County receives update from Crosswinds, approves Road and Bridge purchases

This year in Lyon County, Crosswinds served 1,820 clients, which makes up about 52% of their total population. That’s more than last year, CEO Amanda Cunningham said, and appropriations from the county often go to help underinsured patients.

“By statute, we have to provide services to someone, regardless of their ability to pay, so those funds go to those underinsured individuals,” Cunningham said. “In Lyon County, we serve 414 people that we would consider underinsured, so either they have no insurance or their insurance has such a high deductible or does not cover the services that they are obtaining.”

In 2022, Cunningham said, Crosswinds prioritized lowering repeat offenders in the county through mental health treatment in its Stepping Up Initiative, ACT team, substance abuse treatment and more.

She also updated commissioners on ongoing construction on the Earl Center and Chi Omega house.

“They’ve just started on the Earl Center … That’s projected to be done in November and then once we are done with that building we will start construction on the old Chi Omega house. The goal there is just to be out of our building by June of 2024,” Cunningham said.

Commissioner also approved multiple purchases for Road and Bridge including the low bid from CM-K Cover material for the 2023 sealing project in the amount of $61,500 to be paid from the Road & Bridge fund and NF Construction to provide Builders Risk Insurance for $10,986.80 as required by the county.

The county approved signing the Lyon County Contractual Provisions attachment with Terracon Consultants, Inc. for the inspection and testing of the new road and bridge facilities and sending Jim Brull to the 13th Transportation Research Board International Conference on Low Volume Roads in Cedar Rapids, IA and pay related travel expenses. KDOT will cover the registration fee.

In further business, the county approved paying the Motorola Solutions post-warranty invoice for deputy radios and call recorders in the amount of $136,302. Lyon County Emergency Manager Jarrod Fell said the new radios are working well and operate on the same frequency as the state and all school districts in the county.

“I think it’s a good system overall,” Fell said. “I think our radio coverage has definitely been advanced and having the ability for everyone to be able to talk to each other is definitely a good thing.”

Lyon County Emergency Communications Center Director Roxanne Van Gundy said the new system provides better public safety for the county.

“Just having better awareness of what’s coming in on the highway, coming in from other areas, because we can monitor that now,” she said. “It just allows us to be way more interoperable than we were and it’s so much more reliable.”

The Lyon County Commission will meet again Thursday, March 16 at 9 a.m. at the Lyon County Courthouse.