Meeting in regular session last week, the Lewis County Fiscal Court heard the second readings of three separate ordinances and adopted each one.

The Lewis County Hazardous Material Cost Recovery Ordinance allows the county to attempt to recover its costs for cleaning up hazardous materials.

The Lewis County Administrative Code Ordinance sets rules and regulations for the operation procedures and management of the fiscal court.

The first two ordinances become effective upon passage and publication.

The third ordinance established an amendment to the current budget because the funds for the FEMA Buyout Program are required to be part of the county's budget. The program provided for the purchase of 13 homes in the flood plain of Kinniconick Creek as a result of the flooding in February 2000.

In other business, following a lengthy discussion, the court moved to change the County Personnel Policy. The state requires that retirement be made available to both full time and part time employees. Other benefits, however, are left to the discretion of the county government. Only full time employees get both retirement pay and benefits.

A part time worker is defined as one that works less than 100 hours per month and a full time employee is one that works 37-1/2 hours per week. That left a gap of 60 hours without a proper employee designation.

Meeting in regular session last week, the Lewis County Board of Education learned it is losing a long-term employee.

Superintendent Maurice Reeder Jr. announced that John Cordle has been hired as superintendent of Augusta schools. For the past six years, Cordle has worked in the Central Office.

Reeder also told the board about the visit of State Commissioner of Education Gene Wilhoit to Lewis County High School on Wednesday, April 16.

He then began some success stories from the school system by introducing Kasey Nolen to the board members. Nolen's expertise is in the field of technology and he was hired at mid-year for that purpose.

Nolen and Cordle have been updating the school's website and Nolen presented a PowerPoint presentation to show the school board some improvements made on the site.

He said that one of his tasks was to make the website easier to use and read. A user can now get to the site they desire from the district's website within three clicks of the mouse.

Nolen told the board that one of the key features is the uniformity of the pages and they all look the same. That allows the users to feel more comfortable throughout the web pages.

Links to other pages and more information are at the bottom of each page. He also cut down on the size of the pages by using more drop-down lists.

He explained that request forms for service are available for the teachers if they have a problem with a computer. They can fill out the form and it goes to the tech office so someone can fix the problem quickly.

Three Lewis County High School students appeared before the board requesting that the educators grant the desire of the senior students regarding the details of this year's graduation.

The agencies have established a toll-free fraud hotline to report suspected fraud, waste and abuse of disaster assistance at 800-323-8603.

"Managing a multi-million dollar disaster program always means walking a fine line between bringing speedy service to those who need it and ensuring that taxpayer dollars are nor misused," said Thomas J. Costello, deputy federal coordinating officer, overseeing Kentucky's recovery.

Making false statements to a FEMA inspector is itself a prosecutable offense under Title 18 of the United States Code. Potential cases of fraud or misuse are referred to the US Justice Department for prosecution. Penalties for felony offenses can be severe, Costello said.

Applicants who made a mistake when reporting damage or may have misrepresented their losses have the opportunity to withdraw or correct their application and prevent prosecution.

Individuals may correct the information by calling FEMA's Helpline at 800-621-3362. The number is operational from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Those with speech or hearing impairments may call 800-462-7585.