typical month-to-month um that we have um several vouchers out there for people looking for housing and they only have i think it's 60 days but they only have a there there's a time limit that they must find housing and then they have to reapply if they do do not find housing
within that time and then there's also 45 people on the housing choice voucher program on that waiting list um we also have maple hills and frzy which is currently full that one is typically full monthtomonth um we do have a rfp
going out for uh to put new siding windows and decks on that uh building we have our west river town homes which are in town here there was one vacancy um but that would be will be filled they
had someone in line to to do it it was just a recent vacancy and 12 of those vouchers there's 12 units in that housing and 12 of those the housing choice vouchers are allocated to that property so um the west river town homes is the one that we probably have the
most turnover in um and that's all for our housing we i also had a the childcare grant meeting where we agreed on the screening process that will come to the eda this month and then will come to the board also have
had our township meeting um just a couple things to note it was a great turnout it's was a little earlier this year than what um it typically is and i think there was only mary was there only like two or three townships missing um so it was a great turnout um they're
considering moving it up next spring to keep that momentum going the one thing that they did note is um there was i think it was $800,000 that was stole from the minnesota association of townships and they found the people that were responsible for stealing that money
where were they from i mean i know they didn't i think the the court case for it is in ohio i think there was a long list of people that were involved really mr chair i'm very familiar with this situation being
on township 800,000 was stolen because they wired the money and and but they found the people but but they haven't they didn't say they found the money yeah they don't know if the money is coming back so and then we just had our joint governance this meeting but that
that was a like a fishing scam wasn't it that you know an internet fishing scam so that's that's why these human error is what what causes the and and everyone is makes mistakes but that's why it's so important for us to be leaders and do our do our share and as you know doing
those it's really hard for matt minnesota associates of townships to send emails out to townships to to tell us to be careful of fishing scams when they just lost $800,000 in the township money i i had an unrelated question on housing so ron zean and our joint governance
brought it up that they've built 27 homes last year in detroit lakes that there has been 27 homes i don't know that they built they didn't build no not the city but the there there has been has there been 27 homes built i think he said 37 37 has there been 37 homes built
in detroit lakes last year well i don't know what area but going up all over i mean i mean like if they build a should i should ask ron if they build a twin home is that considered two homes then i suppose okay yeah i think it's units mhm so they could have an apartment building too or
something maybe too yeah i don't think any apartment buildings have gone up in the last year though but those wouldn't be really homes they would be but it depends on what area too if it's just in the in the city limits or the school district because there's there's things being built all over there's lots being
sold all over yeah and popping up homes and you know i don't know if you guys are aware but there's a big apartment complex in lake park that's gone up the last couple years back the old football field the old football field yeah and that's full i believe is it i i believe
that was what was reported at eda was that's i think there's a couple in there that are income based you know part of them are income based and part of them are just regular but uh who who uh that was all i jen who'd
like to go next uh mr chair i had one question for yeah do we have an inventory of our do we have 25 houses or 25 apartments or what nope it's 25 homes single family homes do we have an
inventory of that could i see that i i i i don't have a clue where any of this is and yeah well it's t mmc mmcdc manages manages it all for us yeah but do we have an inventory where i could see where the addresses are for the could i get that somehow like to know where
those are thank you and that does not include any you know there could be some tribal homes that are public housing too i mean for tribal members so it wouldn't it would not include those no these are just our becker county homes
all right who'd like to go next all right go ahead can i just make one note so the the so we do have i believe one other home other than the 25 these are just under the public housing so they're the ones that are through the federal government yeah so we do have
yeah we do have a yeah i think we have six mural home mural homes left left and then how about if i just give you the housing report yep i'm done
sorry bill go ahead all right mr chair uh and board uh so on the 19th i had an airport uh meeting um just a couple highlights there uh they're going to be remodeling the the the airport the hanger that where you walk in over there uh so they're that's up for architect design right now they're going to be
doing a little more building they're talking about some 35-year leases i guess that's the standard out there so you may see some building out there for hangers you mean uh yeah individual hangers but the hangers they have out there right now those are rental hangers as i understand it that someone wants to build their own which they have those
out there too and they do a 35-year lease you build it after 35 years it becomes airport property that's the way i understand it and i asked so um i can't believe that that you asked imagine that uh highway uh we had
highway on the 21st me and uh uh richard and we we had highway yeah yeah um just one thing uh the road projects are getting in full form here they're going to be doing fog lines that's the white line on the outside of the road so you might see a lot of that coming on this
summer um i guess they they they rotate sections of state of minnesota to redo that and that's uh going to be a lot that's there going to be a lot of that done this year talked about some reclaim projects um the 24th i filled in for barry at the wild rice one watershed one
plant up in ada interesting thanks for letting me do that barry and just see a different perspective up there um 26 uh this was just on on my own i went to the regional economic summit here neil qashqari is the federal reserve chair for this area uh montana north dakota
minnesota um south dakota and wisconsin uh cody and carrie both gave a a presentation there um and one thing came out of this and dave maybe you can help with this uh uh do we have a relationship with the dl high school that that academy model uh to get kids
from school into worker programs uh seems to be very active and used and really working i mean i just do we get them into like snowplows or is that even possible or sheriff or yeah go ahead we currently have
several high school oh perfect i mean i just and then yep and then we also have a career day here at the courthouse where we did last year with the sophomore academy class yeah great and then we had them come in and we had uh vern stanthor and aaron swson
come in and present to us i think two years was it last year or two years ago i don't remember about what they're doing and how they're doing it with us and so forth yeah but i think there's always room there's room for more and that's why i brought him in so that we could possibly someday do that it was great i mean there was i know they
talked about one kid getting his cdl his bus driver he was driving some of his classmates or kids from the year before so i mean that's that's we've had a few we've had a few of those in the over the years uh ethan wall too when he was 18 he drove a bus yeah school bus yeah just think that official that officiating
crew we were at a basketball game in the grandfather and grandson were officiating the same really yeah and they did a story on it uh out of the cities we were down in uh we're down south they're in the south southern crew but no it's good it seems like a very active
very popular program and yeah um uh 27th i had a otter ottertale watershed plan policy implement implementation plan so uh that was on the 27th 27 was a busy day for me and then we had environmental with barry sat
in for richard that day uh dean havamp is is is retiring um good guy last day friday last friday great employee for a lot of years for for the county just did a super job um and i don't say that as a county commissioner now but i dealt with him on the township for a number of
years too just if i can mention this he's been very good to everybody that comes in there if you want to cut wood there if you you know i mean he's just he's just been a very accommodating
yes for everyone for years and so yeah he's that's just a fantastic public servant yep a lot we missed a lot all right you're going to have to put your thinking caps on here now a little bit so we had the uh township meeting last thursday and a couple things came up
that uh i didn't know there's a lot i don't know but this i really didn't know so uh we had our assessor talk about the county and i'm asking erica you can't answer this and carrie you can't answer this because you were there how much estimated market value do we have in
becker county if you have any idea time guys my places how much estimated market value for 2024 do we have in becker county
oh i don't know 102 billion not quite barry only 10 billion but 10 billion in estimated market value for all of becker county uh second question uh new construction in becker county how
much new construction did we have in 2024 i'd estimate 1% 1.2% of 10 billion would be what's that 100 million close 88 million of new construction in 2024 so i thought
that was really interesting um 28th last friday uh had a watershed meeting um the bucks mills dam modification south of lake melissa the engineering is getting done with that you might see some public meetings coming up here this summer to see what that's going to look like and campbell
creek north of floyd lake uh the wha is going to be doing some stabil stabilization projects to that creek which dump into floyd lake um and then also uh here's another question for you what's the longest meeting you've ever had
um board meeting or meeting subboard meeting committee meeting oh we've had the these meetings go well into the afternoon we've had lunch so board meetings we went till i would say 2:00 back in 15 years ago that was the that
was more of a norm than an anomaly i went 6 and a half hours in the wershed meeting uh straight 8:30 to 3:05 um pelican river wershed meeting we did a rules revision and we had 147 line items we went through each one six and a half hours straight uh and there were some
significant changes uh so keep an eye out for for some of that uh and that's that's all i had all right go ahead um phil uh phil and i were at the environmental and we went through a few things um howard's driveway service is
going to do some we're doing asphalt um shingle recycling and and they're going to um haul in and haul out trying to work out a deal with them one of the positions we're reviewing a position go from per permanent part a permanent part-time position we'll discuss that
later um concerning about the eququick crew we're going to lose one that's pretty valuable and um the crew is from better homes and garden was it no better futures better futures better futures sorry better
um and we got an update on the separated organics program um still still looking at that and reviewing uh there's an update on the mandatory boat wrap recycling it's similar to um the bail and the um the other plastics from like
dynamic homes and some of those can't be intermingled so the storage of those are might pose a problem in the future um of course everyone wants campus needs you know for um so steve stated that uh the hazardous waste
building could be re looked at um a new building there um that one was from 1980 um you know that that's some special needs in that building because you have to have a holding area for chemical spills if you do if you have that in there so um we didn't really
discuss it a lot but because we don't like seeing new buildings come up pop up because that's a that's a big expense for us um one of the things we talked about briefly at the end of meeting was maybe outsourcing our public outreach um there's a candidate that might be able
to do that quite well for becker county a former employee that is very knowledgeable in that so um i think we're going to just review that as we move forward but uh i think she would do well at that uh if if that's the route we go we had our audit at the lake
agassy regional library if anyone wants to review that in their off time um in their in their leisure time for reading then if not carrie can have that if browse if she wants uh you know i'll read it and let you know um one of the
the big topic that we had was we've been asking for the the city of morehead has built has built this is building currently building a big project and i think i have some i think i passed some literature out yeah you did that's just another book um but they got have this
big off this big building it's they're calling it the loop because there's a walking t track around it and they are they got i i i can't remember but they have sales tax money paying for it from in the city of morhead and they also got received some um state i don't
know which grants but they got some grant money well now they're coming up they're short i think on their money so they're we've been asking for over a year to get because they they've lobbied this by saying this is a regional library system is in here also so it's a regional it's a regional facility
regional and i think they pushed that agenda to get funding and approval of of sales tax funding now they're now they're finally coming to ask us or to sign an agreement and we are not very pleased initially with the
the request so we are going i am on negotiation team ben grimsley nominated me quite quickly and um so we are we are there's three of us meeting zoom to have a kind of a discussion about what what
what we're looking at um but they threw a couple proposals out there that the square foot rate was fine but then they wanted some other conditions on it which we said we we're not doing that so um i think and they weren't sure the mayor
was there so they weren't even sure what they were asking for so they have to figure out what they're asking for but um you know there's we signed an agreement in 22 i think larry was chair and um ben was on the board at that time and we can i mean there are options
we we're not bound to go into that facility if it's not something so i think they're well aware that we're not just going to give them whatever they want it and i think they have given we've been a very good partner in the past so i i'm sure we can get through this but it was really some um some
questionable questionable numbers you're like um but again the square foot rate was fine but they wanted one of them they wanted a freeze on theirs and we're we can't do that so um it was a good it was a it was interesting um lakeland mental health uh beginning of the year
were were and was our first first report was actually in the red so we were losing money but that's not uncommon right away to till they cost average stuff so not a lot of concern there one of the big things and judy probably if you're listening one of our big topics there was their it person came in and
discussed their security and and and car or judy i will have to say i i i leaned on some of the things that you've said so the discussions went went very well i think i think becker county is i mean we're not we're not the agame but we are
not far behind i think we're pretty solid in some in our protections i know judy um and their it guy is this very similar to judy that they would spend every dollar we spent on them on protection so um it's i think we have a good compromise on where we are but um
those protections are just vital and and knowing your backups they were more back everything backed up in the cloud i think so um that was that dave and i had sunnyside um let's see what did we talk about dave
we had we bought some beds uh we we're a five-star facility again we're we are a great we got more bad news from from our region from um minwasa they were watching the the governor's proposals and he's proposing a a freeze on how
much you can increase it's it's like everywhere you turn we are being hit with increased increased costs from the state everywhere we turn from the nursing i mean and and the number that we were
given by um who was it wasn't chris it was one of michelle michelle was there from miniwasa said this could potentially cost over a 4-year period they did a little quick adjustment for sunnyside $980,000 over four years $980,000 now i
think now there are things that would offset that because we but it's this i mean it's just insane what what what the state government is thinking about doing to counties and cities and townships it's just and i've said this
before this is the most i don't know what word to be accurate but scared or or depressed over or what our budget's going to look like i mean everywhere we turn you're looking at a 100,000 here a 2% here a 5% here um
i don't i it just there are other states that are looking at how to help help local governments and our state's looking at how we can pass every buck off to them that we possibly can to local government so um hey what what's the name of that board that regulates
the employee wages it's a oh the labor something they set the remember how they set the wages for and then now they're going to increase again we were sunnyside was oh the the state
law that that yeah but it's not a governor wals made that a law i think two years ago the mandatory increase that we're going to and i think we were we were there was a couple positions that were minor tweaks that we had to do but we were pretty well within that we're in well within that but that's going to drastic has drastically
affected and will continue to drastically affect other small nursing homes too and we also we had six beds on layaway that you know nursing nursing homes you have to pay for every bed that's there if you're if if even if it's not being used you have to pay for it to the state um so we had these on
layaway which we don't have to pay for but they're talking about not having the layaway program or or buying beds back in the future so or paying for beds that go off from layaway to um to get rid of them so we are going we made a motion to um eliminate those layway beds and we
will be paid by the state um $2,000 per bed per year to put those 2080 so we decided to do that because um there are ways to get beds in even but in today's environment um nobody wants double rooms anymore you can't you can't have double rooms in a
nursing home facility so we have one double room and and that's for financial reasons cuz if you don't have one double room you can't charge a single rate so makes sense i guess anything else on sunnyside oh that was it um yeah here's our that's our sheet so
um i won't go into the details on the library lease discussion but i think we can we'll hammer that out because i think it will be a nice new facil it's a new facility that we'll be in um like i said their per square foot lease was was reasonable um their increase was reasonable but they just
wanted some upfront money that we were not willing to and we were the problem was they didn't know if they were including furnishings and and and prep for your office cuz that you you have to spend no matter what so we did have 250,000 set aside for that but they said
"well we're not sure if that's included or not." well then we we have to find out so if that's included we're we're we're ready to i mean it'll go pretty easy because there's been individuals that have fundraised for the library too another 150,000 so um anyway mr chair
commissioner nelson um so that library just to at a high level so we're on lakes area regional library there's locations is is morehead part of that yes we're lake library we're like a joint powers almost like we are what are the boundaries for our
um generally i i don't think ottertale's in it w um wilin is um just i'll have to google it no that's okay norman becker um manomomen um that's okay i'm just
thinking but yeah it's i was going to look at that anyway because i i think there's 10 10 in the state 10 districts but okay do you have any any more there no all right richard you
um i had eda with erica i'll just add we have an apartment building eda owns it in frezy and the paint has been falling off of it and it's looking kind of tough but we are finally we finally got that building paid for so of course now it's
it needs help but we are looking at new siding and new windows and for the apartment building and new decks for the and maybe air conditioners mhm for for that building um and then i had highway with um phil and he covered that so
that's all i got all right i had a couple i'll go quick here i so i had a dac meeting um they had their day at the capital just like everybody else they are very confident that the funding will not be cut but there will not be an increase from
dhs dhs is a department of human human services um the so there's it's essentially a part of a cut so we we're we're very being very diligent as a board to make sure that we're not overspending because we might
end up in a could end up in a pickle if we don't monitor very well um we are actually actually we're having a meeting tomorrow um a committee meeting i'm on the personnel committee meeting and we're updating all of our administrative team teams uh job descriptions so we're
doing that to uh tomorrow and then currently right now the there are 54 day clients and there are 37 residential clients so um the building is getting full you know it's not it's not
unmanageable but if and their goal is to keep increasing and and they they have regular program committee meetings to make to see where they're at and how they can get more day clients and residential clients so we're look so next meeting we're going to look at an
architecture building slb building consultant for maybe how we could add more space to the dac building to see what we can what can happen so that's kind of what's happening there and then we also have an an agenda item too um barry and i had a courthouse meeting
that one yeah that's all right i got you i'll cover you so we talked about a a few things we did talk about the scanning how we had brought that up last time about how they charge a lot of overage on that um we have we did we pay the h the first half
of the planning zoning so then we'll get that information and we then we have about 11,000 left i think so we might have to do maybe some of the scanning in house or figure out something else we'll we'll see how that goes but we're we're we're committed to not paying the the
overage chair that that that was the the recorder department recorder recorder planning and zoning and assessor scanning yeah yep um and then we also had we also had a discussion about our ukg which is our payroll program what
else does our ukg do that's about it all our human resour oh all our human resources stuff um there's a lot of issues there that with that system and with them not supporting us and so forth so we they have been doing some discovering of possible other options
and one of those is paycom um obviously we're not going to do anything with that until we have a concrete idea of what's going on but that's that's a possibility and then we uh also also the outer treasures office has a new coin
sorder we will have a new coin sorder yeah it's i guess the other one is a mary's decided not to do it yeah fiasco mary mary we said we thought mary could just count them by hand but i all right then i had a fair board meeting um real quick just a couple things that happened there nothing
really a lot new but they have decided officially to move forward with the rodeo next year even though they had planned it to do it they now they officially made it official um they're also going to meet the um executive officers of the fairboard are going to
meet with jnk marine and jane cray has expressed some interest in possibly assisting in building financially assisting in building a horse barn a new horse barn so so what that would entail would be jnk would help you know build it and then they would also then be able to use it as storage in the winter time
so i think it if it works out it could be a good good plan a good idea um one other thing they found out is their building insurance will go up to $31,589 and it's an increase of $15,300 wow now there's a lot of there's that
obviously the price of insurance has gone up but when we went through when they showed us the list of all the buildings there are a lot of buildings that were undervalued from pre from the previous insurance company so that has that has a lot to do with it too but but it's an i mean it's still an increase
they got to they got to they got to make up for uh that is a that is a lot of money for i mean i'd like to i mean it would be interesting to see how much is liability because i would imagine the liability is a big portion yeah yeah yeah that's part of the building insurance yeah liability
i mean that's that's huge cuz for just buildings that's that's a lot because i don't imagine there's a big amount of dollar coverage on that no there's not but the just the but the some of the values that were shown previously were like some of them a couple of them were
within like a 100,000 away of what it really is actually valued at so but yeah you're correct i i we didn't have it broke down that way but yes i'm assuming that's there's li there's liability too yeah all right that's all i had so um phil i can tell you now exactly um i was
correct in wilin clay becker norman manomomen clearwater and pulk county all right do we have any other reports by anybody okay we'll move on to appointments are there any appointments mr chair just uh we had a resignation on
the buffalo red wershed board so we'll be looking for and i forwarded that to carrie and she was going to contact the buffalo wershed to to uh start advertising for that um i i i haven't i don't know uh richard brought it up to too this morning but we
haven't been real real a breast on what's going what's going on but i think there's some projects that have brought some eyeire to some of the area land owners up north um in the callaway area so um i just think we'll have to look into
that and see what what's going you know i i don't know specifically i know sometimes these projects you look at projects and they build the local the local land owners and it's a benefit for you know state you know anyone statewide so it's hard to hard to sometimes pay
for projects when they're benefiting everyone and you're footing the bill for it without without um even though they you don't want it so um those are things that you kind of have to balance um who's paying for them and and who are they hurting and who are
they helping so um richard was going to dig into that a little more and they feel that they're not represented fairly up north and and when you look at where these other people on the border from there there could be there could be some truth in that so they're looking for
support from us and so i'm going to look into it and well again we we don't have any authority over the wersheds so no just they just are looking for our support i don't know you know do we have authority to appoint somebody though yes
we will be appointing but but i guess our guy doesn't pull a lot of weight down there and that's one of the reasons he doesn't want to be there anymore so got and i and i but i am going to look into it and we'll we'll we we can talk about
it here and and i don't know what we can do about it do we have anything else on appointments anybody else all right let's move on to the presentation of the becker bay auction
funds there's nobody here oh there he is he's right there he's hiding behind the pole i was waiting for our manager to come give me a couple yeah sure sure we can we can move on we'll we'll come back to it when she comes in okay thank you yep um so we'll move to the county
administrator's report carrie thank you mr chair i'm probably repeating myself from this morning's uh joint governance meeting but um we will be doing our second interviews for veteran service office uh officer position tomorrow so hoping to get that office restaff so
they can serve our veterans in the county yesterday afternoon i spent some time over at our probation office just following up on some ideas that i uh had and sharing those with uh brian rubenstein especially when they bring in the f5 project and potential funding and
as they start that process with uh our human service human services here with their mentoring program i had shared this morning and i'll share again um we had gotten some information in uh from the state that there's potential cuts to our pil payments uh
which they're talking about a 35% cut what that means for us um after looking at the dollar figure it's roughly about 250,000 of lost revenue um that we potentially could lose where i guess one
of many things that we're watching and monitoring you know coming down from the legislator legislature it seems to me that most of the cuts in the governor's proposal hurt rural minnesota much harder than it hurts agree metro that's because there's
nothing here but rocks and cows we got to remember that but you know i think i think it's something that you point out to our rural legislators saying you know every proposal here you know henipin and ramsay are doing the pilot programs for everything and they're getting paid for them so they're getting set up and ready
to go when this when these things come live and and mandatory so they're they're already paid and they have such a different line of service so it it's just it's it's concerning to me that every reduction hits rural minnesota 10 times harder than it hurts metro
minnesota if you look at the way minnesota has been treated by the state it's been terrible and it's almost like they want to destroy it and you can't make this up i'll say it one more time minneapolis burned for three days and nobody did
anything and i hope people in minnesota wake up and see who's in charge there because i want to be part of north dakota that's what i would like to i would like to have north dakota take becker county in mr chair
carrie uh so pill payment payment in lie of taxes what where where does that come from what what what lands are we being paid for in lie of taxes is that the forestry land or tax forfeited land and i i haven't looked into the formula too
much to see which payment in le of tax formulas he's talking about um because there are there's payment in le of taxes for dnr owned property that that they man that they purchase off the tax roles and then there's then there's tax forfeit land you know and the tax forfeit land is considerably less per
acre um because we don't get a lot of tax appeal payment from tax forfeit the old timber there's what is it about two $3 but it used to be okay that's kind of and then but the dnr land
that they've purchased depending upon which pot of money they purchased for and which program but that's up to 12 you know that's like 12 to $15 an acre so i don't know which if it's across the board or if it's a specific program or or or what but um so mr mr shared
so if we're going to lose up to 250,000 250,000 of what was it a million dollar payment a $10 million payment in payment of lie of taxes 7800 7 yeah so this was the 250 is 35% 35% okay so okay
so 600 600 higher than 700 again would i mean you have to wait to see what portions of what which pots he's t saying from because i don't know that he'd pull anything from dnr funding
cuz those those have been taunted every time they come in to purchase something that that this is payment of taxes you're getting more than what you would if if you if this was on the tax roles i mean those are promises to me so you're going back on the word of your
government that these are being taken off the tax roles and you're going to continue to fund them than pilt um and again every time a new project comes in doesn't you know and they have thrown more money on pilt at sometimes but you're just getting a a different slice of pie you know you're adding something
more to that pie and you're getting that the pie doesn't increase in most cases but um every once in a while i think they've changed and now they're talking about taking part of the pie away so yeah and this is just you know one of many as you indicated uh potential cuts
and you know we've been are looking at these dollar figures and and amc has been asking for us to track that as by county and as far as what that really looks like you know dollar-wise so i've been sending that information back through amc so they're tracking that and
we do um by uh bi-weekly calls you know across counties and ais was another one i yes yes and uh 50% cut sentence to serve is another one um it's complete cut reduction in medicaid
payments for yes and we did the dollar figure on that yeah i should probably put that all together yeah if we looked at all all the program cuts and all the it could be well it's the program cuts plus additional mandates such as the minnesota african-american family
preservation child disproportionality and the and safe and sick safe and sick and what's the other one the sex family medical leave family medical leave sex offender portion of the recovery is being pushed back on the on the counties
and every one of these is a couple percent or maybe 5 10% % um i've heard there's been some work on the um african-american the minnesota african-american um child protection welfare poverty something
act for the big um so hopefully and i'm hoping they'll just push that one back up because i think everyone agrees that minnesota was not doing a good job i think that's the consensus i'm not i'm not in detail but um how do how can we improve that with and m and fund it
without um financially crippling counties especially rural counties especially rural counties the more rural the worse you are all right all right carrie you can continue on your report okay thank you um and i had gotten an
email i think it came from mitch lundine um potentially there's a sponsor jim joy for modifying for the re reallocation of bonding money from 2023 for the h heartland trail so we'll keep track of that and see where that goes and then i
believe it's tomorrow um or maybe it's today um commissioner hansen and i are going to be meeting um with regards to some of the discussions that we've had with regards to strategic planning and what that may look like so we'll bring back more information for that solved
one thing that you know steph brought up this morning steph from paggel from frezy um there's some bills in the sen that senate that she brought forward that really is is something that's it's not it's an overreach again by by state government telling rural communities how
they should plan and zone their communities which is ridiculous i think each each community has their own goals and objectives and how they want their city to to be to look and i think the state should respect those and allow i
mean i think their push is to have everyone ride bicycle to to and from work uh and in in rural minnesota that's not reasonable i mean it it's i mean winter times you can't get out your driveway with a four-wheel drive car sometimes i so i i just i think there
the goals and your dream is good but it's not realistic for for this part of the country and we don't you know in our small communities we essentially don't have rural transit and there's no uber there's no i mean there these things aren't available like they are in the cities and they're trying to make the
city's laws apply to everyone and i i it's just i i it's hard to understand how how the state can can think this is reasonable so so the last thing under my no i i
thought i was done too i thought of something else kind of like you um so we had our township meeting so just one last uh thing about that with the townships we or there was tracking of that of who has deferred to the
county for um managing cannabis um businesses and there's four is it four or five i can't remember i might have my number off uh townships that have not yet deferred to the county so that was talked about at the township meetings and i would expect that those townships
will in the near near future uh defer to the county uh for assistance with cannabis that's all right so let's uh go back to our becker bay presentation for the becker county food pantry i believe we're ready just just i'm sure most people know but we have we have a new
beck a food pantry in becker county and if you have not been there you need to go in there and look because it is amazing it is you walk in it's it's a bright facility it's inviting it makes people that need to be there feel
welcome so that's awesome and kudos to you guys for doing that that's a great place it is a beautiful it really is much needed mr mr chair if i may um with regards to this topic i just really wanted to highlight the amount of work
and effort that uh peggy put into making this happen and so i just wanted the board to be aware of that and and the rest of the yeah and we thanks peggy it's hard to replace sandy gunners thanks peggy yeah thank you very much so people participated and brought amazing
gifts and um and we knocked our goal out of the park we knocked our goal out of the park we raised $3,56 for food pantry thank you not bad for a goal of 2025 everything that's going on we definitely
can use it so do we have a check we do have a check a fake check but a fake check real cash and just this is liz li she's our new uh manager
he's been uh a great asset so thank you yeah awesome yeah and i think kudos out to the employees you know the the becker county employees donated and then bid it bid bidded bid on um the don the donation so and we had i think the most
i've ever seen on it was very competitive and a lot of items donated so we finally keep those employees going yes and and on that note administration finally got the treats from the auditor treasures so they will be delivering to
us we they will be cooking for our in our department so we all come down with food poisoning you can't do it today because it would be an april fool yes it would be yes it would be y all right are we ready to
present the yeah go ahead did did you want to go over any of your numbers before we do i did want to kind of bring to light absolutely yes please do because i i feel like maybe some people don't know how much of a need this pantry is um so just some some numbers
uh the past four years there's been a 128% increase in people using the pantry and our clients are from becker county of course and we did a survey last year and 50% of them said they have food
insecurity that they don't know what they'd do without the country so that that really that really enlightened me um and then the rest of the numbers just show you the increases that we're we're
having in 2024 we serve 20,728 versus 17,000 in 2023 so it's quite an increase um and now for this year the first quarter of 2025 we serve 6,100 people and with that
we're projected to serve 24,000 people which will be 4,000 more than last year so um and then the food we do food rescue from local retailers which very generous very very generous and um that
really helps of course we buy the food we get the food from the food bank but in 2024 we distributed 592,000 pounds of food versus the 467 in 2023
so it's just a it's just a big need and with we don't know what's coming where we talked to the food bank in uh uh east grand forks and they're in limbo they don't know what cuts are coming to them
because they import food um you know they're looking for lowcost quality food and they do import food from canada and mexico so and then another thing that's with the tariffs so who knows how much
our food's going to go up in price and then we also receive we call it's called tfap it's the uh the food let me food emergency uh assistance program so what that is is
the this food is federally funded and it comes to the food bank and it's mostly our meats and chickens and fish and so we get it for free but if that goes away then i don't know how we'll sustain what we're
doing because we don't really buy we buy ground beef but that's the only meat chicken poultry item we buy so yeah with the two programs like pap and then the snap program might be cut too so if that's cut that means our need is
going to go up mhm so we've already uh we we the last couple years we've been going for every grant we can get we doesn't matter if it's a,000 500 5,000 we've been searching for grants to keep us going and our donors are really doing
well and as our future goes we're going to go start looking to see with uh like some larger corporations in town and that if we can get some sustaining money like work with them so every year we know we're going to get so many let's
say 5,000 a year or whatever uh so we can project our budget with a little bit better consistency because everything we have right now is donations and if prices of everything goes up like anything else our donations will
probably get less so we're trying to fill that gap in expecting that to happen so we are looking at ways we can uh keep sustaining ourselves but uh as what we're giving out now we'll probably have
to reduce if prices go up because we won't be able to afford to to keep that up so that's going to affect the people we serve as we go uh basically we're an emergency food pantry we work classified as so we are it's a two to three day uh
food supply we give them to kind of fill in a gap well for some of these people they need more than that you know so we're just trying to figure out being proactive and trying to figure out how can we sustain ourselves in the future so that's kind of where we're at right
now so something like this this is is huge uh the 30,000 it it's it's coming at the right time too because we're in our our march campaign i think we're giving either come here march the 1st or the 15th well this fits into our march
campaign so the more we raise there's a pot out there the more we raise the bigger the pot is we get we get money from so this is going to help us on that that goal also so any questions mr chair i have two questions
um i was just curious is there um a limit as far as how often people can come in once a month okay yeah we do have a we have set up a little program if they do uh need uh more than that uh
we used to let them come in and give them another full load but we can't do that anymore so we have uh set up a little program where we can give them partial so that'll give them another couple days or whatever it isn't the full type where they can come in and
shop for everything okay we we had to limit that because we couldn't sustain that either you know because there are some you know there's large families you know coming in 10 13 eight so the food we give them you know keeps them going for a couple days but it's not going to
keep them going for a while so okay um i had a second question i can't remember what it was i can't remember anything oh i remembered um are you the only food bank or food pantry in becker county or is there other smaller ones that are ser
by churches or there are a couple uh smaller pantries at the churches um first lutheran okay and then there's another one up by us but that those are the only two i know of and they're very small panels that's what i assumed i was
just curious and i believe the high school has um a room where students like a backpack they have a backpack program yeah okay but we're basically up till this year or so we've been the only food pantry in becker county okay that we've been serving and
we serve quite a large area so right you know you guys know that yes yes okay thank you yeah so let's we oh go ahead yeah i don't have any questions i just wanted to thank you for for filling this huge need in our community so thank you for the work thank you and this new
building has really made it very nice i mean the people enjoy it uh it's it's been such a different atmosphere and uh a lot of people now for us too they they shop they do their own shopping we have an assistant go along with them and let them know how many items they can take
off a shelf or whatever but that's also helped us in our planning because before we gave them everything but pretty much filled the box now they take only what they need so we're able to now liz is able to figure out what we need to order more and more and what we don't need to
order because the people aren't taking it so that has helped us in the last year or so to kind of come up with a a better plan on how we stock our shelves so and i think we we had somebody from extension come and talk with us you're considered a super
super shelf yeah we went into this new building the way we set up our shelves and in their order and that we were certified as a super shelf yep which is you know an award we didn't have before if anybody saw the old building you understand why
but it's it correct me if i'm wrong it makes it much more consumer friendly and that you like you said you can come in shop for what you want not just you have a box of food that you may not need that certification also helps us with uh um
our grants we're writing if you can throw that in that's another thing we have that that helps us out so all right any other question let's let's move on and present the the cool big check
you know it's it's kind of funny that commissioners want the picture but we didn't do the work typical typical typical politicians it's all based yeah then i ran out of time and he forgot about it forgot about
it i had to donate spanish we had a family loss okay how do i get i got to be in the picture you got down i got to get my tip toe okay you guys ready on three one two
three one more time one two three all right excellent thank you thank you very much thank you thank you guys thank you thank you
thanks we appreciate all thank you all right let's move on back to our county administrator back to me um mr chair um i there is a contract in your packet um one modification to that i had
uh met with uh josh several times and basically the one modification i will add i had some information in there and then i took it out and then late friday after this packet went out so the modification that i will be putting back in there there was some question about
uh errors and emissions insurance coverage for josh what that means is whether or not our mcit insurance for liability would cover him as an appointed official and i took it out thinking that it would not cover and then late friday afternoon mcit called
me back and said yes it would cover since he's an appointed official so i will put language back into this contract prior to signature um just i just wanted to make that that note okay so any questions with regards to this um
this land surveyor right remember i said did that throw you off when i sent that this morning that i had things i wanted to input in there maybe so on my josh come up so my text message this morning that said i couldn't make it to the board meeting
today we played a april fool's right yes i wasn't gonna talk publicly about that but i but i i threw i threw in there that i had some additions on here and i thought that will get her mind off me not missing she'll mind will be confusing and no i was stuck right on nobody was coming to the board meeting
but anyway i do have a couple questions and just just to make sure we're all on the same page on the second page of the document on page um 8 nine of your packet um where we go down to um public land surveyor corner
corner maintenance services public corner maintenance um under letter c attend any meetings requested by the county um just clarification how do we how do we compensate that's just an hourly or m i mean i'm i'm i just wanted
in here do we pay hourly or mileage when we request to be at a meeting or how is that being compensated when board requests them to be at meetings well josh and i talked about that i don't think it's ever happened josh you want to take that one it hasn't happened yet
so come to nrm meetings to discuss the corner monuments true true and i've never charged for mileage because they're there you know i mean there's only a mile down the road so i just do an hourly rate so we're not doing any i just want to make sure we're all on the same page when we do these contracts so there's no mileage so just down from
there under number three um after december 31st 2028 this agreement will automatically convert to and renew on a year-to-year basis um then it says with an adjusted interest increase rate of 10% um is that annually then every year or
is that a one time and then adjusted you know it was annually and it's subject to negotiation too so i just picked the number thinking that i didn't want the rate to be stuck there every year you know that we could just maybe put something in the contract that it just automatically goes up whatever
percentage that we decided so maybe i can reword that i think that needs i mean i it's not clear that it is 10% a year and i would not support 10% a year after i mean you yeah i mean maybe 10% initially because it's been a a four-year contract but then a after and
then you can even say 3% and then you can go back and negotiate that later i would make sure that that's clear because a 10% annual after that's it's not something oh come on barry not and it might be low and you know we
don't know it might be hopefully not but um well and if i may you know that i couldn't find and maybe somebody with history for the count i couldn't find any prior contracts that had ever been done so this was a definite work in progress doubt there was and we were
trying to capture everything all in one shot so it was it was definitely it's definitely a work in progress yeah we started the whole process just cuz i kind of wanted something set in stone and formal mhm um and then just after that i was thinking under compensation
it we should probably provide you with a budget or expected budget so not to ex i mean it should just state in there that stay within the budget that provided by the county instead of i mean you don't have the authority to just go out and spend like the assignments yeah if you
do that um so the county surveyor i don't think that we you'd have to ask mary but i don't think that it's much throughout the year you know a few grand is about it but if we could keep it separate from the the grant because i'm billing county surveyor through the
grant too which is a larger portion so so maybe just where did you know the survey all work must be authorized pre-authorized pre-authorized by the county okay for for billing purposes whatever bills need to be paid and under
n number nine on page three of the document i just want to clarify that becker county owns all the work that you do when you're paid for by becker county um becker county would own all with all the work that's you that i do for you um
except if you like if i if you ask me to prepare some type of bid request and then metalland or whoever other firm did it they would that would be a private because that's a contract through them you know i uh anything i do for you is fine but as soon as there's a contract
with another survey firm you wouldn't own that um i can't perform the work like if you ask me to come out and survey your property because it's bordering county land i don't own any of the equipment so that's when the subcontract goes to the other firm does
that make sense no mr chair i'm not so you you're talking about like if an rfp goes out to do something you organize it yeah it's bid out is that what you're talking so if you if you needed a tract of land surveyed for the county you come to me i can put get bid uh the bid
request together saying that this is you know we need monuments here we need a drawing like that and then that would go out to that's owned by you yeah but then it would go out to bids for other survey firms those survey firms are private
companies you would not own you know the survey notes and all the records you would own the final product of like the drawing and the pins and all the stuff in the ground why wouldn't we have you do that work why would we even bid it out i thought that was the reason for having the county we bid out we we bid
everything out for to for low quote i mean we well then why do we have a county survey why don't we just bet it out then well we we need someone i mean we utilize a county surveyor to i mean in the past put the grants together for for becker county um yeah i get phone
calls from the zoning office i just got an email from sue ciphert about you know some gis stuff she wants to talk about that type of stuff is mostly what i do um not actually doing it's more opinion on
on paperwork not it's not actual surveying actual surveying we will do we'll we'll bid that out so we're asking opinions or can you can you can you show us how to put this rfp together for bidding it's it's not it's not because
we don't have the skill set to know how to word those things in it's like us you know it's it's like jim doing the skill set in in highway he knows how to word those but it's like having someone on staff then that can work us through
those you know in jim's case building a road or um josh's case how do you word applying for a grant or how do you word putting out a we need these this section you know surveyed
i got to go back to number nine here so what you're saying josh is when when it says any survey records used to perform survey tasks those are that's your notes and your data okay so maybe we need to clarify what the word tasks is cuz i i
was totally confused when i said you own when i read it the first time i thought middle securing um middle surveying owns all of our docu everything so maybe that we have to i wanted to clarify that middleand excuse me middleland surveying is a private survey firm they not
contracted through the county unless they have an rfp that they've got so that's the terms i was okay so maybe that just needs to be clarified to say it that way okay because i had that same question too mr chair is this something that's urgent or could we table this and
figure this out and come back or how um i we can i guess i think we does this have a timeline for you josh makes no difference i'm still thank you for coming today got some of this out yeah we there's a i think there's some tweaks
that just a couple tweaks if you want to see it in in the paper form i think it doesn't matter to me doesn't matter to me either as long as we yeah we got to get it done eventually but is there anything the big one is the clarification
on on who owns the the data is is kind of just to clarify and that would have i think our attorney would have to look at that before we i did have some prior discussions uh with brian um and then there's been some additional my my thoughts were to have him relook at this
and i made some notes of the things that have come up so however you want to proceed is fine so maybe we should just bring it back after brian reviews it okay m just just clarify the data and then make sure josh and brian are able to okay well obviously you're gonna look at it i mean absolutely no problem like
i said it's been it's been a a long run it has been but we'll get there okay all right do we need a motion to table or we just going to agree to table anybody it it's doesn't matter it doesn't matter okay this a there's no
there's no there's no one objecting to this moving forward it's just we want some clarification so we can um i'll make a motion to table till our next meeting to for clarification on wordage of the documents do do you have a second second okay motion may be great any any further
discussion so you want to come back next round yep that's absolutely no problem do you as long as i'm sitting here you want a quick update on the grant sure let's finish our motion first quickly yeah oh yeah uh so we have a a motion and second to any further discussion all right all in favor signify by saying i i i all right motion carries all right go
ahead josh so very quickly um we were going to do we were going to certify 201 corners is the plan um two township lines all the way across from um east to west coast of becker where we visited 150 of them roughly um paperwork's in
the work for that so the county recorder is going to be seeing all of them probably in the next month or so uh and then the field works being commenced on the last four townships so we're kind of coming down the home stretch everything needs to be wrapped up one year from
about a month ago so um there potentially could be another grant in the works um they weren't sure yet they're kind of waiting for how the whole budget things are going um senator green did throw out some interesting
proposals in one of his bills regarding uh wanting all of northern minnesota remmonumented by 2028 mandatory which is absolutely no way that could happen if we started right now there it's
impossible but so anyway that's where we're sitting right now so things are moving forward and everything's been going pretty smooth so mr here uh josh so if we're doing these surveys i i read or i heard about this that it's it's a
grant that's to get the okay um when we record those is is that fee is does the grant help pay for that or that recording fee or do we do that gratus to ourselves or how does that well i don't think the recorder's office is ever charged for recording for doing our own
stuff is that reimbured through the grant or does that not within the confines of what the grant the grant was very specific that you could not use the funds for recording okay yep and and we did we put money into this too i mean we we've recognized the value and we were
willing to put county money into this also i don't know that we did this round no um it was set aside but we haven't done anything with it yet but yes it's in the works so any other questions for josh all right
thanks josh and then we'll get you next time all right let's move on to uh back to me yeah back to you okay um in your packet you had uh resolution uh
42511 and with that this is really um going with with regards to the chief deputy position uh shane richard specifically he is appointed by the sheriff and serves at the pleasure of the sheriff and there had been some
discussion with him he is not covered under a union contract and what benefits he is entitled to and which benefits we would agree to so this is really just formalizing the benefits there was no changes to this from what he had been
receiving that i can remember it was really just formalizing the benefits and so that we're all on the same page basically of the benefits that he he will receive uh in the position so it's it's essentially just what he's
already been receiving correct there's no changes to correct to it okay mr chair i'll make a motion to approve 4251 i i'll second all right so we have a motion by barry second by erica do we have any further discussion mr chair we
did get um free speeding ticket um exemptions from this right right sheriff glender and shane i'd like to give mine to commissioner nelson i don't want one yes yeah i think i said just remember
you serve at the pleasure of the sheriff all right we have a uh any further discussion all right all in favor signify by saying i i opposed all right motion carries the last item i have mr chair is in your packet you have a letter of support for empowerment swings
this was requested by uh the board chair and i would um request a motion um to send out that letter of support if there's any questions i'm sure yep the chair can ask answer those for you i will try do we have a motion to what are
empowerment so they are they are u they use them for se several things the first thing they use them for is they they're in their they use them in their uh um what it's not recovery room what do they call that room uh sensory room so they they use them so
that they can calm them down and relax them and and and uh make them feel comfortable so some of them are are having you know an issue or something and then they also can use them just for a just a thing to just do i mean an
activity it's an actual swing though i mean it's a yeah and it it's it's empowerment because it makes them it it makes them feel uh in control in control of their emotions and their cognitive stuff and it allow allows them i i i
won't use any names but i uh a gentleman that's there um i know him real well he he he would he would absolutely love it because that's what he likes to do he likes to do things that allow him to feel in charge of himself so has anyone watched the movie about temple
grandon the she's u very it's a movie about she's an artistic and she showing her in her as growing up um she became and she had one of those she made herself kind of a a recovery device that she would
put herself in to calm down and um she's very successful um but you know doctors i haven't watched the movie but i i want i'm going to um she's very she's autistic um but she's very high functioning autistic and um very very well known in
the world of cattle um she's designed the stockyard um shoots and how they're and and it's interesting so i it now you have sparked my interest yeah it's a very i mean i've just seen clips of it and and it's it's just very interesting about how you know her mind works
differently than than ever i mean so it's and this i i can only assume this this has something is similar to what she made when she was in college she made this i'm sure i'm sure calm down calm herself down cuz they're so and and what in order to successfully apply for
this grant they need five letters of support and so this would help immensely for the for that and it doesn't there's no financial anything just saying that you know he obviously read the letter just saying that uh we support the fact that this is a good idea basically i'll
make a motion to approve sending the letter on behalf of becker county dac in support of empowerment swings initiative second all right we have a motion by erica second by barry do you want to repeat her motion or no okay all any further discussion okay all in favor
signify by saying i i all right motion carries thank you mr chair that's all i have all right um mary otter treasure st mary did you hear that this snowstorm was really just in april for spring i hope so i doubt that's yeah i think it's
going to hit tomorrow not according to the radar this morning yeah i think it's going to hit tomorrow so today i have resolution 4251h to accept the land donation of a parcel of 80 acres of land in osage township formally owned by pot
latch conveyed to the conservation fund in 2020 uh currently pending closed april 15th to northland waters land trust of walker offering it to becker county to provide uh forest habitat it adjoins
about 400 acres of tax forfeited land that we currently manage the only costs that we will incur the 2025 taxes are $1,18 and then we have to agree to pay closing costs i did
ask them for an estimate they did not get back to me but i'm estimating at the max it should be $500 this first time um i mean we've had other donations of small lots this is the first time we've had an acreage donation so a good thing motion to
approve one each do i have a motion we have a motion by barry do we have a second a second okay a motion by barry second by erica uh any further discussion on the resolution yes mr chair mary so you said that this doesn't happen very often
this is a once off oh very rarely i mean we do get donations of land in lie of forfeite where someone will have a lot and they say it has no bearing so they'll donate that but this is the first time since i've been in office that we've received land as a donation
that's 80 acres yeah all right we have a motion and second any further discussion okay all in favor signify by saying i i opposed all right motion carries thanks mary yep uh one other reminder um last friday the tax
statements were mailed so if you haven't received them yet you will get them because we started getting them back at the office the tax forfeit statements came yesterday exciting news uh mary one last question were there any conditions
on that 80 acres were there any other than what you mentioned there the agreements in the packet basically that we're not going to hold them liable that and this was reviewed by the county attorney yeah okay yep and i think it was potlash forest what's that pot lash
pot lash right it was pot lash they run go ahead it's paper company it's grown back they yeah it was a big paper company that went that bankrupt i don't know if they went bankrupt no they just closed a couple there used to be i think they
still have one they have one open in uh clo don't i think they there was a lot of properties that went to these land trusts to try to get into public public lands and um we identified a couple that we would be interested in and this one
came back as free okay all righty all right jim for highway information good morning morning you didn't take the plows off yet did you no we didn't i live at 123 roosevelt if you want to plow my driveway
we have a number of uh contracts to award uh first one uh is a construction contract uh for the grade widening of county road 7 from 14 up to 16 and county road 16 from uh the entire length
from 7 to the west county line uh we had seven biders and the low bidder is dennis drews out of phrase z and um they're below our engineers estimate by about 6 and a half% and we're recommending award to dennis drews mr chair jim have you reviewed the i mean
with with mr drews to make sure everything's i mean it was cons i mean they left some money on i mean between them and the next bid was considerable different so yeah no they were they were very comfortable with their bid i think they probably did a little homework more
homework on finding gravel sources and stuff like that where the others had some troubles getting contacts with owners for seeking good for them do i have a motion to approve 1a so make a motion to approve one a motion by richard second by barry any any further
discussion okay mr chair uh so jim so i drove that road back from uh when i was in ada i drove that road back um this is a shouldering project we're we're like how does that how do you compare how how does that move up on the chart as a as a
required road like a priority road like h how did you decide that and i'm not trying to get in i just want to know because you know i passed eight cars on that road it didn't seem past eight cars or i met eight past met met
went past eight cars and it didn't seem like a heavily trafficked road it's uh well not during this time of year it's probably not traveled heavily um it's priority you know mainly for agriculture you know farm to market uh and we've
kind of you know highway committee over the years have you know kind of looked at programming uh these safety improvements and widening projects you know doing one you know a year if possible and you know with the large farm equipment we have up there and
those narrow shoulders and you know this does build it to standards you know the safety shoulders and stuff like that we did we did uh 14 of how many years ago is that now yeah that's been about five or six years ago and that's the one from hitterd doll to becker 7 and that
you know hit doll has the bead piler just south of it and yulan has the big elevator which is now west or um harvest states and the truck traffic on there it's a i mean you drive truck on those roads and you meet trucks um you can almost put your hand out and high-five
each other going by and this is this is just a huge huge improvement that number um the hitter road and now people just love it now they and of course people wanted 8ft shoulders also and and we said well that's that's cost a lot of
money and and i mean when i drive truck i like putting my wheel on that white line so i you know so you know where um mr jim you know that makes sense because like i said i i drove it when i just met cars and i'm like this seems relatively safe
but a truck and you know what going into lake park it is wider yeah and if you had a tractor with dual some of that big equipment yeah would make a big again you like jim said you you do a portion every year and our goal is do county i mean ideally all heavy traveled roads
would have wider shoulders but i think on this one too you look at the steepness on this one it it is it's not just closer to the edge it's it's very steep um shoulder which is very dangerous and um you you now go back down to the one on hitall and you're
like this is so much more you feel just so much more at ease driving it when you're in a truck driving that narrow you're you're clenched i mean these trucks aren't cadillacs they're they are you're moving if it's windy the ones you drive no they're not not always the best
condition all right we have a motion and a second do we have any more discussion okay all in favor signify by saying i i opposed all right motion carries all right jim next one uh next contract is for our countywide wheat spraying uh we
received uh quotes from three vendors and uh we're recommending the low quote to l&m road services they were our contractor last year so you would um motion to motion to approve 1b motion
by barry do we have a second i'll second second by phil do we have any discussion uh one question jim uh cars tree service is that the tree company in ottertale they spray as well i i guess i didn't never know that okay all right um all in
favor signify by saying i i opposed i motion carries i believe cars tree service is a subsidiary of lake region electric too i think arv no i think so arv yeah all right jim i think i think it's lake region okay uh next contract is the
mowing contract um countywide mowing again we receive quotes from two contractors here again l&m road services is the the low quer for all four areas and we're recommending award to them
again they were our boeing contractor the last few years so we're sticking with them and they were low bid on everyone and and um they they can manage they manage the whole county so yep motion to approve one seat all right we have a motion by barry do we have a
second i'll second second by richard do we have any further discussion okay all in favor signify by saying i i i all right motion carries all right next one uh the next contract is our gravel road blading and plowing uh our seven areas this is uh up for
quotes for the next three years um we received a number of quotes on all those um the different areas uh growth gravel re is a low quer on area one hendricks road maintenance area two growth gravel area three gustin construction area four projects
unlimited area five theland excavating area six and projects unlimited area 7 um so the only new contractor is gestner there and they've been working for local township so they check out well and it
looks like they wouldn't have gotten the low bid if the one would have been bid correctly is that accurate correct there was a bidding error so on their part not our part yeah there so unfortunately we can't undo that it i was it looked that that was a little bit high the one that
got number um number four too but is what it is all right do we have a motion to approve 1d motion to approve one motion by barry do we have a second second second by phil do we have any discussion okay all in figure all in favor signify by saying i i all right
opposed all right motion carries uh final item for your consideration is a construction service agreement looking for a motion to authorize execution of the contract with more engineering for performing construction uh field inspection and surveying uh for the lake
park construction project in town there doing the sidewalks and roads there uh they were the same firm that did our design on this project and they're the city engineer in town there and they have that expertise to uh do this work on especially on the sidewalks and the
ada requirements i'll make that motion all right we have a motion by phil to second and a second by barry do we have any further discussion jim just uh i didn't ask this in the highway meeting so what what will that bill be to more just guesstimate i know they got a price
list in here but what what will we be paying them to do the portion through the city which that isn't really our expertise or timing to do that uh yeah they'll be there you know monitoring the contractor dollar amount just what will the what will the county pay them to do
that the estimated amount is i think 168,000 is what they kind of estimated as hours and stuff was that in here um the big bold print the page 3452 it's right there the big bold print sorry got it sorry
it happens to all of us is there any any further discussion all right all in favor signify by saying i i oppose all right motion carries thank you jim thank you and mr chair too jim if that i mean if we do look at deviation make sure they know that they have to come you know that's the dollar amount and if
it's more we need to prove more i mean we've been in cases where you have engineering companies come back and say "well we've done this much more so we are owed more." and it's we want to know that prior prior to getting a bill that that um but mr chair commissioner that's
why we're signing the contract right but a professional contract that's always there's always unforeseen you know it's just like remodeling a old home and similar to our so yeah if there any other additional costs we want to
know you know well beforehand so thank you thanks jim all right uh steve morning mr chair board members morning i have three items today uh two of them are for personnel item
action items first one is for a part-time solid waste officer or operator work out well you still didn't get the year right thank you we're going to end date in 12 123124 or
uh sorry steve i insulted you oh and well this looks a lot better yeah yeah we talked about it at finance and he steve gave us a different a sheet to to
show us that so i reached out to the auditor's office and got updated personnel cost and trying to compare what it would cost to hire a seasonal worker versus uh uh light equipment transfer station operator a part-time one uh on the
second sheet i simplified it even further for comparison purposes you dumbed it down you say for commissioners is that what you're saying so there's so there's not hopefully not a lot of questions uh if you hire a seasonal per worker last year we i went back and looked the
the worker that we had she worked 260 hours so we had to back it takes about 286 hours out there that it's open so if you take you can go do the math but it works out if you have a seasonal worker and you have to fill in with a transfer station operator that you take from
detroit lakes the works out there it's probably going to incur some overtime it's about $7,300 if you put a permanent part-time worker that reported directly out there uh it's going to be roughly the same i guess the only difference in
would be i didn't add in here would be you're going to wind up paying per into the permanent part-time worker i think that's when when i said in for you for committee that's we we said if it's close to the dollar amounts it's
fine it's fine with so hold it i i'm not understand what what is the increased dollar amount for the 67-day seasonal person versus the part-time person that's going to go from about 260 to to 286 hours second page kind of shows the so when when you hire
a seasonal part-time person usually you start them a little later in the season and usually they're done earlier in the season so you don't have full coverage of those hours throughout the whole year which you have to make up from someplace so okay so it's about seasonal okay i
just saw that so it's about $6,000 for the seasonal worker additionally yeah if you and this great supplements what the hours that the seasonal worker supplements what the
part-time person will cover an already existing staff person existing staff to go and do those so that's the so it's increasing some yeah yeah so the o so this the seasonal person is only hired in the summer and
then the oage landfill is open year round on saturdays from 1 to 4 it's it's from 9 to 9 to1 9 to1 so that has to be covered then by a regular employee and they might have to drive from detroit lakes or they might have to drive from wherever you know and then they and they
might incur overtime if there's not enough staff okay so we're saying an additional $7,000 to have the part-time person $60.17 no it's basically a wash it's a wash
it's you have to depends on how you want to look at it steve if you want to say our current budget is what or our current cost for a seasonal worker is $6,000 uh if we switch over it's going to be $7,300 but we're saving um hours
that are done by an employee in the at the transfer station it has to go out so it's actually $6,7,300 so a $1,300 increase but we have savings because we're not paying someone coming from the transfer station but it is but then so we'll have more
hours there so if if but it's it's a $1,300 increase in the budget and also there will be hr savings not this year but ongoing moving forward yes it would be the other positive about it well two things one is you're trying to
match the job with the hours that you're hiring someone for that position which if if you look at it from that aspect you're hiring somebody and i i don't know if it's a union issue or not but you're hiring a part-time
seasonal or a seasonal worker to do a ongoing job ongoing i think it makes better sense to hire somebody ongoing to match that ongoing i think the other thing to show here and correct me if i'm wrong but the the cost to fill this will
be 9,000 just under 9,8,956 and our budget is 10,400 so we are under budget even we're within within our budget by doing this for 2025 for 25 and 26 our bud budget goes down
so so we weren't utilizing the seasonal part-time oh there because of the limit of hours we budgeted for 286 and used it for 260 something right yeah i think that's so even with 260.75 and we budgeted for
286 but thanks for this updated one because the old one i was like what what what so all right any other questions otherwise i am prepared to make a motion to approve 1f all right do we have a second i'll second all right we have a motion and a second do we have any further discussion um just just about
procedure i mean i'm i'm on environmental we talked about this there was some confusion i mean this is the first time i've seen anything i stopped in yesterday i i didn't get anything so i i do not like being put on the spot like this without a chance to kind of review this stuff going forward i'm
going to vote for this but going forward i want my questions answered and i want clarification before i get to this spot where i got to vote mr i think that's more than fair to say because um obviously there was a mistake and i don't think we would have approved it but should have had the correct numbers
prior to so we so the committee can have a a good understanding of it correct move forward so okay so we have a motion and a second all in favor signify by saying i i opposed all right motion carries thank you the second one is a personnel request to replace the solid waste manager out of transfer station
now mr mr chair um i don't think this has to come before the board it's a replacement of a policy and as our now we talked talked about that in committee i it got back in the board packet so i don't think it's necessary yeah i don't think so either but i do want to i i
forgot because i do want to clarify one thing um under the 1f that we just approved it should not read should not read that then fill the vacant position through normal hiring process on that one we need to correct that and delimit
yeah because this this position is not gonna back that's correct yeah so if everyone's all right with that we should delete that part y that's good so sorry um mr chair and mr nelson if you could help me with this
so this was from our policy that we changed a month ago right so so right now we had a position retire so that does not have to come before the board that is something the department head just go ahead and start advertising and hired can handle okay
because it's a budgeted position it's a budget okay so and if the back fill is in in their if it's if it's someone with in-house that gets the job they do not have to come back and as long as the job description and the stays the same stay the same and it does not have to come
back okay so what comes before the board is a new position out of budget and out of budget new or changed new or changed okay so this position was changed because it was a seasonal position yes and we're asking
to permanent part he's talking i was talking about the manager solid waste manager camp yeah position so really okay so but that one was changed right okay so that's why okay i got it i think i got it and just for a point of hopefully clarification i
know um the prior policy that we did revert back to for hiring you know we historically had always brought before the board when they were hiring seasonal positions even though the policy didn't really address that so just wanted to make note of that that i know several departments had
broughten brought forth seasonal positions by resolutions but so what would seasonable seasonal be i mean hit with the seasonal audit osage was it was a change to part this one is correct but i was just stay i was just stating just
in general um when we have seasonal regular you know hires that they do every year um that would not come before the we have the policy doesn't really address seasonal hires but the board has historically um seen those come by
resolution and and i think again we've talked back and forth about those seasonal positions and i from my perspective i don't know that it's necessary um however it is good you know for p for information for the board that it's coming and and kind of timelines on
that i i i as one would just i would like to know whether we voted on it or not i know like like highway has some seasonal people come in and it's just it's nice to know um maybe it is just for information those are the ones that we had brought to the board so we have a we have a resolution we don't need do we
need to make a motion on the resolution i don't think we need to okay so we will move on then the third item is consideration of a service contract for potty shacks to provide us with portaotties at our various sites around the county and this includes pumping
right this does yep is middle corant under a different one i don't believe so is it is are they on there they're not on there is that becker county or is that oh yeah i'll check on that
you know mr chair some of them are difference in price i guess some are year round and yep there's two of them antifreeze in them or something the mountain view recreation area and the pine grove high uh rest area are both year round that's why they're that's why they're considerably more and a couple are handicapped and a couple ada ones
yep do we uh do can we just make a motion to have steve check on corro and make a motion for these or do we want to wait i suppose we need to get this that might be a different service provider that might be a different service top my head i i can get back to you on that
though all right do i have a motion to approve the potty shack service agreement i'll make a motion to approve the potty shack okay a motion motion by erica do i have a second i'll second second by richard any discussion
didn't we want to see if that one was in there or we're just assuming it's in well he'll well this will cover bring it forward we'll cover these got it it might be a better fit for someone else cuz that's it's a permanent one and okay okay all in favor signify by saying i i
oppose all right motion carries thank you thanks jen oh boy i need a okay we're going on yeah we got to take a break yep we're going to take a five minute break i'll i'll send you an email okay but i did catch that i assumed you
did did you just had to be one of the ones right i know i was hoping it wasn't and i thought who do i think all right before we start with kyle i forgot to add i forgot something in my courthouse report we had talked about informing the board that we were um
um implementing the career ladders in the recorder's office like we had we had we had approved them before now we're implementing them actually today there are there are two there are two people that are being moved so i just wanted to make sure everybody's aware yeah that's
another thing that wasn't budgeted so we was not budgeted it was in the budget it was budgeted correct it is budgeted yes in in another area that's not budgeted for and we will be bringing that we'll bringing that too yep for consideration i think that was um i can't remember off
the top of my head or environmental i think i don't remember which one it was but there was one that wasn't too yeah so when we went through the budgeting process as much as i could anticipate where we were going to plug in these career ladders i try attempted to account for that within those
departmental budgets this is one that was budgeted so it's really just a career ladder um recognizing the more um com complex duties within the recorder's office that a couple of the what what levels are we moving from and to so
right now there are four staff one of those being part-time in the recorder's office that all do um customer service passports and uh birth certificates marriage those kinds of things they don't all do those jobs well they all
they all can do but then there are a couple within the recorder's office that do more complex like um property tax um those and then what is the other one the terren for therance so so you have everybody at the
same level and really what this ladder will do is it'll move one one of the full-time positions up to a recorder two and one of the positions up to a recorder three the recorder 3 does the torren and did they did our policy say they all had to apply for them they did all they
all applied yeah okay we did go through an application internal process what what grade is that a oh i don't know it was basically everyone shifted uh two of them shifted up let's say one and two grades the the grade the recorder two is a grade up above and then the grade
three is another grade up i don't know what the recorder grade is five maybe what grade do you have the recorder is it i think it's five i think it's five i think it's five and then so one shifted to a grade six and one to a grade seven i believe so i do have a question about that about the application process
because my my understanding with the career ladder is once it's determined by a department head that somebody meets the criteria for a career ladder what's the purpose of them happening to a specific request by the union
and what about the non-un were we doing it with the non-union positions just because i don't know that we have any of the non union positions that we've done that in the it department yes mhm yes we did do it for that process as yes i forgot about that one but you are
correct yes so for the sake of consistency yes we are we have done it that same in that same fashion yeah it just it just seems odd to me when we and i i it's a union when we when it's been identified as a certain individual meets
the criteria and then we open it up for essentially countywide for anybody to apply for it so what's what's the process after that well then you vet your applicants and uh look at the qualifications we had a
similar discussion in one of our new we did and we didn't come to any real good conclusion i mean yeah we're just we just want to make sure that we do things fairly yep yep yep so that was process the department said recommendation to qual they recommend because they're
qualified all right let's move on with uh planning and zoning uh good morning planning commission recommendations from march 26th uh the first applicant will be going to lake ununice township for subdivision
consideration so the second applicant is requesting a conditional use permit for retaining wall the recommendation was to approve i'm going to make a motion to um follow the planning commission's recommendations and approve the
retaining wall use permit so we have a motion by erica and a second by phil do we have any further discussion okay all in favor signify by saying i i opposed all right motion carries got off easy this month
oh no come on kyle you have another cannabis one coming next month oh no anything else is that one not in the eastern side of becker county put it over east supposed to be in i heard they grow really well on like
old vacant uh potato land irrigated under under pivots i thought you say the ditch do do we have kyle do we have any other surprises i don't to look forward to okay to look forward we have a good one but it's oh wait okay oh thanks i will entertain a motion to
close the meeting pursuant to minnesota statute section 13d.03 subdivision 1b the governing body of a public employer may by majority vote in a public meeting decide to hold a closed meeting to consider strategy for labor
negotiations including negotiation strategies or developments of discussion or discussion and review of labor negotiation proposals conducted pursuant to section you just need to read the statute don't we not not the whole i don't know peggy said i had to read the whole thing
statute 17a.01 to labor negotiations you got i'll make a motion eric we have a motion by eric have a second second anybody i'll second all in favor signify by saying i i all right we are
now in close session