The Porter County Board of Commissioners committed to refinancing the debt lease on the county’s 2001 Jail Bands as expected on Tuesday.

The move had been previously advocated by the Porter County Council last week and the Porter County Jail Building Corporation at their annual meeting conducted on Feb. 16.

Accounting advisor Todd Samuelson from H.J. Umbaugh & Associates said savings from the transaction will be realized in the county’s 2011 budget. The county will realize a net savings of $570,000 from the transaction. An additional $700,000 would come from the trustee bank of the Jail Building Corp. from when the jail was paid for in 1999 for an approximate total of 1.3 million in debt service reduction to go back into the hands of the county.

County officials are eager to use the money for capital improvement projects. Umbaugh said the county is not legally obligated to use the money that way but using the money for construction would be the likely choice.

The interest rates for the new bonds are estimated to be significantly lower than when they were first purchased. The county has to wait until April 11, or 90 days before the call date, to complete the transaction when Samuelson estimates the interest rate would be 2.75 percent comparable to 5 percent in 1999.

Porter County Commission President John Evans, R-North, earlier suggested the money received could be used to open up the third pod at the Porter County Jail which has remained closed since its construction in 2000. No official decisions have yet been made.

Umbaugh said the jail is owned by the Building Corp. and is leased to the county.

The commissioners approved the motion of committing to the transaction with a 3-0 vote.

In reviewing a request from Porter County Auditor Robert Wichlinski, Evans revealed his interest in establishing a human resources service/department for Porter County government.

During the business portion of the meeting, Wichlinski asked the commissioners permission to set up official deadlines of when all county employees can report their weekly hours worked to the county payroll in the auditor’s office.

Employees both part-time and full-time will now be required to report their hours at the end of the day on Friday in order to give the auditor’s office a one-week time buffer to process any status changes or other special circumstances that would go into calculating the employee’s paycheck.

“Those deadlines and dates become very critical,” said Wichlinski. The goal he said is to smooth out the process of getting the weekly payments into the employees’ pay checks.

Because not all payment methods are the same, Wichlinski said it may be wise for the county to consider bringing on a person or group who specializes in human resource management.

Evans latched on to Wichlinski’s suggestion and added to it saying the county “is in need” of those services.

The discussion prompted Evans to request the commissioners office to set its own deadlines to cut off when items can be placed on the agenda for commissioners meetings.

The county council discussed creating a county’s human resources department during last fall’s 2011 budget hearings with mixed opinions on whether the county would be able to afford another entity of government.

A series of three contractual agreements were approved during the meeting, mostly aiming at clearing some of the tax appeal backlog and restructuring the assessor’s office.

One agreement presented by Assessor Chief Deputy Daniel Timm was approved with WCM Human Resources not to exceed $5,000 to fulfill a request by the previous county council to create new job descriptions in the assessor’s office to list the specific responsibilities for each employee. The firm will be paid from $50 to $70 per hour. Evans commented consultants are the best way to handle the situation and not have the county worry about additional insurance costs.

Two more consulting agreements the commissioners gave nod to would further eliminate the roughly 7,000 pending property tax appeals. One stated that SRI Inc. would offer project management and training services to the assessors. The firm would also meet with taxpayers on their own and ultimately cut the appeal log by 2,000 different appeals.

“It would help get us over the hump,” Timm said. The agreement is not to exceed $18,000. All agreements have already been included in the assessors’ budget for the year.

The other agreement was made with Gordon Etzler & Associates who would provide legal counsel during the appeal hearings at an hourly rate of $120 per hour not to exceed $16,000.

Lastly, the commissioners discussed adding vacation days for the four employees hired by the county after the state did away with most township assessor positions in 2009. Those four individuals are now working full-time and will be give 15 vacation days per year instead of 10.

Former Porter County official Michael Aylesworth visited the county commissioners as Northern Regional Office Director of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

As part of his reason for visiting, Aylesworth distributed material to educate the commissioners on practices to responsibly maintain sewer systems and encouraged the commissioners to look further into utilizing new forms of technology.

“Our goal is to make all water in the county drinkable and swimmable,” he said.

Aylesworth also commended the county in undertaking the comprehensive drainage study and was pleased to report he has heard nothing negative regarding the study.

In other business Tuesday, the board signed off on a first reading to rezone a 40-acre parcel of land at the southwest corner of CR 700W and CR 100N in Union Twp. The change in zoning was from Rural Residential to General Agriculture and was recommended by the Porter County Plan Commission advisory board in February with a 6-2 vote.

Evans noticed a trend of numerous requests recently to rezone to General Agriculture so that houses can be built on ten acres of land as have others on the Plan Commission. He asked Plan Commission Director Robert Thompson if an ordinance needed to be “tweaked.”

Thompson said he has delegated an employee to research the ordinance and mentioned County Commissioner Nancy Adams, R-Center, who was recently voted president of the advisory board last month, is planning to hold a workshop session to discuss possible changes to the Unified Development Ordinance.

The commissioners also moved their second March meeting from March 15 to March 22 since there are five Tuesdays during the month. Evans said the County Council meeting would also be pushed back to March 29.

Posted 3/2/2011