Commissioners approve borrowing $21.3M

Commissioners approve loans in the form of bond anticipation notes to fund litany of equipment, etc.

Lorain County commissioners approved more than $20 million in new borrowing Dec. 19 during their last meeting of the year.

The new loans, which take the form of $21.32 million in bond anticipation notes, will fund a litany of new equipment, systems, building improvements and infrastructure which the county is seeking to soon tackle.

Commissioners approved the issuance of $1.77 million in bond anticipation notes for new voting equipment for the Lorain County Board of Elections after a presentation on the new machines by Paul Adams, executive director of the board.

The last time the county received new voting machines was 13 years ago, Adams said.

These machines have been used in 40 election cycles, he said.

Due to their age and use, the machines are failing and replacement parts are becoming hard, and expensive, to procure, Adams said.

“Currently, we have less functioning units than would be required to open up the entire county,” he said.

The new ES&S Hybrid vote machines will maintain the touchscreen system Lorain County voters have used since 2005, but also will integrate a paper card which actually will contain each voter’s choices, Adams said.

Ballots will not be tallied within the voting machine, but the card which contains the voter’s choices will be run through a high speed scanner which will tally, he said.

While certain counties are moving to paper-only systems, laws in Lorain County requiring bilingual ballots makes such a system costprohibitive, Adams said.

New machines along with all the proper wiring will cost $4.5 million with the state picking up about $2.8 million of that sum.

This leaves about $1.7 million for the county to pay, Adams said.

New technology

Lorain County Clerk of Courts Tom Orlando also gave a presentation on the new court information technology case management systems coming to the Lorain County Justice Center in the coming years.

Commissioners approved bond anticipation notes for $4.38 million for the new systems.

Orlando said the new systems have been in the works for several years.

“I know that in our office, in the clerk of courts office, we are keeping our system together with Band-Aids and the other systems also are in need of upgrades,” he said.

After the courthouse’s initial call for proposals on the systems in fall 2016, six case management system vendors have pitched their products to the heads of the various divisions of the court, Orlando said.

“It was very involved,” he said.

In the end, each division chose the vendor, and system, they felt worked best for their purposes.

Orlando said the differing systems should integrate together.

The clerk of courts office’s system will “fundamentally change the way that information flows through the courts,” he said.

“We have an e-filing solution, which is electronic filing, and our system is running in other courts in Ohio,” Orlando said. “There is real probability that in the years to come, we could be, if not paperless, real close to paperless.”

Other approved spending

The commissioners also approved bond anticipation notes for other upcoming projects such as: $3.13 million for the new Lorain County Public Health building, which will be built at the site of the current building in Elyria; $1.66 million for improvements to the county’s Burns Road facility in Elyria; $5.24 million for various capital improvements to county properties; $2.54 million for improvements to the Job and Family Services building in Elyria Township; $1.04 million for a new Lorain County Dog Kennel facility; $1.04 million for new phone systems in all county buildings; and $520,000 for sanitary sewer work along Oberlin Road in Amherst Township.

County Administrator James Cordes, many of these short term loans will not be repaid with the county’s general fund and they will be refinanced into long-term bonds next year.

The commissioners also voted to roll $7.92 million in notes to bonds for the Old County Courthouse renovation, and $2.93 million in notes over to bonds for sanitary sewer improvements along Redfern Road in Columbia Station.

In other news, the commissioners approved the 2019 General Fund budget.

Commissioner Ted Kalo said the county has a total carry over and revenue of about $71 million with a potential budget of about $70 million.

The carryover from 2018 is about $8.9 million, Kalo said.

Cordes said this is a bit lower than bond rating companies would want the county to be at, but the financials are showing improvement.

“On the last rating call, I told them we were anticipating adding about $2 million more to the carryover and we’re going to add a little more than that so that will keep us in a good light,” he said.

Cordes said he has another rating presentation Dec. 27 and he hopes the county can add to the carryover again next year.

Also, the commissioners approved a maintenance and services agreement with CGI Technologies and Solutions Inc., of Waterville, Maine, for $95,347 to upgrade Job and Family Services’ software and technology.

“This will allow for credit card payments,” said Cordes, who also said he’d like to see all county offices and agencies move away from accepting cash.

The next commissioners meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. Jan. 14 on the fourth floor of the County Administration Building, 226 Middle Ave. in Elyria.