Sheriff commends local companies on their expertise

Linn County Sheriff Kevin Friend gave high praise to two Pleasanton companies during his report to the county commission on Monday. (Journal file photo)

MOUND CITY – On Monday, June 26, the Linn County Commissioners received the weekly service numbers from Sheriff Kevin Friend and at the request of Commission Chair Danny McCullough heard his report on how the service contracts were working for the maintenance on the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) for the Justice Center.

Friend reported that he was impressed with the service and the professional bid provided by Myrick Mechanical from Pleasanton.

Friend said that Myrick’s brought in their technology and read all of HVAC units at the Justice Center and explained the maintenance that would be performed yearly.

He said they gave him very professional bid of 20 or more pages listing things they would be doing.

Friend said that Myrick would be purchasing and storing all of the Justice Center’s filters and things like that; will be having quarterly inspections and take care of all of filter changes; and will have an annual inspection.

Friend told the commissioners that Myrick was even doing inspections on the walk-in coolers and ice machine. He said that Myrick would be taking care of every piece of heating and cooling equipment in that facility.

Friend explained to the commissioners that Myrick comes in and scans the label on the device on the roof or wherever it is at be it a cooler or freezer whatever. The label tells him what his maintenance is and tells him about the longevity and how the device should be processing.

“Kind of neat technology, he dials into every one of those instruments and reads everything so he can give us updates on where our equipment stands so really a robust maintenance program,” said Friend.

McCullough brought up having this done on all the county HVAC equipment.

Friend said that he thought over the years that maintenance of that kind of equipment was something that was kind of missed.

The sheriff said the one thing he really liked about these processes nowadays is that there are local people who are doing this within the county who also do it all over at other facilities.

It’s just like our sprinkler project at the Justice Center, he said. A Pleasanton sprinkler contractor, Conley’s Sprinklers, is doing the Justice Center’s sprinkler and backflow and maintenance. Conley's installed the Justice Center systems, and they installed most of the systems in the jails in the state as well as in Missouri too.

“I think that when we are finding our very own taxpayers to do the maintenance on our equipment that is county owned, I think there’s a huge benefit to that because they actually have a buy in because their tax dollars are paying into those maintenance programs,” said Friend. “I think that is important.”