Jasper County Auditor’s Office to receive upgrades

The county auditor’s office will be seeing upgrades in the near future. Although it was not initially budgeted to receive a facelift this fiscal year, Jasper County Auditor Jenna Jennings told supervisors on Sept. 19 the office has unspent funds that can be used to purchase new carpet, cabinets, countertops and furniture.

Altogether the total cost for all of the upgrades is about $75,000. Jasper County Maintenance Director Adam Sparks said since there was no need to cut holes in load-bearing walls or do any other major remodel work, the fees to hire an architect were not needed, which provided even more cost savings to the project.

“We’re doing, I guess, quite a bit less structural wise than obviously what we did downstairs (for the recorder’s office), but it’s mainly just giving the office an overall facelift that it hasn’t seen,” Sparks said. “The panels we have in there are 30 years old. The carpet is going on 15 years old now.”

Similarly to other county offices, the carpet will be set in squares. So when it comes time to fix damaged sections, Sparks said all the county has to do is replace the high-traffic areas and leave the others in place. Like everything else, Sparks said the costs are not going to get any cheaper than they are today.

Jennings said the funds can come from her budget. The auditor’s office has been down two people for a while and the office even gave back $118,000 that went unspent last year. The county auditor stressed she is trying to keep costs low, but it is difficult when dealing with the high costs of furniture.

Jasper County Supervisor Brandon Talsma said, “Yeah! We learned that one on the administration building … I’m not opposed to it. Honestly I’d be pretty supportive of it. It’s kind of the last outstanding office we have that hasn’t been either moved to a new office building or renovated and updated.”

Still, supervisors wanted to make sure the auditor’s office had the necessary funds to complete the project. Supervisor Doug Cupples confirmed with Jennings that she knows — not she thinks — her budget can handle $75,000. Jennings confirmed she knows her office can cover the costs of the upgrades.

Jasper County Supervisor Denny Stevenson said, “If you don’t keep things updated a little bit, then all of a sudden everything’s bad at the same time. Then you’re not looking at $70,000, you’re looking at $500,000. I think Adam does a good job … I’m absolutely for it, especially since Jenna’s got room in her budget.”

Supervisors voted 3-0 to approve the $5,995 bid from L & L Custom Tops, the $9,321.27 bid from Woodstyles and the $36,554.31 from Workspace.

The supervisors did not vote on awarding contract for the carpet replacement, but the county did receive a low bid of about $19,000 from Store for Homes. Supervisors will vote on the carpet bids at the Sept. 26 meeting.