New flooring approved for jail

New tile flooring was approved for the dispatch room at the Jasper County Jail on Tuesday. The Jasper County Board of Supervisors decided to move forward with a bid from The Floor Store in Newton at a price of $4,672.

“The dispatch room was not supposed to have carpet. One of the issues we’re having is it is one of those rooms that there is always something going on. When you try to clean the room when it is carpet you can’t have the noise because they always have calls coming in 24/7,” maintenance director Adam Sparks said.

Luxury floor tile, the flooring selected, comes in sections four feet long and six inches wide. The long-lasting flooring will replace the commercial carpeting that was installed in error.

“It’s about as indestructible of a floor as you can get,” Sparks said. “The cleaning is going to be very minimal, it’s something we can go in and sweep instead of having to go in a vacuum. It’s just going to be longer lasting, easier to clean, easier to do everything with that we need to do.”

Also approved was the continued contract with Iowa Alcoholic Beverage Division for the I-Pledge program. The I-Pledge program is a partnership between the ABD and local law enforcement to perform compliance checks by local retailers.

“This is the annual tobacco compliance check for the retailers in the county, not just within the city of Newton,” Halferty said. “The benefit to us is it makes us a little money, a little revenue for the county. We are doing compliance checks and they pay us $50 per compliance check. It’s good, too, that we do a training program if there is a violation of one of the vendors, we can schedule training for them so that they can get their employees trained on how to properly sell tobacco products.”

Halferty said that the sheriff’s office started the program in the late 1990s under previous sheriff Mike Balmer.

In other business:

• Jerry Nelson was appointed to the Veterans Affairs Commission.

• Herb Scott was appointed to the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at
641-792-3121 ext. 6534
or jpierson@newtondailynews.com