The Northeast Commissioners and Clerks meeting took place in the 4-H building last Tuesday.

Amongst the numerous gifts provided by local businesses scattered across the tables were mums. The flowers were provided by Community R-IV FFA student Lydia Hoyte as part of her Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) project. As a thank you, clerks were invited to take home a mum.

City government officials and local businesses from northeastern Missouri including Warren, Schuyler and Scotland counties gathered here in Mexico with Audrain County officials. This group will meet twice a year, in the fall and spring for training.

“Every year an elected official has to have a certain amount of training, and this helps us meet those requirements.” says Eastern District Commissioner of Audrain County, Leslie Meyer.

Commissioners and clerks start the day with breakfast pastries provided by Daniel and Henry Insurance and Risk Management while they made introductions and found their seats. The meeting officially began with a History of Audrain County presentation by Tony Robertson. Robertson is Community Bank President of the Central Bank of Audrain County. 

“The North Missouri railroad entered the county from the southeast at what is today Martinsburg and went through Mexico to centralia and on up to Macon to link up with Hannibal and St. Joseph.” explains Robertson in his presentation. “It’s hard to overstate the importance of the railroad to our area.”

Like the railroad, the municipalities program, presented by Meyers, brings together municipalities and elected officials across the state.

Through the municipalities program, every community gets the chance to host meetings using community owned buildings and the cities provide refreshments every other month.

“This is not a commission driven program; this is driven by our municipalities touching on things that they need information for.” says Meyer. “The commission just helps connect to the resources and provides those topics.”

Tracy Graham, Western district commissioner of Audrain County led the first training of the day regarding cybersecurity. With Graham was a panel of experts: cybersecurity advisor and Missouri State coordinator with Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Robert Graham, Kent Hillman, chief services officer (CSO) at Huber and Associates (an IT company) and Carl Donaldson, emergency management director for Audrain County.

The panel discussed many types of cybersecurity threats from email scams to familiar documents with hidden malware, to hacking our infrastructure.

“Missouri has about 1,600 water treatment places throughout the state.” says Hillman“Not that long ago, hackers got into one of those systems, I mean these are decades old, and they basically tried to program it so they could pollute that particular water system.”

Graham’s cybersecurity panel also discussed protections, safeguards and how they are working with local government entities to ensure as much safety as possible.

Following the cybersecurity panel was a brief presentation by Mark Grimm of Gilmore and Bell discussing Chapter 100 and the taxation of solar property. Audrain County engineer Brian Haeffner discussed the progress on small structure repairs and Rob Frese, district planning manager of MoDOT also presented.

A lunch preceding group meetings amongst commissioners and clerks began with a prayer led by FFA officers.

“We really appreciate everyone coming out and being a part of today, especially for visiting Audrain County.” says Meyers “We have so much to highlight and showcase to our visitors.”