FARMINGTON — Franklin County commissioners voted 2-1 Tuesday to pay nearly $5,000 in bills for computer maintenance to CSH Inc.

Commission Chairman Gary McGrane of Jay opposed the motion. He also requested a separate warrant be drawn up for those bills because he said he wouldn’t sign the warrant with that included.

McGrane has repeatedly said the county does not have a contract with the company and has refused to pay bills from CSH. He has also repeatedly asked that the company come before commissioners to explain the services provided.

The company did send some paperwork last year, but McGrane didn’t consider it a contract.

“You don’t have the authority to commit” to a contract, McGrane told Sheriff Dennis Pike on Tuesday during the commissioners’ meeting.

Pike said the work was done on Sheriff’s Department computers and he had money in his budget for it.

“I did authorize it. It is my prerogative,” Pike said.

CSH has provided service to the Sheriff’s Department for many years, and, according to Chief Deputy Ray Meldrum, there was never a contract.

Nearly $5,000 was owed in recent bills.

“This is for legitimate services that were done,” Pike said.

Commissioner Fred Hardy of New Sharon supported McGrane’s comments that there is no contract and that McGrane asked that the company meet with commissioners.

“I don’t mind paying for services rendered,” Hardy said. Once the county engaged Somerset County to do computer work, CSH should not have been contacted, but they continued to be called on for computer maintenance, he said.

The county’s new Intelligent Management Center system, a computer-aided dispatch and record-keeping program, and the in-house programs that CSH works on are two different entities, Pike said.

The IMC program that is being overseen by Somerset County was not implemented in December 2011 when it was supposed to be done. It wasn’t implemented until this fall.

Pike said if IMC was up and running when it was supposed to be, then the Sheriff’s Department would not have needed CSH services. He doesn’t believe there is further need for the company’s services, he said.

“The issue right now is the service that was rendered,” he said.

McGrane maintained that the sheriff does not have the authority to enter into a contract specifically when the amount is over $10,000. Commissioners need to be notified of what is going on, he said.

“I’d rather meet them in court,” McGrane said, than pay the bills. “We didn’t authorize it.”

Hardy agreed.

The in-house computer system needed to be kept up, Pike argued.

The Sheriff’s Department had $7,700 in work done by CSH for the year July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012, in addition to the nearly $5,000 in invoices that were facing commissioners, Treasurer Mary Frank said.

In other business, commissioners took no action on a request to waive a probationary period for utility dispatcher Penny Camfferman.

Camfferman has worked for the Sheriff’s Department for 24 years, Meldrum told commissioners. She was in a union position at the jail, then transferred to a nonunion position as office manager at the Sheriff’s Department office. She now has transferred to a union position as a utility dispatcher.

She was told she had to be on six months’ probation, Meldrum said.

Hardy said that the union contract says that someone has to be on probation for six months in a new position.

Clerk Julie Magoon confirmed that.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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