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Logan County Board
January Workshop Meeting
[January 16, 2026]
On Thursday, January 15th, the
Logan County Board held their monthly Workshop meeting in the
second-floor courtroom of the Logan County Courthouse at 6:00 p.m.
Of the twelve members of the board, eight were in attendance. Those
present were Vice Chairman Dale Nelson, Lance Conahan, Michael
DeRoss, Kevin Knauer, Joseph Kuhlman, Bob Sanders, Kathy Schmidt,
and Gil Turner. Absent members were Chairman JR Glenn, Hannah
Fitzpatrick, Keenan Leesman, and Jim Wessbecher. Also present at the
meeting were Administrative Assistant Madelyn Hinton, Zoning and
Economic Development Officer Al Green, and Thomas Titus with the
Logan County Farm Bureau.
After guests were introduced and the previous month’s meeting
minutes were approved, Nelson, who was leading the meeting, gave
Conahan the floor to discuss items from the Building and Grounds
Committee, of which he is chairman. There were many items on the
agenda, and a few that were brought off the floor. First, Conahan
brought forward a change order for Restoric in the amount of
$84,075. This change order would be for the company to redo murals
in the courthouse, place LED lights at the base of the stained glass
and repaint the ring around the stained glass. These are all items
relating to the courthouse restoration project.
The next item was an approval for an invoice in the amount of
$29,769.44. The invoice was for benches that had been purchased for
the second-floor courtroom. The next six items were all for new fire
and security systems at several of the county owned locations. The
county is looking at purchase burglar alarms for Scully Park, the
courthouse, the Logan Building, and Animal Control. They are looking
to install new fire alarms for the courthouse and Animal Control.
They are also looking to install key card access to the courthouse.
To see more information on these items, please see LDN’s article on
the committee meeting where these items were first discussed
here.
Conahan stated that he had a
conversation with Sheriff Mark Landers and Deputy Sheriff Josh
Pharis about the key card system. This is the first step in a plan
to get key card access to all county buildings. He also stated that
the burglary and fire alarm system for Animal Control is going to be
taken out of the Contingency line item, as when Bellwether helped
the county put their contract together, an item was never added for
special projects.
Next, Conahan brought forward a motion to approve a change order for
TK Elevator to fix the outside elevator at the courthouse. The
motion states that the change order is not to exceed $30,000
additional, but Conahan stated that he might be “coming back for a
little bit more,” as this project is costing the county more than
they originally thought.
The last two items that were listed on the agenda were for the
replacement of an old server by Heart IT, the county’s IT company,
and the ‘migrating’ of their computers over to the new server. The
costs for these items were $23,851.94 and $25,606.60 respectively.
Conahan had three more motions that he brought off the floor. The
first was to accept a contract with Gibson Teldata as the new phone
service provider to the county. Currently, the county uses Frontier
and pays almost $5,800 per month. With Gibson, the county’s bill
would go down to $2,763.24 per month, and they would get cloud
phones, which would allow the county to have phones that only need
internet access to use.
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The second item
off the floor was hiring Jim Mulkins to do some painting work
for the courthouse restoration. The locations Mulkins would be
painting include the jury deliberation room, the restrooms, and
the lactation room, as well as many doors, woodwork, and the
railings and banisters.
The final item from Building and Grounds was for the immediate
suspension of all county government work with Frontier and all
their associates. At Wednesday night’s special Building and
Grounds meeting, the committee discovered that, contrary to what
they were told, the “new” phones they purchased were
refurbished. This motion was in response to the representative
from Frontier selling the county refurbished phones “under false
pretenses.” Conahan stated that he had reached out to the
representative since that meeting, and they were very
apologetic, stating that they were going to try to make it right
with the county.
Sanders then wanted to know if this would impact the Sheriff’s
department, as they use Frontier for their 911 system. Knauer
suggested that an exception might want to be made for the
Sheriff, and Sanders agreed. Conahan stated that the Frontier
representative has their own company called CCS Solutions, and
they only work with Frontier “on the side.” He stated that all
of the checks they wrote for the phones were to CCS and not
Frontier, stating that they may need to amend the motion at
Tuesday’s regular meeting to include CCS and not Frontier.
DeRoss suggested that they seek the counsel of State’s Attorney
Brad Hauge, as he was not sure they had the authority to do
this.
This brought the board on to the Executive and Personnel
committee report. Nelson, who is the chairman of this committee,
had three agenda items and one off the floor. The first item was
a motion to approve an invoice of $11,000 to terminate the
county’s contract with American Central Insurance, their
insurance broker, up until last month when they voted to go with
Alera Group. Nelson stated that, to ensure they were not in
breach of contract, they had to pay out an agreed upon amount
since they are terminating the contract early.
The next three items were approved with no discussion. First was
a motion to appoint Schmidt to the Logan County Housing
Authority, next was a raffle at the Oasis Senior Center, and
last, which was the item brought off the floor, was a raffle for
the Lake Fork Community Center Consignment Center.
Next was Transportation. In the
absence of committee chairman Wessbecher, DeRoss brought forward the
one item that was on the agenda. This item was “to award 2026 MFT
contract for aggregate materials to lowest responsible bidders.”
After this was Zoning and Economic Development. To read about that
committee report and the announcements after, where Green revealed
that he had been contacted about a new battery storage facility
being proposed right next to the proposed data center near Latham,
please read LDN’s other article
on this meeting.
[Matt Boutcher] |
