The Highland County Board of Commissioners held its annual first meeting of the year Monday where it approved the rules and regulations for the upcoming year’s slate of meetings.

The board unanimously appointed Dave Daniels as chairman of the board and Brad Roades as vice chairman for the 2024 term. Roades assumes the role of vice chairman in only his second year as a commissioner.

This is a change from the 2023 term as commissioner Terry Britton was the president and Daniels was the vice president.

In other news, the board discussed some of the projects Highland County has planned for 2024.

Daniels said the county has a couple of building projects like the OSU Extension building that it “obviously” wants to get done. He also said the county wants to continue to get its records taken care of and sorted.

“I think that that’s probably gonna take up an awful lot of time,” he said.

On the OSU Extension Building, Roades said it’s more advanced than they thought it would be. He said the only part that might hold it up is that it’s predicted to finish around March and they don’t know if they would be able to put the blacktop on in March. However, other than that, he said they should have occupancy or limited occupancy.

Daniels said Highland County applied for funding for upgrades at Rocky Fork Lake, and if approved, they could be able to do “a lot more improvements” there in the “coming years.”

In terms of the American Rescue Plan Act funds, Daniels also said that by October of this year, the county has to have the money designated. He said the board will be looking to get “a lot of those projects” completed or start the final ones they identified.

He also said he thought there were still some uncommitted funds left over, which he said was because they wanted to wait to see if its other projects came in and would have cost overruns.

Among seven resolutions approved by the board were:

* Res. No. 23-288 is a designation of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio (CCAO) official representative and alternate, with Britton saying they are normally the chairman and vice-chairman, respectively.

* Res. No. 23-289 is the appointment of a CDBG complaint procedure committee.

* Res. No. 23-290 is the establishment of the board’s weekly meeting days for Wednesdays at 9 a.m.

* Res. No. 23-293 is the wish to establish rules for public comment for meetings, which Britton said was a five-minute limit and if people want to talk about a topic not on the agenda, they must call a day ahead.

* Res. No. 23-293 is the approval for travel for commissioners to meetings.

Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.