Park running for 2nd district county commissioner

The Platte County Commissioners held a brief pre-holiday meeting, down one commissioner due to a death in his family.

The commission met Monday, July 1, with second district commissioner John Elliott absent.

Jennifer Goering, director of the Platte County Convention and Visitors Bureau, presented the bureau’s annual marketing matching grant from the Missouri Division of Tourism for the next fiscal year. Platte County’s grant total is more than $23,000, which will be split with the Weston Chamber of Commerce and the Main Street Parkville Association, leaving Platte County with $13,250.

Also at the meeting, citizen David Park questioned the county’s contract with UHY Advisors, a financial group contracted early this year to assist the commissioners with various financial analysis projects, particularly in relation to the county’s cash carryover. Park ­— who ran for presiding commissioner in 2018 and recently announced his bid for second district commissioner in 2020 — noted that according to county records no invoices had been received from UHY, yet the contract specified that the county would be billed weekly.

Park expressed concern that the county could be racking up a huge bill, as the contract did not include a monetary cap.

Presiding commissioner Ron Schieber said UHY had been contracted to handle projects as they arose and that commissioners had only recently tasked the consultants to look into the first project. No bill had been received yet for this preliminary work, he said.