Welcome back to Cape Chronicle. I'm Mike Renek. Charlie Herbst is the Associate Cape County Commissioner for the second district today. He will talk with us about what is going on in the county and any upcoming projects. Charlie? Good to see you. Good to see you too Michael. How you been? I'm good. Cape County. So how long have you been a County Commissioner for? I was for 10th year. 10th year. District Commissioner. Yes. Wow. And I know the little that I know about about about what happens. Each Commissioner kind of has their own piece that they oversee. Is that correct or? Yes. The County's made of three commissioners. So I was presiding Commissioner Clotrecy and he's elected by the citizens of the entire county and then the county's then is split up by population to two districts district one and two. Okay. District one is Paul Kepper, our responsibility and it's pretty much the city of Jackson the out county and in district two because of population is the city of Cape Toronto of which I'm the representative. Okay. And I know there's there's a lot happening in the county. Always a lot happening. We were talking before we started today just about the variety of things that you have your hands in. And let's just go through a few of those. Talking about budgeting and office space for office holders. Yes. So as you asked previous question is commissioners do have responsibilities and the three commissioners do kind of divide up the duty sum. I'm over building grounds. I'll also share that with Mr. Kepper and then also IT and then the juvenile division budget. Mr. Kepper primarily to his care for Odin Bridges and also shares and building and grounds. Mr. Tracy is over the parks department and emerged the operations for the county. We all kind of share in those duties though. Okay. Day to day for that. And then as commissioners and we're responsible providing budgets to all of the county office holders to perform their duties as prescribed by the statutes. I know a big undertaking recently was the new courthouse and I remember hearing you talk about kind of what went into you mentioned materials and those sorts of things. Yes. Some really neat stories on how some of those facilities were put together. So in 2013 when I came on the commission we decided to do a really comprehensive capital improvement study for the county and looking at our space needs and facility needs and maybe some maintenance items that have been put off for many years on type budget. And so we are still using that 2013 study that we did. You know sometimes we think a government we do a study for something and it sits on a shelf because it has to be funded and be appropriated. And so we have really dug into that comprehensive study and one of our biggest projects we had to do was the new courthouse in Jackson which we started in 2018 and moved into right and middle of COVID in 2020 and you know we were on a limited budget for that and so we looked at ways to partner and one of our partners in that building was Missouri Vocational Enterprise which is our prison system. Right. They have their own factories to build furniture and to build cubicles and chairs and millwork and so we utilized a lot of that to help. We saved around 1.25 million dollars by using the prison system to outfit our courthouse. Although we still in government you don't really save money. We spent that 1.2.5 into the building itself to give us more scope in providing space for the court. Okay. So you mentioned that that 2013 comprehensive study. There are still some things on that list that you're looking to hopefully accomplish someday. Yes. One of them that we did check off was the Juvenile Department. The County provides the budget for the juvenile division although it is a state of Missouri court division and they were in two different locations and needed space and so that was one of the items so we were able to put them in a 10,000 square foot administration building to operate. The next item that we are embarking on now is the new jail is now 23 years old and so it was built to a 20-year standard and so we are now embarking on another 20-year standard of an jail addition which that was something that was identified also in this comprehensive study. To do that and along with that we have the 19-08 courthouse which hasn't been renovated since 1909 and 1908 or so so we're working on that project also. So there's always something. Always something. I know you also obviously have a lot of roads and bridges that you have your hands in. Yes we do so Mr. Kepper gets to where the hat is the road commissioner. We have approximately 450 miles of roads in the county about half are paved. We do have a half-sit sales tax that goes to the road fund in Cape County. We don't have a road property tax it's all paid by sales tax collection. Okay. And maintaining those roads is a challenge. Again the costs of items have increased the cost of our material to put down on the roads is twice what it was about three years ago so instead of paving six or seven miles of brand new road a year we're only doing two or three miles of road a year but we have a really comprehensive program to make sure that the roads we have are maintained and kept up so they don't deteriorate. My family moved to Cape in 89 and you know there's not a better entry into Cape Droid Jackson area than Cape County Park you know when you come off of I-55 just a beautiful park and I know that there's several acres of park that you guys oversee as well. Yes sir we are very fortunate that in the 60s the county had property that they were able to acquire and some property that was donated to the county and was dedicated to be a county park and many people don't remember any longer that the county poor farm were indigent folks that were found indigent by the courts were actually signed to live and there was an actual where in North County Park is that was a farm and they raised raised food there for themselves and then also sold that food and so as other services and state agencies took over the role of working with indigent folks in the county and the court system that was converted in in the early 80s into actual park system so we have about 350 acres that we operate as County Park. How about a minute left is there anything on the specific horizon coming up that is a big project or I know there's some ballot initiatives coming up in April. Yes in April we have the marijuana sales tax and we just thought it was prudent to put that on the ballot for the citizens to decide for themselves for that tax. Well also the ongoing problem or projects with the New Jail and then also with the new court house or the old courthouse but the renovation of that to make that space so that we can expand so our current county offices. And with that sales tax that will be a 3% sales tax is that correct. Yes be a 3% sales tax will be stacked on top of normal sales taxes and there has been some discussion among the commission that whatever that revenue is that perhaps that we may look at where we budget that for the best need for the public. Alright Charlie it goes quick thank you thank you we'll do it again