Highland County Board of Commissioners President Jeff Duncan announced in the weekly Wednesday morning meeting that he spoke to the architect of the proposed new dog pound that morning and got the impression that they would break ground on the facility sometime next week.
Duncan said the dog pound had been a topic of discussion for the past few meetings, but that now they’re “finally” going to see some action.
Commissioner Dave Daniels said that they had planned to have a contract come in later in the morning for the construction of the dog pound. However, The Times-Gazette received no confirmation of the contract from the commissioners.
Duncan said the contractor signed off on the contract, but it needed their signatures when it came in.
In other news, Greenfield City Manager Todd Wilkin said that the village applied for a Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area (DORA). He said the parks and recreation committee recommended the application.
Wilkin said there is a process for the application including a 30-day notice for their upcoming meeting. He said that a meeting was scheduled, but couldn’t recall the date. He said he thought there was a “lot of confusion” regarding what a DORA is and that the village wants public input on it. He said they’ve already received some input through Facebook.
In another matter, representatives from McCarty Associates LLC were present to give details and ask questions regarding the records storage center. Duncan said he asked Highland County Clerk of Courts Ike Hodson, Highland County Auditor Bill Fawley and Highland County Recorder Chad McConnaughey to attend the meeting because they were people that were the ones with some of the most records.
Doug Karnes, a partner at McCarty Associates, said “usually” the way to design a type of facility like the records storage center, which he said will be located at 138 Beech St., would be to get a feel of how it would be used. Because of that, Karnes constructed a questionnaire for people to take to start thinking about how they’d like to use the facility. He said he didn’t expect the questions to be answered at the meeting, but that they were something to think about later and complete following the meeting.
Karnes said some of the questions include:
* How would the people using it access the facility?
* Should there be a driveway or loading zones for records to be dropped off or delivered, or for the facility to give the users the ability to have a truck sit there and not be in traffic in the alley or Beech Street.
* Who is planning to work there? Will there be an employee or will it be staffed at all?
* Would the public be allowed at the building?
* Will the records be stored on pallets, strapped in boxes? Will it be opened or closed shelving?
* Will there be an electronic filing system with a server farm for electronic documents?
Daniels said that following an initial study of how much records storage the entities that are in Hillsboro use now, they figured out it should be about 5,000 square feet.
Karnes suggested at least designing a second floor of the building for future growth. He said that is because if the building is 6,000 to 7,000 square feet, and there’s already 5,000 square feet now, then they might come to McCarty for an addition onto the existing building or another building entirely at a later time. He said they should at least think about designing it with the second floor in mind. He said it doesn’t need to be built, but they should at least know the cost.
He also said some of the rooms in the facility would need to be secured away from others because there are some records that only certain people are allowed to access. He said they talked previously about things like divider space so they will need to continue to explore that option.
Duncan said they didn’t anticipate the need for parking. He said it would be used by people in the administration building and the courthouse, which are both within walking distance. He said a place to unload records would be all they would need.
Daniels said they would be initially moving records from “all over” and that would cause a little disruption in traffic for a few days. However, he said after that initial move the facility would be getting about three new boxes of records from an individual record holder. He said there wouldn’t be a lot of traffic in or out of the facility.
In other news, the board of commissioners had an authorization to execute for an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Permit-to-Install/Plan Approval Application for the Rainsboro School Sewer.
The board of commissioners also approved a right-of-way easement for Highland County Water from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development.
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
