The Lincoln County Commissioners met Tuesday, March 12 in the Lincoln County Boardroom.
With all members present, the Commissioners heard agenda items including sealant purchases and employee handbook changes.
Highway Superintendent, Terry Fluit requested board action to purchase crack sealant and mastic sealant off the Yankton County bid.
“Crack sealant is going to be at 67 cents a pound and mastic sealant is will be 60 cents a pound. This is a budgeted purchase and we have budgeted about $115,000 for this this year, so we shouldn’t exceed that number,” Fluit said.
Commissioner Mike Poppens asked how that number compared to the price the Highway Department paid last year.
“It’s going to be slightly up from last year because we’re starting to do more of this, but as far as pricing, maybe a nickel higher,” he responded.
Motion approved.
Human Resource Director, Traci Humphrey joined the meeting to request board action to approve the Employee Handbook.
“I would like board action to approve the employee handbook updates 10.2 and 10.3 to conform our PTO policy to the new software protocols. There’s no changes being made to the PTO policy, it’s in accrual amounts, or the cost to the county, it’s just moving it from 24 payrolls a year to 26 payrolls per year for that leave accrual because currently, there’s two times a year where they don’t do leave accrual, but our new software needs it to match whatever our payroll is,” she said.
Motion approved.
Commissioner Jim Schmidt opened the floor up for the public comment portion of the meeting.
Linda Montgomery was the first to speak.
“I have not been the best communicator in speaking with you, and I hope today that that changes. My purpose today is to come before you to speak for those who cannot or are unable to come to speak about the topic I am discussing. I felt God has been putting me on this mission for the last three years to help restore trust in our elections. I am coming to you today to talk about hand counting at the precinct level to restore transparency in our elections. We are not the enemy; we are your neighbors. We ask that we return to hand counting where we as neighbors go to our local precinct and vote. After that vote is complete and the polls close, other neighbors come in and count that vote, this is true transparency. For those who need help to vote, that will be given by their neighbors or by their family members. No one will be prevented from casting a ballot. The issue is, we have lost trust in our election system. It’s a third party that runs our election through the machines and as throughout the last three years, we have been unable to audit those machines or even audit the ballots. I know they say well this year will be different, and I say no, I can’t wait that long. We need to know that our vote counts, we need to stand up and make sure that our neighbors are the ones that our counting our ballots to restore true transparency in our elections. Again, we are not your enemy, we are your neighbors and we just want full transparency in our elections,” she said.