County to Realize Savings on Phone Bills

by Jeff Wright

Some Gasconade County departments that use AT&T phone systems are to receive a 20 percent discount on their phone bills - and county employees, a 15 percent discount on their personal AT&T phone service, according to Commissioner Jerry Lairmore, who announced the “good news” at Thursday morning’s county commission meeting.

“That’s a significant savings,” Lairmore said. “This will be some help to employees of Gasconade County.”

Currently, the county’s emergency, health, and road departments have phone service through AT&T. For employees to realize the 15 percent savings, they would have to present their county ID number and pay stub when paying their phone bill.

In other business, Presiding Commissioner Ron Jost reported that the road department’s grader is in working order, at least “for a little while.” The County had talked about getting a loaner grader while the problem piece of equipment could be repaired.

Poor county roads were the subjects of several phones calls Commissioner Jerry Lairmore said he’d received. He said the road department has been doing “a good job. It’s hard when it freezes and thaws, because you’ve got to work with the weather conditions. People have been very understanding. We appreciate the peoples’ patience with us, because we have 468 miles of roads that need work.”

At a previous commission meeting, Matt Penning had suggested the commission look into putting a use tax on the fall ballot. He said the tax on purchases of items that cost $2,000 or greater, made by individuals in the county, could go toward restoration and upkeep of an annex building or companion structure to the courthouse.

On Thursday, Penning asked if his fellow commissioners had pursued the idea further. Jost said he could use some more time to look into it, adding, “It’s nothing we have to fly into right quick.”

“I think we definitely need the use tax,” said Jerry Lairmore. “I think we need to have some numbers and have somebody from the state come down and talk to us about it, then we can decide how we want to move forward.”

Penning underscored that it would be good to have the use tax issue on the fall ballot, to which Lairmore responded, “I think we have a lot of discussion to do before we put anything on the ballot, in terms of a tax issue.”

“I just appreciate you looking into it,” Penning said.