The Crawford County Council held their monthly regular session meeting at the Courthouse on Tuesday evening. A handful of items were listed on the agenda for discussion. Here are some of the high points from the meeting:
- Christine Harbeson the Executive Director of the Community Foundation of Crawford County came before the board to updates on the housing survey and pass out final surveys. The purpose of this survey was to see exactly what the community thinks the housing needs situation is in the county. Harbeson said she would get a final tally of the votes after the Crawford County School Board meeting which is being held on Thursday evening.
- County Historian Roberta Toby came before the board asking the Council to help pay for the purchasing of heavy-duty shelving to hold books about the history of the county over at the Historical Annex. Toby stated that some of the big record and ledger books were too heavy for store-bought shelves and she had solicited a couple of estimates from two different contractors for this project. The Council agreed to help with this project.
- Crawford County Assessor Mike Carlisle came before the Council with a trifecta of items that included a new laptop computer for his daily duties, newer software being needed, and training for the new software. The cost of the laptop was $1400.
- The largest piece of business was spent talking with Josh Dawson from US Imaging in Saginaw, Michigan about the digitizing of all Crawford County Courthouse documents and records. Mr. Dawson explained that his company has done this work for 90 of the Hoosier state’s 92 counties and countless other places across America. All documents would be scanned on-site with two teams working 24/7 on rotating 12-hour shifts who would take the scans to begin digitizing and cataloging files. The Courthouse would always maintain possession of the original document but every document would have a digital footprint easily accessible online. To take care of this for each department in the county, including the Sheriff’s Department, the cost was projected at over $400K. The council agreed to look into this and asked Mr Dawson to see if they could negotiate a better fee and maybe make a decision at the next meeting.
The Crawford County Council meets on the second Tuesday of each month at the Crawford County Courthouse in English.
