County to move forward with two part-time building inspectors

County officials tentatively have a plan for performing building inspections in 2021.

The inspector position had remained a bit of an open question following the retirement of former County Planner Don Hatfield earlier this year.

While Lisa Zeiner was hired to replace Hatfield as the planning and zoning director, she is not filling his duties as building inspector. While this requires less help on the administrative side, it leaves the county in need of an inspector.

Following Hatfield’s retirement, Bill Mentgen and Donnie Watson performed the county’s inspections on a contractual basis, but neither man wanted the job on a full-time basis.

As it turned out, no one was looking to be a full-time building inspector for the county.

Earlier this month, the county received three proposals for performing county building inspections. One was for Energy Conservation Solutions, Mentgen’s company, to perform them on a contract basis.

However, county officials balked at the cost of going this route.

The other two interested parties were James Smith of Staunton and Greg Papenfuss of Greencastle, both of whom wanted to do the inspections on a part-time basis.

Zeiner and County Attorney Jim Ensley interviewed the interested parties, with Zeiner proposing two possible plans during the Monday commissioners meeting.

One of them would involve hiring one of the inspectors for three days a week, while the other involved hiring both men for two days a week each, leaving only one weekday on which inspections would not be performed.

Commissioner President Rick Woodall made the motion that they hire both Smith and Papenfuss part time, with a caveat.

“The key to this is those two people have to be on the same page about inspections, what’s good and what’s bad,” Woodall said.

The motion passed unanimously, with David Berry and Don Walton adding their affirmative votes.

The approval is only tentative, however, as both Smith and Papenfuss have to agree to the plan, as well as the Putnam County Council signing off on the new salaries.

The salaries, however, will not be additional money in the 2021 budget, as money was already budgeted for a full-time inspector.

The council already has a special meeting scheduled for Monday, Jan. 4, so the matter will be added to that agenda.

Looking ahead to 2021 in other ways, the commissioners also approved a number of calendar items for the year, including the payroll schedule, claim dates, holidays and meeting dates.

The pay dates and claim dates were approved without discussion.

As for holidays, the county will follow its normal procedure of abiding by the State of Indiana holiday schedule, which is as follows:

New Year’s Day: Friday, Jan. 1

Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Monday, Jan. 18

Good Friday: April 2

Memorial Day: Monday, May 31

Independence Day (observed): Monday, July 5

Labor Day: Monday, Sept. 6

Columbus Day: Monday, Oct. 11

Veterans Day: Thursday, Nov. 11

Thanksgiving: Thursday, Nov. 25

Black Friday (Lincoln’s Birthday observed): Friday, Nov. 26

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day: Thursday, Dec. 23 and Friday, Dec. 24

County offices will also close at noon on Wednesday, Dec. 22.

Meetings will continue to be at 9 a.m. on the first and third Monday of each month, except when moved due to holidays.

The alternate meeting dates will be Tuesday, Jan. 19 (Martin Luther King Day), Tuesday, July 6 (Independence Day) and Tuesday, Sept. 7 (Labor Day).

In other business:

• The commissioners approved the annual contract with Purdue Extension with a budget of $102,765.

Extension Director Mark Evans noted that this was the annual approval and that two of the Extension employees, Jenna Nees and Kim Beadles, are paid partially by the Putnam County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Further, he discussed how they have mitigated the risk of COVID-19 this year by providing curbside services and doing many of their programs virtually.

“We haven’t spent any money on Plexiglas or anything like that,” Evans said. “I think it has worked out well for everybody.”

Woodall praised how active Extension educators have remained in terms of providing programs for the public.

“I feel like you guys are doing a lot more of those,” Woodall said. “I think it’s great.”

Evans said that for all the problems the pandemic has caused, the move to more virtual programs has actually been a positive for busy people. They can take things in smaller chunks from wherever they choose.

“You get tired of listening to me for an hour,” Evans joked, “but 15 minutes you can tolerate.”

Evans also noted that the 4-H program was down about 100 kids in 2020 as well as having about two thirds of its normal exhibits.

However, he was proud that Putnam County was able to have the fair, limited though it may have been, and said most comments he had received from the public were positive.

• The commissioners gave their approval to Putnam County EMS temporarily adding an additional paramedic to its roster.

The reason for the additional paramedic is two current EMTs are on the verge of completing their paramedic training. Unfortunately, there is currently only one open paramedic spot.

While paramedics make a higher salary than EMTs, Deputy Chief Anthony Taylor presented numbers showing that in the first year, it would actually cost less to keep an established employee at a higher rate than to hire a new employee as an EMT.

The added cost of training a new EMT springs from the need to pull someone off of his or her regular duties for several weeks to train the new employee. This requires someone else to make up the shifts by working overtime.

There are also initial outlays for uniforms and equipment.

Taylor and Chief Kelly Russ said, for the first year only, actually keeping both employees as paramedics would save about $3,900.

After the first year, Taylor noted, there would be no additional savings. The thought is that there is likely to be a vacancy before the year is out, thus opening a paramedic spot and avoiding the problem of an additional year.

• County Highway Supervisor Mike Ricketts told the commissioners that Bridge 45 on the Putnam-Hendricks line south of State Road 236 was set for completion by Wednesday.

This brought to an end a closure of more than 21 months.

• The commissioners will do their annual appointments of employees and board members during their 9 a.m. meeting on Jan. 4.