PRIMGHAR—O’Brien County is part of a website that is a beacon of public information.
The board of supervisors received an unexpected update on Tuesday, Sept. 18, in Primghar on Beacon, an interactive public access tool that allows users to view county and city information, public records and geographic information systems via an online portal.
Beacon became publicly available in the county on July 1. Board members approved a five-year contract on March 13 with The Schneider Corporation of Ankeny for the county to join the website.
Ryan Smith, the business development manager for Schneider, was not listed on the supervisors’ Tuesday agenda, but he stopped by the board meeting because he was at the courthouse to introduce Beacon to city employees from Primghar and Sheldon.
“They were both very excited about it,” he said. “I was showing them some different tips and tricks on how to use the site.”
County employees — such as from the assessor’s and auditor’s offices — also attended his presentation about Beacon.
“Long story short, they should know how to use the website,” Smith said. “Frankly, if the city employees know how to use it, then they don’t call the county as much, which makes the county employees happy.
“If the city employees know how to use it, they can connect directly with their local constituents,” he said. “That way, they have a little more ownership.”
Smith noted that the county’s Beacon site did not include a layer of information about soils.
“I’d like to add that,” he said. “That’s a publicly available layer. We can just put that on there for free.”
Smith said the city employees asked about selecting several land parcels at once on Beacon. He gave an example of what they were talking about.
“I want to select all parcels within 200 feet of this street segment or whatever it is, and you can instantly create mailing labels from that,” he said. “That is not on your site. I did not include that in the contract. It’s $1,000, but both cities that were there said they are willing to help pay for that.”
The county’s original contract with Schneider includes a one-time setup cost of $1,000 and $4,350 from the county for Schneider to host the site for the first year, but then the annual hosting cost for the four years after that will be $8,700.
Smith told county auditor Barb Rohwer that he would e-mail her all of the information he just told the supervisors about updating the county’s Beacon site.
“Again, it helps us because otherwise they’re calling us,” Rohwer said of city employees. “For the $1,000, we could do the 200-foot radius?”
“You can do whatever you want,” Smith said. “It’s very commonly used for permits, as an example. The cities are definitely interested in it.”
Smith noted another item that he stressed to the city employees who attended his Beacon presentation.
“If you work with a local engineering firm — which I assume they do — if they’re creating any GIS layers for you and you want them on the Beacon site, just e-mail them to me directly and we can put them on the Beacon site,” he said.
“It is your Beacon site,” he said of the county. “But obviously if there are GIS zoning layers or anything available out there, let’s put them on there. The more layers you have on there to help research, the better.”
Beacon is available in N’West Iowa’s other three counties — Lyon, Osceola and Sioux — as well as in O’Brien County’s other neighbors of Buena Vista, Cherokee, Dickinson and Plymouth counties.
“It’s a great research tool,” Smith said.
“The little that I’ve messed around on it — it’s pretty helpful,” supervisor Sherri Bootsma said of Beacon.
OTHER BUSINESS:
In other agenda items on Tuesday, Sept. 18, the O’Brien County Board of Supervisors:
- Approved a claim to Jacobson-Westergard & Associates Inc. of Estherville for engineering services on Drainage District No. 5 in the amount of $7,356.05.
Auditor Barb Rohwer said the county has paid Jacobson-Westergard $67,905.80 so far for engineering services on the drainage district. The supervisors are the Drainage District No. 5 Board of Trustees.
Board members — in their role as the drainage district’s trustees — also decided not to pay $6,939.78 to the county’s secondary roads department for repairs made in May to a bridge on 300th Street northwest of Hartley that spans Drainage District No. 5’s open ditch.
Supervisor Tom Farnsworth said one of the duties of the county’s secondary roads department is to maintain and repair the county’s bridges.
Rohwer said that is the opinion of Jim Hudson, a drainage attorney from Pocahontas.
Hudson is scheduled to attend a completion hearing that has been set for the project of cleaning out and repairing the drainage district’s open ditch.
The supervisors have scheduled the completion hearing for 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9, in the Assembly Room of the county courthouse in Primghar.
- Entered into an agreement with Cottingham & Butler of Dubuque as the county’s employee benefit consultant for $12 per county health-care policy per month. Rohwer said the county has just over 80 total health-care policies.
Rohwer notified the Wellmark health insurance company that a representative of Cottingham & Butler will be the writing agent for the county’s health insurance plan, of which Wellmark is the third-party administrator.