Two emergency declarations were declared at the Finney County Commission’s regular meeting Monday. One of the emergency declarations was due to the storm damage and flooding from the two July 20 storms. Paul Resley, Finney County Emergency Management director, said the storms greatly impacted the area around Friend and tracked southeast towards Kansas Highway 156. “It suffered extensive damage; I believe we lost about 104 distribution power poles and three 115 A-Frame poles for Sunflower transmission lines, not counting the number of crops and buildings that got destroyed,” he said. “Then later in the evening we had a massive amount of flooding, which impacted … many basements throughout the area as well as a number of vehicles that got stalled. We were using our big trucks to get people out of the roads.” Commissioner Dave Jones said the emergency declaration allows the power company work extended hours beyond what the Kansas Corporation Commission holds them to. … Also at the meeting, the Commission approved changes to an updated employee leave policy. One change is to transition from sick and vacation to a Paid Time Off model. Kelly Munyan, Finney County Human Resources director, said currently sick and vacation time are used interchangeable, and she believes that moving to a PTO model will allow for ease of administration, creating one pool for employees to use as at their discretion.
Source: Garden City Telegram
