Commissioners approve upgrades to courthouse wireless access

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Wireless internet access should soon become much improved inside the thick stone walls of the Putnam County Courthouse.

Acknowledging the need for strong Wi-Fi signal in the courthouse, the Putnam County Commissioners approved a $2,032.47 plan to upgrade wireless access inside the building.

Currently, signal strength in the building is weak, with just two installed access points — one in the voter registration office on the second floor and the other in the community corrections/GRASP office on the first floor.

This limits access in the multiple different offices and rooms of the courthouse and does little for attorneys who need access to document e-filing and whose business centers on the three third-floor courtrooms.

The court offices currently have wireless access of their own.

The proposal from air-LINX is to install a unified system with six additional access points. Placing additional units in the commissioners room, the clerk’s office, superior courtroom, circuit courtroom, assessor’s office and prosecutor’s office will give the building two access points on each of the four floors.

The wireless access will be open to public use and not password-protected. Much like using the Wi-Fi at other locations, a screen will pop up at log-on requiring the user to agree not to misuse internet access.

The commissioners could also opt to turn on firewall filtering of certain sites if they choose.

Access to the internet through the network will not give users access to the data network of the various county offices.

In other business:

• Transfer fees in the auditor’s office will increase from $5 to $10 per parcel.

Auditor Lorie Hallett advised the commissioners that the increase is required by the State of Indiana, which captures more than 50 percent of that money for itself.

The money that is collected goes to the plat office.

• Residents of County Road 1100 North in Russell and Franklin townships were in attendance to talk about the state of their road.

James House, a farmer in the area, advised that in the last 40 years, maintenance on the road has been “patchwork on top of patchwork on top of patchwork.”

“The road, almost 70 percent, is almost like a corduroy road and the wear on it is pretty substantial,” House said.

County Highway Supervisor Mike Ricketts had good news for House and his neighbors. The road is set for grind and double chip and seal next year.

Ditch work will begin on the road this fall, including the installation of culverts and field entrances.

• Commissioner Rick Woodall talked of concerns county employees have expressed about payments into their health savings accounts.

For any county employee opting to take a health savings account (HSA) health plan as opposed to a preferred provider organization (PPO), the commissioners contribute $500 automatically in addition to up to another $1,000 to match employee contributions.

The idea is to help employees with health expenses because HSAs save the county money over PPOs.

However, some employees are reportedly using the money from their HSAs for anything, not simply medical purposes.

Some employees who opted not to take the HSA look at this as simply extra compensation to co-workers who are behaving dishonestly.

“Once again, this is something we need to safeguard?” Woodall asked.

One question that arose from the conversation is how, if at all, the county can police this. One thing that might make it easier would be to require that employees have HSAs at one particular bank.

“We could have chosen the bank or we could let them choose. And we let them choose,” Hallett said.

“Well, looking back, that was a terrible decision,” Woodall said.

At a minimum, a taxpayer will get in trouble if this sort of behavior is caught by the IRS.

Woodall plans to talk to the county’s insurance carrier to see if any other plan is possible.

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  • Employees are taking a big risk if they are using the HSA funds for purposes other than those allowed by federal regulations. Abuse by employees will land them in trouble and could potentially jeopardize this excellent program for many others that follow the rules. What a shame!

    -- Posted by rawinger on Fri, Aug 9, 2019, at 5:52 AM
  • How does anyone know what others are using their hsa money for? Not the counties job to monitor the employees foolish choices, they will get caught and wished that they had not abused it.

    -- Posted by taylortwp on Sun, Aug 11, 2019, at 8:30 AM
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