Hill County Commissioners pass disaster mitigation plan

After it was worked on for most of 2018, a pre-disaster mitigation plan update was passed by the Hill County Commission on a 3-0 vote Thursday morning during the commission’s weekly business meeting.

County Commissioner Mike Wendland commended the employees of Tetra Tech Inc. for their work on helping update the plan for Hill County.

Tetra Tech Inc. is an engineering and consulting firm from Pasadena, California. The company identified and ranked areas of concern in pre-disaster mitigation plans for Hill and Blaine counties and included a plan for cyber security.

The highest disaster concerns for both counties are flooding and severe weather. Daphne Digrindakis, a contractor for Tetra Tech, held meetings with members of the public to collect input, then in July held a meeting to go over the updates to the disaster plan.

County Commissioner Diane McLean said that while it was costly for them to have Tetra Tech assist with the planning, it is necessary due to the unpredictable nature of disasters.

“In the heat of the moment, emergency things happen. So we hope we are on track to do it correctly,” she added. “It is our intention to try and make sure our county has these things in place and be safe and be planning ahead.”

It is a federal mandate that counties across the U.S. must have a disaster plan in place in order to receive disaster funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

During the business meeting, McLean went over slight changes to the travel policy. Aside from minor typos in the policy, McLean said, they were adding a phrase for clarification to the third paragraph of the travel policy.

The original sentence reads: “All travel expenses shall be approved by the Elected Official/Department Head.”

The revised sentence will be adding, “then submitted to the auditor’s office.”

“Because then it gives it clear direction that the auditor’s office is going to approve those before they’re paid,” McLean added.

She also discussed modifications to the use of county vehicles policy. She said she added a sentence to clarify when county employees could and could not use their own private vehicles.

The policy now states that the “County Commission may authorize an employee to use his/her private vehicle for official use only when a county vehicle is not available or when extenuating circumstances warrant an exception.”

McLean said she added wording to the final paragraph of the vehicle use policy to make it clear that spouses or non-employees were not permitted to operate county vehicles.

“I think these variations are going to be rare. That’s the hope that we keep these things rare,” she added. “But it does allow a little bit of latitude if something happens on a weekend or Friday afternoon there’s no commissioners to OK something. It states definitely for official county business.”

McLane made the motion to pass the policy along with its updates, and the commission passed it unanimously, 3-0.