District awards teacher grants

Jay County Solid Waste Management District is providing more than $2,500 to help teachers promote the reduce, reuse, recycle mission.

The district board on Monday approved a six grant applications totaling $2,584.60.

Also Monday, board members discussed the district’s contract with Waste Management for recycling trailers and its request that the City of Portland return more than $50,000 in grant funding.

Three of the grant requests that were approved involved the purchase of books related to recycling. Two of those went to Cathy Fugiett for $500 for books for the libraries at Westlawn and Redkey elementary schools. The other went to Bloomfield Elementary fifth grade teacher Kristen Gibson for $352 to purchase leveled readers for third through fifth grade students.

Lisa Cook was approved for a $460.26 grant for cooperative games, made from recycled materials, for use with East Elementary and preschool speech and language therapy students. Also at East Elementary, Lexie Penrod received $484.50 for the purchase of LCD writing tablets with a focus on reducing paper use and Jenny Gibson was approved for $287.84 for a paper shredder for special education teachers to safely recycle confidential paperwork.

Board members Chuck Huffman, Mike Leonhard, Chad Aker, Mike Rockwell and Gene Ritter, absent Randy Geesaman and Bill Gibson, denied one requests because it was not tied to the recycling mission. They requested additional information about another request.

Numbers were down in terms of applications this year after the district received 19 a year ago. It had allocated $5,000 for grants to teacher this year.

Huffman brought up the need for board members and district director Samantha Rhodehamel to meet with attorney Bill Hinkle to discuss options for potentially terminating its contract with Waste Management. 

The district is interested in the possibility of contracting for recycling trailers with BestWay in order to save money, but Huffman noted the importance of making sure that any financial consequences of such a change are clear before doing so.

“I do think we should move forward on this as quickly as possible, because the potential savings is big,” said Huffman.

The contract with Waste Management runs through April 2021.

Huffman also reported to the board that he attended the most recent Portland City Council meeting to request that the city return $52,649.83 in grant funding that the district had provided over the years. Those funds were meant to help cover the city’s curbside recycling program, which has since been canceled.

No action was taken, but Huffman said he is hopeful the council will move on the issue at its next meeting.

In other business, the board:

•Heard a request for assistance from All Circuit Electrical’s Ryan Hurt, who is working to clean up a property he recently purchased on U.S. 27 south of Bryant. The property has an abundance of scrap tires that need to be removed. Board members said they would look into what solutions might be available.

•Approved the payment of $117,430.63 in claims, which includes $100,000 for an investment at Farmer’s State Bank. Income from Jay County Landfill for January was $15,637.80 on 9,026.15 tons. The district has a total balance, including investments of $364.080.03. 

Rhodehamel also reported that the district, in its first year investing its funds, earned $1,999.90.

•Heard and update that the district paid $629.40 in bonuses to groups that worked at recycling trailers in 2018.