General clean-up PR

[xylar]

This merge includes:

• a few changes of "MPAS core" --> "component" that were missed
• Moves a public method before a private one
• Get a config option as a float instead of an int for better generalization

Checklist

• [x] Testing comment in the PR documents testing used to verify the changes

[xylar]

@cbegeman, I would normally ask you to review but I will skip that since you are on vacation.

[xylar]

Tesitng

I tested the default baroclinic channel test case in by branch https://github.com/xylar/polaris/tree/add_baroclinic_channel that includes these changes. The results were bit-for-bit with the compass version of that test case.