources by form­ing a non-profit insur­ance fund that pro­vides for antic­i­pated losses and expenses.

Brantley’s share was part of a $3.25 mil­lion div­i­dend cred­ited to Geor­gia coun­ties this year, ACCG offi­cials said.

The return means lower insur­ance costs which could mean lower costs to the tax­payer as well.

The county man­ager also said that the county saved $21,000 on workman’s com­pen­sa­tion insur­ance for vol­un­teer fire­fight­ers by chang­ing companies.

The item was for infor­ma­tional pur­poses at the meet­ing and did not require a vote.

Mean­while, a lower than expected bid on the future grant-funded men­tal health facil­ity in Brant­ley County could mean the build­ing gets an expan­sion even before it is built.

Though no offi­cial change has been made, com­mis­sion­ers dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­ity of adding onto the exist­ing plans for the build­ing to bring the cost of the project – cur­rently $345,330 from R.H. Tyson Con­struc­tion – closer to the grant fund­ing of over $400,000.  This money can only be used for struc­tural addi­tions and improve­ments to the build­ing itself and not to items such as land­scap­ing, accord­ing to county clerk Dale Halligan.

The item passed unanimously.

A con­tract word­ing dis­pute also has Brant­ley County back at the draw­ing board regard­ing power line relo­ca­tion at the air­port.  Accord­ing to county attor­ney C. Deen Strick­land, mem­bers of the Oke­fenoke Rural Elec­tric Mem­ber­ship Corp. (OREMC) and legal coun­cil attor­ney Dan Smith were not happy with a pre­vi­ous draft of word­ing that gave them a “guar­an­tee pend­ing funds become avail­able” on the over $500,000 relo­ca­tion project.

How­ever, the county was hes­i­tant to give an out­right guar­an­tee of the money since the grant funds that would pay a major­ity of it, have come in pierce by pierce as por­tions of the project are done.

The county has agreed to a new draft that would guar­an­tee pay­ment in incre­ments up to $50,000 a piece to insure that the county isn’t stuck with the bill if the state redi­rects funds from the One­Ge­or­gia pro­gram largely fund­ing the air­port ren­o­va­tion endeavors.

How­ever, Air­port Author­ity Chair­man Bill Lee said that he hoped the issue would be resolved soon so that the project could begin again. Lee said he feared the money would be taken away if the county did not act quickly enough.

The county attor­ney said that he would draft the new agree­ment and pass it to the OREMC for pos­si­ble approval.

County man­ager Row­land said that in the numer­ous air­port projects in which he had been involved, none had required the type of word­ing requested by the OREMC.

Row­land also cau­tioned the county to look out for a bill in the leg­is­la­ture that could allow the state to own the county’s for­fei­tures instead of the county itself.  Row­land said that this would hurt the coun­ties in Geor­gia while ben­e­fit­ing the state and called the bill ludicrous.

Mean­while he said leg­is­la­tion that would force money to be spent where it was orig­i­nally intended could be a pos­i­tive change giv­ing exam­ples of money from One­Ge­or­gia – a major fun­der of small rural projects – being cut to help fund tran­sit upgrades in Atlanta.

Such leg­is­la­tion could help pre­vent this in the future, he said.

Fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the county’s web­site was also brought up par­tic­u­larly regard­ing over­all cost.

Row­land said that while he was speak­ing with res­i­dents about roads he recently met with a for­mer com­puter pro­gram­mer and web designer who moved to Brant­ley County from out­side the area.

The man agreed to draft a web­site for free in an effort to pub­li­cize his work.  Row­land said that the site itself would be free but that the county would have to pay up to $6,000 in equip­ment and soft­ware if it hopes to house the web­site in-county as opposed to in a server farm in another location.

Chair­man Char­lie Sum­mer­lin said he took issue with the cost of equip­ment needed to pro­vide the county the site and that felt it was an unnec­es­sary expense.  Sum­mer­lin also said that the county should look at area coun­ties to see who did their web design work to get the job done professionally.

Row­land said that the county could house the web­site with another com­pany for a fee instead of the large sum, but also said that his future plan to con­sol­i­date county web­sites into a sin­gle web por­tal would be bet­ter served with a secure in-county server.  Row­land also said that the cost of going with a pro­fes­sional com­pany, in his expe­ri­ence, could eas­ily cost $20,000 com­pared to the free cost they are get­ting from the Brant­ley resident.

Row­land said if the final prod­uct isn’t up to the commission’s, they didn’t have to accept it.

Com­mis­sion­ers voted to allow the county man­ager to work with the man and report back to the com­mis­sion at a later date.

Row­land said he had pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with web­site revamps such as the the one cur­rently used in Thomasville, Ga.  Row­land may also con­sider advice from mem­bers of Lead­er­ship Brant­ley that sug­gested web changes in a class project in the last month.

Com­mis­sion­ers con­tin­ued dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble con­sol­i­da­tion of the Brant­ley and Charl­ton County Exten­sion Ser­vice pro­grams at the meet­ing with a new 4-H direc­tor in place as soon as the next two months and a new exten­sion agent by the sum­mer pend­ing a joint deci­sion between the counties.

The county man­ager said that the county’s cur­rent retired and part-time agent has been con­tacted and has requested input on the process.  Mean­while his sec­re­tary has been offered a job in the new program.

Cur­rent plans call for the county to con­tribute the same amount it does now for a part time posi­tion plus about $2,500 for extra expenses.  The deci­sion would mean a major change for the county’s exten­sion office and an active 4-H pro­gram for the first time in sev­eral years.

Com­mis­sioner Brian Hen­drix said that he hopes who­ever takes over the 4-H job is “gung-ho” about  the pro­gram and that he hopes to see the return of 4-H hog shows in Brant­ley County.

In other busi­ness, the board:

• Tabled dis­cus­sion of employee over­time but voted to have an out­side com­pany come re-evaluate the county’s pay-scale.

•  Approved the bid of $19,040 from South­ern Prop­erty Main­te­nance of Way­cross for 193 cubic yards of rub­ber mulch for the Way­nesville Nature Trail and out­door class­room.  The mulch will be used in place of a board­walk due to both cost and safety con­cerns. Com­mis­sion­ers have been told that the rub­ber mulch won’t float away in a major storm as would be expected from the wooden variety.

•  Approved the bid of $11,570 from Brant­ley com­pany Pool­side Con­struc­tion for the place­ment of board­ers along the rub­ber walk­way, the place­ment of mulch and the instal­la­tion of drainage.

•  Appointed Sherry Grif­fin to the library board.

•  Mod­i­fied a con­sent agenda item regard­ing the Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency vehi­cle.  The keys will be left at the Emer­gency Med­ical Ser­vices build­ing and not the 911 center.