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Kosciusko County Commissioners gave Highway Superintendent Steve Moriarty approval Tuesday to advertise for bids for the restoration of the Chinworth Bridge.
He said they want to advertise on Aug. 19 and 26. Bids would be opened on Sept. 22 and then awarded on Oct. 6.
After that approval, Moriarty presented a resolution deeming the highway department’s 1971 PUG mill as surplus. He said the resolution would authorize the sale of the PUG mill to Decatur County for $15,000. The commissioners approved that, too.
A PUG mill is a continuous mixing machine designed to combine materials into a uniform mixture, and makes cold asphalt.
Over the last 10 years, Moriarty told the commissioners they’ve applied for grants from the GRIP (Grant Rail Project) program for at-grade railroad crossing improvements “for all the crosses that we have there as you come up to the railroad.”
The GRIP grant he sought permission to apply for Tuesday from the commissioners was for 2027 and totaled $23,100. Moriarty said it was a 100% reimbursable matching grant.
Commissioner Cary Groninger asked how many crossings would the $23,100 help with. Moriarty said it’s “normally about $1,000 a site.”
Moriarty’s request to apply for the grant was approved.
The last item Moriarty brought before the commissioners was supplemental agreement #2 for bridge 123. The bridge is on Packerton Road, south of Pierceton.
“This is to change the design, which would add about an increase cost of $114,000 and some odd cents to the project,” he said. “This is for the redesign of the bridge, to improve the bridgeway width in general, to take away the crossing path.”
The commissioners approved the supplemental agreement 3-0.
Dispatch Redundancy
County Administrator Marsha McSherry presented a proposal from J & K Communications to add two radios to the current consoles in the dispatch center.
“This will help to make the system more redundant than it already is. What this will do is add two radios. If the system were to go down, there would be an alert on the system that the system is down. Dispatch will just flip a switch, basically. That brings the system into play without any hesitation and no issues,” McSherry explained. “Currently, we’re relying on hand-held radios that rely on the PDA system in the Justice Building.”
She said that’s kind of like relying on cell phone service in a building.
McSherry said, “This was not included in the original proposal for the system, but this will just make our system more efficient, more redundant.”
Sheriff Jim Smith said it will provide a “peace of mind” to the dispatch and to himself.
“Portables are good, but they’re not the best we can offer. This system that she’s proposing here with the backups ... it’s kind of like an in-home generator. If your power goes out at home, it’ll continue to operate as normal where you don’t have that function as we currently stand here. So, I’m fully supportive of this,” Smith said, reminding the commissioners that dispatch does fall under the direction of the sheriff.
McSherry said the original quote was $22,993.88. “Due to some issues that we’ve had and E.F. Johnson working with the county, we’ve been able to get that down to $15,536.28, with a difference of $7,456.60,” she stated.
The commissioners approved the proposal.
Groninger gave an update on the five bids for the Justice Building reconstruction, which were opened June 2.
“We are still working on selecting a contractor. We’re really, really close. We just didn’t get a signed document in time for today’s meeting to be able to make that award, but we are really close to making that,” he said. “We’ve done our due diligence. We’ve been calling a lot of references and confirming pricing and making sure we’re picking a quality contractor to be able to do that work, but we’ll be making that award at the next meeting as long as we get that written documentation that we’re requesting.”
In August 2025, part of the facade and soffit of the Justice Building collapsed, but no one was hurt.
In other business, the commissioners:
• Approved CivicPlus as the county’s new website vendor, as requested by Director of Technology Eric Sorensen.
He informed the commissioners the county’s current website provider let the county know earlier this year they will not be doing websites any longer at the end of this year.
“Our hand was kind of forced to find a new vendor,” Sorensen said.
A committee was formed to find a new vendor, and out of all the options they saw, CivicPlus “best fit our bill,” he stated, and the city of Warsaw uses them as well.
The initial investment is $36,719. After the first year, the annual fee will be $6,796.80.
With the new website, Sorensen said he wants to be more mindful of being ADA compliant.
Commissioner Sue Ann Mitchell recognized the people who served on the committee to find a new website provider.
“Because there was a great deal of time put into this. A lot of research went into it. Between Eric and Chaz and Matt. I believe Bobbi sat in on some of the meetings, and Alyssa. There just was a whole lot of good input - Rob Bishop was very instrumental in it. So I just wanted to say thank you to all the employees for how hard you worked to try to make this be something that wasn’t near as difficult because we kind of got hit with it at the 11th hour and this is kind of a jump off the cliff,” she said.
Mitchell said it’ll also give the county a better way to get its information out to the public because every department is going to be encouraged to maintain their own website and get their own information out so the public has better awareness of what goes on in each of the offices that’s current.
• Approved new bulk user agreements with ICE Mortgage Technology and CoreLogic Solutions LLC - Cotality, pending the receipt of the county-required addendums, as requested by County Recorder Deb Wright.
• Approved a $8,500 fee from HWC Engineering Inc. to envision improvements to the Chinworth Bridge Trailhead Park, as requested by Kosciusko County Parks and Recreation Board President Troy Turley.
• Invited the public to the Liberty Tree dedication and the sealing of the America 250 time capsule at 6 p.m. July 10 at the east corner of the Kosciusko County Courthouse.
The public also was invited to attend the public reading of the Declaration of Independence at 6 p.m. July 8 at the same location.
