Sheriff
Despite now having a K-9 and a deputy, Ryan Pilling, to serve as its handler, sheriff Allen Wittmer said it would still take a few months before the new K-9 unit was up and running.
"We're probably looking at April at the earliest to get things started," he said. "I still have the car, the equipment and everything coming. This all happened a little faster than what I had planned on, so I'm a little bit behind, but very happy and excited that it's coming along."
The longest wait will probably have to be for the handler's training, for which Wittmer said he was looking to late March. "It takes about a month to five weeks to get a car in, and to get it installed," Wittmer said. "The dog goes with Ryan for 10 days to get to learn it, and after the 10 days, he goes back for his two weeks getting training."
|
|
"I told him we can issue an ID for the dog," noted county treasurer Ana Lorber, at which Kent White, the newest county supervisor, suggested he and the dog might go together.
Treasurer
Lorber said business was settling down at her department since the new year. "Things were really, really hectic right before the new year," she said, because of the state's TIME-21 mandates that raised a number of vehicle registration fees at the start of 2009.
Despite hurdles in the changeover and a few last-minute revisions from the state, she said the office was now "pretty much business as usual."
Assessor
The county assessor's office will be implementing a lot of new property values this year.
"We're implementing all new residential values this year, new commercial values this year, and ag building values this year," said deputy assessor Sheila McAllister, who predicted a fair amount of commentary from residents. "The public comes in whenever we change things"
In addition, the department is implementing a new manual mandated by the state Department of Revenue. "It's created a lot of extra work for us, to adjust that manual to our sales levels in our county," said McAllister.
A new commercial evaluation was to be delivered to the county today.
The county has picked up a sizeable amount of new value this year, she reported, and agricultural building values will be made accessible online for the 2009 assessment. "We did a complete ag building revalue, and the state set new guidelines on our ag buildings," she said.
Conservation
"We're just kind of coming up to speed after the holidays," said conservation director John Pullis. The department's calendar is set for the department's Afternoon in the Parks series of Sunday events, which he said naturalist Cari Burnstedt has termed the "travel series" - focused on local people who have been to unique areas, giving overviews on their travels.
The department's ACORN group is booked for programming into the spring, he said. And the new maintenance facility is very nearly in full use, with equipment transferred from the previous location. The conservation board is set to tour the building at its next meeting, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 12. "It turned out really nice," Pullis said.
And the department's efforts to set up an observatory on the Oakland Mills grounds are nearing fruition, he said. "We've received a donated telescope, a very expensive telescope," he said. "We're putting this telescope up on a 30-foot tower, and we are wirelessly going to put the sights that the telescope sees into the classroom on a big screen."
Efforts to set up the telescope have run into troubles with the computer software, but Pullis said that "probably, within the next couple months, we may actually have the telescope up and running."
Zip Mettenburg has continued his efforts to restore the hydroelectric generators at the Oakland Mills dam, Pullis said, but "we're a long ways from coming to that decision."
For more, see our Jan. 8 print edition.
