Studying the use of hybrid vehicles by the Reno County Sheriff’s office, Automotive Department Director Kyle Berg found they didn’t provide quite as much savings on gas as projected. However, the combination of gas and electric engines cut down significantly on engine idle time for the patrol vehicles. That prompted Berg to recommend the county extend the replacement schedule for those vehicles by a year, from four years to five, which could save the county substantially more. The only issue, Berg noted, is that other county departments often add the vehicles to their fleets as replacements when they’re retired by the sheriff’ s office, so he wasn’t sure how it would impact operations overall.
Source: Hutch News.

Members of the Reno County Commission agreed Tuesday that rates need to be significantly increased sooner, rather than later, for patrons of the rural Yoder and HABIT sewer districts. What they did not agree on was how quickly that should be or how much rates should rise. Public Works staff have been working for more than a year studying how to address the deteriorating and inadequate Sewer District 201 and 202 systems that serve about 100 residents in the Yoder area. That included asking the city late last year to allow the systems to dump into the city’s sewer plant. “Regardless of where we think, ultimately, we’ll see rates are going to be, it might be time to just increase them to a reasonable rate immediately,” Commissioner Daniel Friesen suggested Tuesday morning.
Source: Hutch News.

Jobs have increased in Finney County over the past five years and more workers are needed. Shannon Dick, Director of Analytics at Finney County Economic Development Corporation, found that on average 126.6 new jobs are coming to the county year over year based on numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2015 to 2020. The biggest job growth was in the manufacturing, transportation and healthcare fields, Dick said.
Source: GC Telegram.