Part of the government’s ability to provide more services virtually to its constituents requires the ability for those constituents to access the internet.

The Warren County Commissioners hit on both of those areas during Wednesday’s meeting.

On the internet side, the commissioners passed a resolution to permit Youngsville Television Corp. to file for grants on the county’s behalf.

The target is a National Telecommunications and Information Administration grant opportunity.

Commissioner Tricia Durbin said the grant — if successful — would be a county grant for the buildout of broadband infrastructure in the county.

Solicitor Nathaniel Schmidt said the “county is best understood as the primary applicant. … The county will be primary in terms of management of the grant (and) ultimately ownership of any hard resources that are purchased with those monies.”

From a government service perspective, the commissioners also signed off on an agreement that will expand the county’s virtual document presence.

The county’s IT contractor, Bill Gallagher, said the current system houses about 2.5 million images of documents but explained that the current set up also essentially just stores and indexes those documents. Commissioner Ben Kafferlin said the upgrade has “been on the horizon for a while” and is eligible to be covered by American Rescue Plan funding.

The upgraded software will provide “more online access to some of the services the county provides (and) cut down foot traffic so we can provide services to our constituents mostly through the web.”

Durbin asked if this will provide public access to documents people would currently need to come to the courthouse to review.

“That would be correct,” Gallagner said. “(The upgrade) gives us much more capability than what we have today (and is) something that gets us to where we need to be.”

The total cost is just over $60,000.

Commissioner Jeff Eggleston called the purchase “part of the overall effort to go paperless as much as possible.”

ACT 13 FUNDING AWARDED

The commissioners also approved $15,000 in Marcellus Shale impact fee funds to be awarded to the Ruth M. Smith Center for a $70,000 project to develop a parking area at their Sheffield facility that also provides access to the new Sheffield YMCA.

Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said Kim Adams, executive director of the center, has “done a really impressive job rejuvenating that organization.”