(Photo by Amber Phipps) The Washington County Commission held a regular meeting Thursday to discuss new and old business. They discussed the vendor proposals for the State Route 7 project.

The Washington County Commission selected and ranked the recommendations for the State Route 7 Request for Quotation.

The RFQ presented vendors which were interviewed and analyzed by a committee composed of county officials Philip Schaffer, Joe White, Jesse Roush, Flite Freimann, and Roger Wright.

The vendors for the SR 7 South & Blue Knob Road Project were Woolpert, Hunt Engineering LLC, and Burgess & Niple Inc.

After the RFQ was tabled during a prior meeting, Commissioners Charlie Schilling and Eddie Place made a motion to select Woolpert as the first pick and Hunt Engineering LLC as the second. They based their decision on the recommendation of Wright, the County Engineer.

During the discussion, Commissioner James Booth said he was in favor of Hunt Engineering to handle the project because it’s a smaller vendor and could potentially give more attention to the project.

(Photo by Amber Phipps) Anna Ritter receives the $2,000 scholarship from the County Commissioners Association of Ohio on Thursday.

“I would suggest that we consider doing an RFP and seeing what the dollar amounts would look like…even though it’s federal money it’s still taxpayer money,” said Booth.

Wright said that since this is project specific with the engineering department, it isn’t likely they can compare services in the way he proposed.

“This is why we have a selection committee,”said Place.

The motion was seconded for Woolpert to be the appointed vendor for the project.

Booth will be working closely with the Washington County Sheriff’s Department about a discussion involving old communications towers like the tower on Glendale Road. Sheriff Mark Warden said there is a need for new or updated equipment.

Each department has its own communication systems that connect to the hub towers, so an evaluation is needed to determine where the true problem is.

“What would truly fix it and fix the whole system is that we made the commitment from the tower to MARCS because our communications weren’t working,” said Warden.

Warden said they moved to MARCS, which is a Multi-Agency Radio Communications System, and the problem is the recurring expenses. The radios can be upwards of $2-3,000 each.

It was determined the communications issue was case by case so Booth wanted to work with each department to come up with solutions.

“I believe it’s our responsibility to make that a commitment, to get our building department on it, to find a cheap way to do this,” said Booth.

Anna Ritter received a $2,000 scholarship check from the County Commissioners Association of Ohio for her academic excellence and work ethic.

Service Corporation Manager Steve Caraway said that her resume rose to the top and she was selected for the award by a panel of county commissioners.

“It’s a very competitive scholarship, one scholarship is awarded to each CCAO district throughout the state, so we do five per year,” said Caraway.

CCAO’s mission is to provide educational resources for members of Ohio and Ritter was one of five recipients this year.

U.S. Rep. Michael Rulli, R-Ohio, also made an appearance in Washington County on Thursday. As congressman for Ohio’s 6th congressional district, he oversees counties from Mahoning to Washington.