Owen County identifies roads in disrepair, alters records request process

The work to address Owen County’s deteriorating roads has continued throughout the summer, and may speed up with the addition of an injection hole patcher and a plan to get quotes for some repairs.

Commissioner Sam Hobbs said the county has some extra money to put toward paving roads. Money from the Community Crossing Matching Grant the county received cannot be used to fix the roads in question. Those funds can only contribute to a hard surface road, Highway Superintendent Chad Walker said.

To address paving in the county, Hobbs and the other two commissioners, Norman Warner and Dave Risk, read a list of roads for Walker to assess and seek repair quotes from contractors.

These include:

District 1:
Oak Grove Church Road
West Dam Road
Fertig Road
Cherokee Pass
Clark Road
Hickory Road
Hudson Hill Road
Front Street
Millgrove Road
Keeler Road
Smith Road
School House Road
Jones Road
Baseline Road
Buffalo Road

District 2:
Sherfield Road
Franklin Road
Macville Road
White Road
Vilas Road
Bakers School Road
Rocky Hill Road
Texas Pike

District 3:
Graham Road
Six Mile Road
Mount Zion Road
Bucklew Road
Hubbell Station Road

Also at the meeting, County Auditor Sheila Reeves said the county is working to make changes to the current public records request procedures. She said the current request form, which is accepted by email or in person, will still be accepted.

The changes follow HEA 1360, alterations to the state Access to Public Records Act (APRA), which focuses on reducing the strain that bulk requests from seemingly automated sources put on public agencies.

The changes “modernize the public records process and set reasonable limits to protect agency resources,” the act reads. It includes authorization for agencies to establish an electronic portal for requests that can screen and track sources. Additionally, it lets agencies prioritize requests from state residents and those submitted for civic, journalistic, academic or personal purposes, among other changes.

The county is still working with its IT and webpage manager to add instructions to the request page and alter the submission process, Reeves wrote in an email.

The county also is in the process of replacing the emergency transmitter tower in Patricksburg, one of the county’s repeater sites, leaving the old one to become surplus. These towers are used by emergency responders for radio contact.

County EMS Director Cris Lunsford said the repeater picks up the radio signal, boosts it and then rebroadcasts it. A taller tower and higher antenna expands the signal range.

“We’re having problems with coverage,” Lunsford said. “What they decided was if they went up 180 feet instead of the 80 feet, they would get a tremendous amount of coverage and would take care of our problem.”

To install the new tower, the former had to be taken down, which happened on July 16.

In the meantime, Lunsford said EMS will dispatch from the Freedom, Indiana tower. As a back-up, the county also identified a portable tower it could rent if needed. Emergency service employees also created a cell phone group chat to ensure they can stay in touch.

However, at the time of the meeting, Lunsford wasn’t able to say what the impact of the missing tower would be yet. He said EMS could run into problems with missing radio traffic. Certain parts of the department may not be able to hear where a team has been dispatched.

“We do have three safeguards in place and hopefully we won’t have any problems,” Lunsford said. “If those don’t work, then we’re going to get that [portable] tower out.”

Lunsford said the new, taller tower should be up by the end of August. Although, with a new tower comes a new radio and repeater system that has to be installed, which could make it September before the new system is set.

Lunsford said the new tower cost between approximately $80,000 and $90,000. The entire radio project, including acquiring new handheld subscriber units and the mobile radios in EMS vehicles, is expected to total about $1.3 million.

At the meeting, the commissioners also scheduled an executive meeting for 4 p.m. July 30. Hobbs said it would be a “lengthy” meeting related to litigation, highway, building maintenance and the custodian.