County commissioners this morning faced what Chairman Scott Briggs called “the world’s longest consent agenda.”
After spending Wednesday’s study session hearing requests, today’s consent agenda includes 10 items, most of which are purchases for county departments.
Other items on the consent agenda included signing an addendum to a contract with BG Consultants and approving the year-end report for the truancy prevention program operated through community corrections.
The truancy prevention program, approved Tuesday by the Community Corrections Advisory Board, is being changed because of state budget cuts, Robert Sullivan, director of community corrections, told the board on Wednesday.
The program has lost $28,000 of its budget allocation from the state, Sullivan said. That has forced the program to move from having two truancy officers to one, Joan Olson.
Olson told commissioners that the goal of the program is to keep children in school and improve their academic performance, which has been shown to help reduce the number of risky behaviors later.
Although the CCAB asked that the program be expanded to the rural school districts of Southern Lyon, North Lyon and Chase County, Olson said those districts haven’t sought assistance often.
“Those smaller populations kind of take care of themselves,” she said, noting that often a simple telephone call to parents alerting them that their children aren’t in school can correct the situation.
Also Wednesday, commissioners received a six-month program review from Doug Stueve of the department on aging.
Ridership on the L-CAT public transportation system is up, Stueve said, noting that in June, the department added an hour to its route times as well as regular routes to the rural areas of Lyon County. The route north of Emporia averaged 17 riders coming both to Emporia as well as from Emporia to the rural area.
“The southern route has been a bit of a disappointment to us,” Stueve said.
That route had no riders in June and only two or three in July.
A ridership survey showed that L-CAT remained popular. According to Stueve, riders used the buses for the following reasons:
• 33 percent to get to and from work;
• 29 percent shopping or to retail locations;
• 15 percent medical appointments;
• 9 percent for social services;
• 8 percent to get to senior centers; and
• 5 percent for education.