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By VICKI URBANIK With no other practical alternative, the Porter County Commissioners swallowed hard Tuesday and approved the only bid they received for road salt for the county highway department this upcoming winter season. The bid with Morton Salt is for up to 1,000 tons of salt at $134 per ton. That’s far higher than last year’s price: $52 per ton for 2,500 tons. North Porter County Commissioner John Evans said it can only be hoped that this winter will be “extremely mild.” The shortage of road salt this year is a dilemma facing just about all municipal, county and state highway crews. County Highway Supervisor Al Hoagland said some other counties are getting even worse bids than what Porter County has received. The county’s efforts to bug salt companies as to availability hasn’t exactly been effective, he said. “We’ve had salt companies hang up on us,” he said. Evans said the county has about 500 tons of salt in reserve, not nearly enough to get through the winter, leaving it with no choice but to move forward with the purchase. “If we keep shopping, it’s going to get worse,” he said. Evans credited Hoagland for having the foresight a few years ago to purchase trucks that will allow the mixing of a liquid additive that will make the salt on the roads more long-lasting. The county will also try to stretch out its salt supply by adding sand as an abrasive. If the winter ends up severe, the county may need to get “get on one knee” and plead with suppliers, he said. On the bright side, Evans said he traveled a number of county and state roads on Tuesday in the wake of the season’s first significant snow fall and said he found that the county roads were in better shape than the state roads. He noted that the Porter County Highway Department only plows county roads, and that state roads are the responsibility of the Indiana Department of Transportation. In another matter Tuesday, the commissioners directed Plan Commission Executive Director Robert Thompson to get prices on a proposal to outfit the county’s code enforcement officers with shirts and possibly other identification, such as badges. Thompson told the commissioners that the Board of Zoning Appeals has proposed getting the inspectors uniforms, as well as decals on vehicles. He asked the commissioners if the funding for the materials could come from the plan commission’s fund, which comes from fees from building permits and other developments. The commissioners took no action on the matter except to direct Thompson to get more prices. In another matter, the commissioners approved two contracts. One was with Meighen & Associates, an Indianapolis law firm that will assist Porter County Assessor John Scott in his tax appeal of the Mittal Steel assessment set by the state. The contract calls for the firm to be paid $175 an hour, not to exceed $30,000. The other contract approved was with Hamer Enterprises, the firm that’s providing new computer software for the auditor’s and treasurer’s offices. The contract will allow taxpayers online access to their property tax information, along with the ability to pay taxes online. The county already has this service, but a new contract is needed since the county is in the process of switching vendors. The online access comes at no charge to county government; Hamer will, however, charge taxpayers a fee for online payment of taxes.
Posted 11/19/2008
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