The last Mineral County Commissioners meeting for 2015 was held on December 31. April Quinlan and Jennifer Donovan with the Mineral County Health department presented commissioners Roman Zylawy and Laurie Johnston with information about a Local and Tribal Public Health Systems Improvement Grant. The $15,000 grant was award to Mineral County Department of Human Health and Services in Mineral County in March 2015.  

A part of the grant funding is to be used to do a healthy communities improvement health assessment.  Quinlan and Donovan want to hire a part-time employee, with grant funds, to help with the assessment.  They asked the commissioners if it would be OK to hire Laurel Chambers, who is currently a DHHP Health officer. The position would be a temporary job and one of the main tasks would be to do surveys of residents in order to do an assessment of the needs of the county.  This would include coordinating with volunteers to go out into the Mineral County communities and distribute the surveys. 

“The last time this was done was in 2010,” said Donovan, “in that study the top three health issues were obesity, unemployment and substance abuse.”

The position would last 39 weeks, until September 2016.  The commissioners approved the position.

Another topic of concern discussed at the commissioners meeting were investment options.  Around 3.2 million dollars of county funds are currently in accounts at Wells Fargo Bank.  County financial officer, Jessica Connolly said that over the years, fees on those accounts have gotten very high.

 “We’re paying anywhere between $300 to $700 a month in charges” said Connolly.

She said that she will be meeting with bank officials and try to negotiate lower fees or try to get them waived all together.

Another project Connolly is going to be working on is to adopt policies for personnel credit card use.