With Highland County Board of Commissioners President Jeff Duncan describing the previous week “as being pretty quiet, which is a good thing,” he and fellow commissioner Terry Britton announced positive economic news for the county.
Commissioner Gary Abernathy was away on vacation.
Britton said that preliminary non-automotive sales tax numbers from the state indicated that the county was “at a positive 25 percent, and that is very good news for us.”
Duncan said that the “hard” numbers would be forthcoming soon, but the preliminary figures indicated that Highland County “was hanging in there, and that as long as car sales didn’t drop off to offset what was on the other end, we should be pretty good.”
Britton said that previous preliminary numbers furnished by the state provided a good indication of what the later hard numbers would reveal.
Highland County Auditor Bill Fawley commented during the meeting that several Ohio counties had experienced decreases in tax revenue of 25 percent or more in recent months due to the pandemic and subsequent shutdown of non-essential businesses throughout the state.
“Of the 88 counties, there were some positive like us and a lot that were negative,” Britton said. “We’re somewhat lucky to live in Highland County since we don’t have a lot of shopping centers and big box stores, and that other stuff that drags those revenues down. Everybody’s buying locally and that’s good.”
Also Wednesday, sealed bids were opened for the North Fifth Street drainage improvement project in Greenfield. Distel Construction, Inc. submitted a bid for $428,374 and Darby Creek Excavating’s bid was for $454,962.
Both proposals were given to representatives of the Stantec Engineering Services company for its evaluation and recommendation.
In other matters, two line item budget transfer resolutions were approved Wednesday, along with three contracts that Duncan said were “fairly routine as I could tell.”
The contracts that were approved had to do with the Provision for Help Me Grow service coordination, an online dog licensing system renewal agreement with Fairfield Computer Services, LLC and a sub-grant agreement with Highland County Community Action Organization and the Greater Ohio Workforce Board, Inc.
Duncan said that later Wednesday a meeting was scheduled with department heads concerning policy and procedure guidelines in securing CARES Act funding that the county has been granted.
Reach Tim Colliver at 937-402-2571.
