Waurika News Democrat

Local News

January 6, 2010

Phillips gets a little slack in first day as chair of county board

Jeff Kaley

WAURIKA — On his first day as head of the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners, Ty Phillips was feeling a little like he’d been shanghaied.

After a regular meeting was called to order Monday morning, the first order of business was to elect a new chairman — and Phillips won, hands down.

“They ganged up on me!” Phillips said, with a laugh, after colleagues Billy Kidd and Loyd Kimbro voted unanimously to elect the District 2 commissioner as board chair for calendar year 2010.

Kidd, who had been chairman in 2009, was then elected vice chairman for this year.

As it turned out, Phillips didn’t have much on his plate in a first day as head of the commission. With the exception of the election, the only major action taken was to approve a force account resolution to the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.

“This is for a reimbursement on the force account for work we did replacing a bridge with a big tin horn in (District 1),” Kidd said. Kidd’s crew had done the work on the project and ODOT reimbursed District 1 for $22,653.74 in material and labor.

Although no action was taken, during new business, County Treasurer Ann Medlinger brought the commissioners up to speed on a potential problem with the computer system and Internet service used by six offices at the courthouse.

Medlinger said the computer system “got slower and slower last week,” which caused a backlog of work for the treasurer’s office. Medlinger was also concerned that the computer problem might cause the system “to crash,” which would jeopardize the data base of her tax-oriented software.

In addition, she noted, because several offices are tied into the same Internet account, the county assessor’s Internet service also experience problems and work was backing up in that office.

On Sunday, software technician Mike Keller had joined Medlinger at the county courthouse and was able to increase the speed at which programs were running. “But,” she noted, “Mike said every office (at the courthouse) needs to have its own Internet account.”

Medlinger also said a technician from KellPro Systems in Duncan would be at the courthouse Tuesday to look at the hardware status of the computer and Internet system.

The commissioners agreed having six offices using the same Internet account was problematic, and there was a brief discussion about where funds might be found to cover the cost of obtaining more Internet accounts.

The commissioners will await a follow-up report from Medlinger before taking action.

In action that was taken Monday, the commissioners approved:

• Claims and authorization of blanket purchase orders.

• Official county reports, cash fund estimates of needs and requests for appropriations.

• Minutes from a regular meeting on Dec. 31.

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