John Scarffe, Gilpin County.  Dominion Voting Systems will be assisting Gilpin County in conducting the 2018 elections since the deputy clerk is running for clerk and recorder. The Gilpin County Board of County Commissioners approved a contract with Dominion during its regular meeting on April 24, 2018, at Central City Hall.

Clerk and Recorder Colleen Stewart said that for election transparency, this is her fourth attempt to get approval of Dominion’s assistance at the least amount she can do this with. The County needs transparency in the 2018 elections because she is retiring at the end of the year and her chief deputy is running for her position, and she has an opponent.

The County needs to have other people run the election. Stewart and Deputy Clerk Gail Maxwell typically set up and program the ballots for each election and then test the ballots to make sure the voting machines calculate the vote correctly. Dominion will be doing that for $4,896, Stewart said.

The wild card is the super judges. Maxwell does not have an opponent in the primary, so she will train the judges during the primary at no additional cost to the county, Stewart said, and then they will take over the duties of Stewart and Maxwell for the general election.

This will be just for the general election, and the super judges will be paid the same as other judges: $50 for half a day and $100 for a full day. That brings down the cost of the super judges – a democrat and republican for 16 days, so $12,096 is the proposal and is as low as it can go, Stewart said.

Commissioner Gail Watson said she appreciates Stewart working on this and getting the numbers down. Do we need Dominion for the primary?

Stewart said she has already arranged for Dominion for the primary. “I had to say, ‘Hey,’ and tell them to move forward.” Board Chair Ron Engels said they had an agreement in principal at a work session.

“This proposal is consistent with my understanding of what we came out with. Colleen was under the impression she could move ahead with Dominion. She will be at training while the ballots are programming.”

Community Development Director Stephen Strohminger requested a local match to apply for a grant to fund an assessment on the Red Tail Cabins for structural integrity to keep them sound and intact. It would be a 25 percent match for $3,250.

The County plans to apply to the State Historical Fund for historic structure assessment reports on 104 and 114 Red Tail Road. These properties were designated as Gilpin County landmarks by the Board of County Commissioners in February 2018, according to the agenda request.

The designation makes them eligible for State Historical Fund grants. “Since the cabins are located on separate parcels, each property is eligible for HAS grants of up to $10,000,” states the request. The County received a bid from Johnson Architecture & Martin/Martin Structural Engineers to prepare HAS reports for $6,500 for each cabin.

Engels asked, “What is the trajectory? How quickly will we know?”

Strohminger replied, “Pretty quickly. Funding is set aside and we should know more soon. They start by making sure it meets the requirements and then go down the list until they run out of money. They didn’t run out last year.”

A discussion ensued regarding whether Red Tail is spelled as one word, or two. Deputy Clerk Sharon Cate said it is one word: Redtail Road Cabins. Watson said it comes up as two words. Strohminger said the road is always one word but the cabins are two. County Attorney Jim Petrock said, “You can name them.”

Watson said, “Let’s get moving on the assessment and the county provide the match.” The Board approved the match for the Red Tail Road Cabins grant.

The Board approved changing the title of Human Resources Manager Susie Allen to director. Engels said they have been talking about this for months or years. Given most of the level of work when the position was changed from director to manager, nothing changed except the reporting structure. The County manager will handle the director’s evaluation.

The Board approved a draft contract for software in the Parks and Recreation Department. New Parks and Recreation Director Kyle Benedic said this is a standard contract, and it has been vetted thoroughly by the legal team. He got the green light Friday afternoon. They will be signing a contract for two years.

The first payment of $8,700 will be for the website, programs, camps and for the roll out. They will pay a $9,900 annual fee. “That’s when we go live. In the budget was $20,000 even,” Benedic said.

“We were already paying for a software system so it’s not much of an increase,” Benedic said. “This is tailor made for Parks and Rec. They are heavy hitters in the market place and are a very strong company to rely on here.”

Strohminger introduced two contracts that work together. The first one is to have North Line GIS, LLC, take data received from the former contractor so they will make sure the data is on the new server and come up with a map server, components of getting it set up and backed up in Cloud.

County staff members would like to bring their GIS in-house and perform their own maintenance and update services, according to the request. They would like to use the ArcGIS Online platform to host their own web application to serve information to the public.

The second contract authorizes the purchase, server and components for Teryx, Inc., for $4,285. Strohminger said this will help keep this data up and running. This would be less than the previous subcontractor.

The company said they can do it in ten days. The Board approved both contracts.

(Originally published in the May 10, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)