The Porter County Health Department (PCHD) has conducted H1N1 flu immunization clinics at every school in Porter County, with one exception.

On Tuesday PCHD nurses were turned away by officials at Pine Township Elementary School, an unusual case because the school is located in Porter County but is part of the Michigan City corporation, PCHD Administrator Keith Letta told the Porter County Council at its meeting Tuesday night.

Of the 24,000 vaccine doses received so far by the PCHD—with another 85,000 expected—fully 11,000 have been distributed in the schools and another 9,000 to other providers, Letta said. When asked how many students have declined vaccination, Letta noted that around 50 percent of the students in Chesterton were immunized, compared to 10 percent in Portage, where, however, the clinic was held on a Saturday.

The PCHD received the first batch of doses on Oct. 20, Letta added, and the goal was to hit all the schools in the county by today, Wednesday, Nov. 25. That goal has been achieved, with the special exception of Pine Township Elementary. “We’re getting accomplished what we wanted to accomplish, which is to get into the schools as fast as we can,” he said.

Home-schoolers, meanwhile—as well as pregnant women and others in high-risk categories—have been receiving their immunizations at the PCHD. So far 3,200 doses have been administered there.

Letta did say that children 10 and younger should receive an H1N1 booster 28 days after getting the initial immunization, and that process is likely to go into January and February.

“Your staff is doing a phenomenal job,” Member Karen Conover, R-3rd.

“Ninety percent” of the clinic logistics is the work of staffer Eric Kurtz, Letta replied. “And our nurses are going a great job.”

In other business, the council instructed Council Attorney Scott McClure to prepare an ordinance authorizing the deposit into the Clerk’s Record Perpetuation Fund of 40 percent of the proceeds of a newly enacted $25 late fee imposed, for instance, on traffic offenders who do not pay their fines on time.

The remaining 60 percent of those proceeds go into the General Fund.

Clerk Pamela Fish told the council that she approached the county’s judges this summer about the creation of a late fee as a way to generate revenue, that the judges made the late fee a local rule, and that so far the late-fee account totals $950. Forty percent of that account can go to the Clerk’s Record Perpetuation Fund, with which Fish can hire badly needed part-time help in the office. Fish noted that filings have increased by 22 percent this year and that all filings are now being scanned, an extra time-consuming step in the process.

The council unanimously approved all intra-departmental transfers and additional appropriations on its agenda with one exception: members voted 7-0 to deny the use of $152.10 from code fees to supplement a juvenile detention officer’s salary.

When queried about his officer’s salary, Juvenile Detention Center Director Ken Perkins said that the officer has taken on additional responsibilities and that the $152.10 would cover the supplemented salary through the end of the year. Next year, Perkins added, he would have to request an increase in the officer’s salary from $33,141 to $34,873, a raise of $1,732.

The council denied Perkins’ request.

The council will hold its 2010 organizational meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 5.

Posted 11/25/2009