Grant County Commissioners wrapped up their meetings for 2022 and were preparing for 2023 during meetings in December. At their December 5, 2022 meeting, then incoming County Commissioner Marty Long, District One, stressed the importance for business owners affected by Covid-19, to work on getting property taxes prorated.
“I would remind everybody that the state has fully opened applications for tax payers who were demanded to shut their businesses during Covid by either the state, or in most cases it was the county health nurse... Those businesses that were made to close for however long the period have a chance to get their property taxes prorated for that period paid back to them, because they weren’t in business to pay those taxes,” Long said.
Long, who presided over his first official meeting as an incoming commissioner this month, pointed out that there is a Kansas Website for business owners to go to. He also noted that the money for those refunds would not come from Grant County.
“Those refunds to those taxpayers do not come out of your county coffers,” he said. “It comes out of the state coffers with ARPA federal. They talked about doing it that way (coming from the County) at one time, but that was never going to be fair for it to come out of the county. The application for this goes directly to the state. Most of the businesses across the state on the average shut down for two months.“
Then Grant County Commissioner Kevin Shapland, District Two, pointed out that those businesses who shut down on their own during that time, most likely “shut down for good.”
When asked if he had anything to discuss, incoming County Commissioner John Martin, District Two, said he was “still learning” the process.
Grant County Treasurer Terri Trotman, reported that “tax statements are out.”
“We have been keeping busy collecting, posting and making deposits,” Trotman added, noting that business pertaining to motor vehicles and licenses has been “going smoothly.”
Grant County Appraiser Cindy Wellbrock reported that her staff had been “setting personal property values for 2023.”
Grant County Clerk Sheila Brown reported that her office was also “working on finishing things up”.
“We have been getting things done for the airport and we are trying to use this year’s budget (2022) to do so,” Brown said. “We are also looking at budgets. Emergency management is fully on ambulance, so anything they have coming out the rest of the year will be coming out of the ambulance fund - not the emergency management fund. I was not able to make the transfer to special equipment that we were supposed to because of the three budgets that went in to the hole in general - that would put us a little short, so we won’t be making that transfer of $77,500 this year.”
Brown noted that everything else in the end of the year budgets was “tight”.
“We are getting to the end - but that is the way we are supposed to be, so otherwise everybody is looking really good,” she said. “We are (also) finishing up stuff on elections with the Veteran’s day holiday right after the election - (we were) running behind.”
Brown said she had also talked to a couple of citizens (at the end of 2022) about possible special elections the first of next year (2023)
“I don’t know if it will happen or not but looking at that,” she said.
Some very good news for the county at the end of 2022 pertained to employee benefits. Blue Cross/Blue Shield had reported to county officials that they would be getting a substantial refund.
“I think we are going to use our $490,000 refund check from Blue Cross Blue Shield to give us more budget authority in that fund, so we will not have to amend the employee benefit fund which is wonderful news,” Brown said. “We had plenty of cash in that fund but we didn’t have plenty of budget authority.”
Register of Deeds Dana McDaniel reported that they had a “really good document count for November” in her office.
“Passports was down as far as people bringing them in, but we still have the same amount of people coming in and getting them and talking to them about them,” McDaniel said. “I’m anticipating they will be bringing back more over Spring break.”
McDaniel noted the time to get a passport back has shortened to around seven to nine weeks for a routine one.
“If it’s expedited, it’s like five weeks,” she said. “It’s not quite like before Covid, but it is a lot better than it was.”
Grant County Health Department’s Denise James said everything was going pretty good in the health department; however, she did report some numbers have gone up - in a good way.
“Our numbers are going up a little bit for the community supplement boxes for the seniors,” James said. “We had eight last month (November 2022), which was good. They were impressed. We are still getting applications in, so that is good.:
James noted that the boxes contain canned foods, dried milk, a box of cheese, rice, and more.
“There is a lot of good things in there that’s good for them,” she said.
James reported that they had been giving out flu shots.
“We still have flu, so if anyone hasn’t gotten their flu shots they can come in for that,” she said, adding that, there have still been cases of Covid. “Covid numbers - we’ve had 17-20 and as soon as a couple fall off a couple more come on. We were down under 10 for awhile. People have been sick. There has been a lot of flu.”
The health department staff tests for both flu and Covid.
“We test for Covid and we test for the flu A and B when we test, and that’s free,” James said. “We do the rapid tests here and have the results within 30 minutes. If they want it sent off we can send it off, but most of ours are rapid.”
Grant County Emergency Medical Services Director Jeff Baier reported they had 43 calls the last week of November/first part of December. The new ambulance was delivered in December (2022) and Baier was expecting to put it in to service about a week after receiving it. Baier noted there was some equipment that would need to be added to the ambulance.
Grant County Public Works Supervisor Shaun “Sam” Minks reported that his department had been unable to do much blading of county roads, due to the dry conditions in Grant County.
Minks said (in December) they were working on elevating Grant County Road C. He also reported that vandalism to traffic signs had been occurring in South Grant County.
“There were 15-20 stop and yield signs and everything stolen,” Minks said. “They are not just unbolting them they are cutting them down with an axe or a hatchet, then they are unbolting them and leaving the wood there after they cut them down. And, all over the county they are doing donuts i don’t know if its a new thing or what. About every intersection has donuts on it now.” (See more on the vandalism in today’s edition of the Ulysses News).
Grant County Commissioners were to meet again December 19. Incoming commissioners Long and Martin who replaced Shapland and Commissioner Janet Stewart, were sworn in January 6, during a Grant County Chamber Coffee. Their first official meeting took place January 17, and there was to be a special meeting of the commission January 31 to continue discussing needs for the Grant County jail.
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