HERMANN — Finally…those bugs in the Gasconade County courthouse’s telephone network appear to have been zapped.

The effort to harden county government’s computer network against cyberattacks — which was aligned with an upgrade of the courthouse’s telephone network — was praised Thursday morning by the official whose office is involved in virtually every aspect of county government.

“We had four people on the calls (at the same time)…and we never dropped a call,” said County Clerk Lesa Lietzow, referring to telephone traffic on election day. Dropped calls and the inability to transfer callers from one department to another has plagued county officials since the telephone system was installed in January.

AQM of Washington, the county’s information technology consultant, was tasked with improving the telephone system, as well as taking steps to harden county government’s computer network against attack by hackers. AQM has completed its portion of the job; Callabyte, the county’s internet provider, has yet to do its part of the project. Thus far, the work that has been done has been successful, Lietzow told the County Commission at Thursday morning’s regular session held in Owensville City Hall.

“That has helped our phone system tremendously,” the county clerk said. “There were no disconnections. It was great,” she added.

In other matters taken up by the Commission, two bids were received for construction projects at the Gasconade County Sheriff’s Department Substation at Swiss. One was for $74,858, the other for $73,500. The work includes putting on new siding and other smaller projects.

But the size of the bids concerned one member of the administrative panel. Northern District Associate Commissioner Jim Holland, R-Hermann, wanted to delay acting on the bids a week to give time to study the particulars of the proposals and consider what he called “another option.” Holland said he thought county Road Department crews might be able to do the work at considerably less cost.

“I think we need to look at the bids” before making a decision, Holland said. “I want to go over everything because I didn’t realize we were adding stone,” he added.

But Presiding Commissioner Tim Schulte, R-Hermann, balked at looking to the Road Department for workers. “Personally, I don’t want the highway (agency) guys involved in it,” he said.

County officials are still trying to determine the status of a project that earlier was approved for a $50,000 allocation from the county’s pot of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money. The funding was approved for the application filed by Marie Newell, who proposed offering a webpage design service. That funding was approved as part of the first — and only — round of distribution of the county’s $2.8-million ARPA allocation in 2022.

More than $40,000 of the $50,000 is left and County Clerk Mike Feagan, who is tracking the use of ARPA dollars, recently questioned the amount of unused money distributed to Newell.

Lietzow offered the update to the County Commission in Feagan’s absence. The Meramec Regional Planning Commission (MRPC) is administering the county’s ARPA funds with staffer Kelly Sink in the lead.

“Kelly was going to meet with the owner (Newell) and make sure that project is still a go,” Lietzow said.

The first round of allocation amounted to about $600,000 of the initial $1.4-million appropriation to Gasconade County. The remaining portion of that first round, as well as the second appropriation of $1.4 million, were used for county government projects, such as the installation of the courthouse elevator, renovation of the exterior of the courthouse and other smaller projects.