--------- County work session order. First item on the agenda is our introduction of new employees. Do we have any new employees here? Anybody that wants to be a new employee? No. All right, we'll move on to identify future work meeting topics because
Commissioner Ser, I think you might have one. Uh, yes, Mr. Chair. I got a few of them actually. Okay. Um, so I had uh uh would like an update on uh the trial care tri child care situation in the
county, how we're doing with that. Um, and also ParkPlace. I believe the county is still a is a partner with Parkplace. workplace if if we can get an update on
how that's coming along or if we're still partners. You know what he's referring to? Okay. Okay. And then uh uh last Mr. chair. Um, I've been contacted by uh uh
Rachel from Taylor Township in regards to um uh chloride um and the county policy when it comes to the chloride on county roads. uh her and I believe seven or
eight other townships uh recently met and I know that the uh county engineer Ruth has uh um attended one of their meetings. So I'm hoping that you know maybe at some future work meeting we can uh discuss the policy for county
chloride and how we can um maybe begin some discussions and dialogue with you know these uh townships. uh cuz I know that there's some concern. Uh there are some folks that like it or love it and there are some that uh are not too fond
of it. So I think um this letter that was addressed to, you know, the three of us. I think uh it probably warrants at least a conversation. Thank you, Commissioner Sar. I have already I got the letter as well and I'm um sent it copied to um administrator
Barry and and our highway engineer Bruce Hazbargon on it to give them a little bit of a heads up to start you know getting getting prepared for you know whether it's the next board meeting or the following one to hopefully get some information on that you know what are the pros and cons what are the costs involved if we don't do it if we do it
you know all that so I think that's that's an important topic I think that we should get covered as soon as we can fit it in Any other future recommending topics from Commissioner Winger or College Carlson? No. All right. We will move on to our
July or June 1 21st storm update and discussion about all things relative to our emergency. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll get things kicked off here. As you know, we've set up the room a little differently this afternoon so that we can have more of an
exchange, a dialogue with the board uh so you can get your questions answered and that we can make uh the dialogue a little bit more free and not have to use simply the podium and so we can all kind of share in that dialogue. Um you'll hear from a number of the key staff that are around the table today in regard to their response and um how we coordinated
the response and kind of where we are in the status of things and especially um kind of what's next, what needs to continue to happen. Uh but let me just kind of recap at a very high level and then what we'll do is we'll turn it over to our emergency management director Chris Muller here in just a moment. But um as you all know on Friday uh in the
in the during the day of June 20th a few weeks back severe storms began to develop in in North Dakota and started moving their way towards the Biji area. And then uh late that evening, Friday into Saturday morning, those storms rapidly intensified and uh gained
significant strength and uh by early morning Saturday the June 21st, the National Weather Service began issuing tornado warnings for southern Belrammy County. Those warnings were issued multiple times. Outdoor warning sirens were also activated and the code red notifications were also sent multiple
times over a short period. Um as the storm advanced towards Belrammy County in particular the Biji area um it surged and produced catastrophic directline winds estimated at 120 mph of the equivalent of a category 3 hurricane or
an EF2 tornado. It swept across much of uh southern Belrammy County. Uh torrential rain also resulted in flash flooding downtown. when it was over about a 10 mile wide area of destruction was sort of left um that that moved
across southern Belrammy County. Um most intense damage was of course southern um uh like city of Bumiji and southern uh Lake Bamiji area over towards um uh Lake Avenue.
Uh 911 dispatchers immediately be began getting calls and were overwhelmed with hundreds of calls in a very short period of time. Uh dozens of gas leaks were reported. There were downed power lines that were sparking. Uh endless reports of trees down and uh over 30,000 uh
customers that were without power essentially immediately. Uh roads were impassable. Uh devastation was uh something like we haven't seen uh in the very recent history. As the sun rose, it was clear that this catastrophic event would require um additional resources.
The county was just not resourced to take on this event on its own. And so immediately activated the emergency operations center and reached out to mutual aid partners who began coordinating immediately with us. Uh representatives from the Minnesota Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency were quick to respond
as well as other agencies at the state um and even local levels. Uh the city and county and state resources uh immediately began clearing debris. It was very important for us to at least get passable most of the roads for additional emergency services that might be needed. Uh and that happened pretty
quickly, at least to get to a single lane. Uh as the day progressed, it was discovered that hundreds of structures had been damaged and that many people um were not going to be able to um reside in their structures. So we immediately opened up the shelter uh and housed that
over at the Sanford Center. Uh it's ironic that that activity of opening the shelter in a catastrophic storm event was something that we had trained on simply two months ago. Uh so that really was very smooth operation for us and the team. Uh you'll hear more about that experience. Uh over 100 people were
sheltered and over 200 people were provided meals initially. Um and uh since the shelter has been closed now and is turned into a disaster assistance center which is also being um um uh organized with the Salvation Army,
United Way uh community resources center uh the county, the city and others. Uh Red Cross and Salvation Army continue to support response efforts by providing meals uh and water. Um, as you know, the county board chair did declare a state of emergency on June 21st, uh, shortly
after the storms passed and then the county board ratified that extending it to 30 days on June 23rd. The governor did visit um Baiji and Bel Tramy County and tooured uh the area and also provided a press relief press release
excuse me or I should say press conference rather on Tuesday uh June 24th and uh on Friday June 27th at our urging he did declare a peaceime emergency allowing additional resources to be utilized in the recovery of this event. Uh we just want to also mention
that Bel Tramy uh Electric and also Ottertale Power Company has made exceptional progress in short order getting a lot of people um power back up and running some within 24 hours uh most within a few days and uh pretty much everybody within the week. Uh we also
have extended the the Belrammy County demolition landfill hours. Uh those are running extended time periods right now. You hear more from uh Bruce and Brian on that. We also opened up an additional processing facility over the target uh fair old fairground site uh which is
also being utilized. Of course, the best news out of all of this is that there were no injuries or deaths reported from this particular event. Uh so we're very fortunate on that front. Um as it relates to um uh the what we have planned for you and presentations today,
we'll go around the room and uh you'll hear briefings from our emergency management director as I mentioned. and also will provide a facilities update sort of how was county infrastructure impacted as a result of this situation. You hear a little bit about the shelter and how that was stood up and how it was utilized and such. We'll also talk a
little bit about what the sheriff's office has seen in regard to calls and responses and other issues. We'll do a short forestry briefing as well uh so you'll know kind of what it looks like as it relates to damage to county assets from a forestry perspective and and other perspectives. Um we can also
provide a brief veterans update uh you know in regard to sort of what we're seeing uh in in veteran needs. After that we'll move into a disaster reimbursement overview limitations and process discussion which our emergency management director will uh provide. So you'll learn a little bit of more like how does this process work from here on
out? What are our timelines? What are we eligible for reimbursement on? How how does all of that work? We'll share information on that. Uh from there we'll also talk about debris management. spend considerable time uh discussing what we're seeing at the uh at the uh debris processing facilities. You know, how
they're being utilized, what kind of materials are coming through, what additional resources we might need. So, we'll provide additional information on that. Uh we'll also provide a a small uh update on insurance for the county in particular for public infrastructure and also available funding for response to
this disaster. So, we'll answer some questions around that. Uh, and then hopefully we'll have a little bit of time at the end uh for additional questions and answers and some direction that we might have um that we're seeking from the board as it relates to moving forward. Um, after that, there will be a
short presentation as well on um the permitting process. Some people have been asking about like, you know, what's involved now and with now the storm has passed and what do I have to do and those kinds of things. So, we'll have a brief update on that as well. So, quite a bit of information to get through. Uh, with that, I'll turn it over to
emergency management director, uh, Chris Mueller to start us off. War buddies that have been with us for the last week and a half here uh, as we've been going through this devastating uh, disaster that impacted. Welcome to our our public that is here
today as well as being online. And it's a a good opportunity for us to communicate directly with you uh, as to what we've been doing on uh, in the background as well. This has been a lot of work that isn't newsworthy or it's not all that exciting, but still
consuming a lot of our time. Um, there is uh what I'm going to kind of do is kind of just go over leading up to the event, the event, the immediate aftermath, touch on some of the activity that's taking place, but allow my partners to
go a little bit more in depth on what they were doing. I don't want to steal anybody's thunder. Shouldn't make a storm rip some, but we'll uh we'll let them talk about what they want to do. So, June 21st, 2025, this event actually started sooner than that. And the fact
that um Tuesday I started watching the Storm Prediction Center for those of you that don't know me, I'm an amateur cloud looker and, you know, pay attention to the weather and you know, I'm also a certified skywire instructor. So I go a little bit more in depth and I look at the detail as to what forecasters are
talking about and what they think that their uh forecast need to reflect in convey and it became very evident that midweek uh in even early week uh is that we were in for something that was going to be hitting in the weekend and um it
happened but we didn't want it to but we were prepared and that is a good thing and to Tom's point is we didn't have a single injury or death and you know that as tragic as it is for our community and having responded, that's what's
celebrating is that we were prepared and nobody got hurt. So I just wanted to highlight that. Thank you. So we started uh public messaging and if you don't have Facebook, it doesn't matter. You don't need to have a Facebook account. You don't need to
worry about people spying on you. Our pages are open for anybody to do it. So all you have to do is go to facebook.com emergency management and you can see the posts and updates that we're putting out there. So this is one of the first references that I made and this was on
June 19th. So just a few days prior um to the event and notifying uh our followers, the public and our residents that hey the weather service and the storm prediction center is really looking uh towards the end of the weekend into the weekend and being at an
enhanced risk two days out uh is relatively rare for this fire month. That's something that we normally see hours or a day before, not two days before. And then a little bit later uh on June 20th is the weather uh I'm sorry
the score prediction center uh put us into a very rare level four out of five moderate. That's I didn't get an image of it but that's where there would be another circle on that map that would be red and that's indicating that there is a fairly significant chance uh of a
storm and you know they do categorize you know tornado hail and wind threats and we were really starting to max out on the wind prep and that really concerned me because it was looking really similar to some of the other um blowdowns that we had. And before we go
on is I just want to give the um National Weather Service forecasters that were working that night a big shout out and thank you that they didn't forget about us because they were simultaneously dealing with tornadoes that unfortunately were deadly uh in the Jamestown Enderman in souththeastern
North Dakota. So they were still having to warn for those storms because this one developed ahead of those and they still provided us with ample warning um that these storms were coming in. So we were getting this messages out also letting some of our response partners know uh that they needed to up their
preparedness as well. Next slide. So here's just another little bit a timeline. Here's another post on the top left. Um late Friday evening they issued spirit thunderstorm watch for us and then then the show started around 12:20
National Weather Service issued the tornado warning that was for significant rotation um south of Sway and Chevlin. I was trying to merge those two towns uh together but Sway and Chevlin there's some significant uh rotation south of there and unfortunately uh if it stayed
on a trajectory this was uh heading straight for uh Binci. So that was at 12:25. 10 minutes later, uh, we had gotten the code notification out. Everybody got the wireless emergency alerts on your cell devices. Um, and those those alerts are
so important and they they undoubtedly contributed to people's lives being saved. And then uh about 14 minutes later uh as the tornado threat was uh looking a little bit less concerning, but then all of a sudden the velocity
just exploded. And what velocity is is the radar uh demonstrating which way the winds are going. And if you look at the image on the lower, the red is precipitation going away from the radar, which is located in Northakota, which is the Grand Forks Weather Office radar
that they use. And green is going towards the so if you know those two pieces of information is in the epicenter for some incredible winds and I was thinking 100 miles an hour would be catastrophic and just you
know change our community but when the National Weather Service came over and did advantage assessment uh they actually uh estimated that the top winds were 120 miles per hour. Uh, one noteworthy uh, event is at the Malaysia Regional Airport. The weather sensor out
there did register a 106 mile per hour winding gust and they were not in the worst of the damage. We had a lot of damage, but they were not in the worst of the damage that we uh were able to uh uh review. And then down on the bottom right, we were able to activate the Muji
sirens for a second time. Uh, they sound for four minutes and then they cool down because we'll burn them out. there's red con. So we let them cycle through and then we activated them one full more activation uh just providing that and uh
warning next. So as uh they moved over the city of somebody was kind of pointing out on the left that this kind of looks like a hook echo. It's not a traditional hook echo. Uh it would be a little bit more uh
counterclockwise with that notch coming in. So what this is demonstrating and I do not have a loop that I can play with but that leading edge south of Turtle River and at this captured just east of Biji and moving into just north of Cast
Lake that Boeing segment that's kind of leading the way if you will that's where your strongest winds are and that correlates with where the worst damage um that we had across southern Delta County and then off into the Beach Lake reservation uh and the Pennington area
uh and as continued to progress across northern Minnesota. It did produce um severe weather uh all the way across into the up of Michigan. So if we watch this event, it started in western North Dakota and went up to the upper M upper peninsula of Michigan. This is going to
be definition was classified um which is a very rare u weather occurrence which essentially just means a long traffic. Don't want to misspe but I think it's 270 miles is the path uh that it needs to maintain those super criteria and not only were we leaving
the epicenter but we had the the strongest winds uh in that following segment. Um, next slide then. So, this is a loop that plays and if you look right when it gets into the county line, um, and where that first polygon
where that first red uh, shape is to the left, that's when new forecasters were detecting that gnarly looking rotation. And um people get really I don't want to say excited when they hear tornado or that a tornado is
something that you want to achieve. 120 mph straight line winds is going to be more destructive than a tornado because a tornado is essentially going to be a pencil drawing a line and a dational or the straight line wind will be one of
those fat markers uh writing across the map. So that's just a little bit of perception, you know, but there may have been a few embedded tornadoes in this, but it would have been covered up by the straight line wind. And there is one little area of damage around that uh uh
Clearwater County, Belran County, and H County uh border area that I want to find some time to get down there and look just to see uh if there was anything that was detectable. But this is the velocity uh scan and you can see just how tight that rotation was and
then that incredible red and white indicators as it moves over the region and that's where that strong strong wind. One thing that I would also like to just uh bring up again our board is well aware that it was presented on before is Minnesota's radar maps and
Minnesota uh particularly the Belrammy County area we're served by two radars on the existing next radar system and it is mandota and duth Minnesota and we fall approximately halfway between those two radars. So, what that means for us
is that the lower 8,000 ft of a storm is not being picked up by the radar. That's called lowle uh radar coverage. And in most severe weather events, uh clearly identified storm features such as tornadoes and that closer to the ground
location, you need it in that lower levels. And we're still working on uh ways to mitigate uh the radar gaps. But um did that make a big difference in the warning of this storm? I don't think so. I think the weather service knocked this one out of the park. Uh issued the
appropriate warnings uh and they weren't even surprised at the magnitude when we did the uh the damage assessment. Next slide. So immediately our response started as Tom alluded to. Um, Chief Sherwood uh was in the EOC, Chief Masten, their
public works. We were making our notifications. Obviously, the city um was a little bit more impacted than uh our infrastructure was. And uh one thing that I forgot to mention is uh at on Friday evening when I was seeing that, okay, this is actually going to happen,
I came into our 911 center and was just there and said, "Oh, you can hear here to help you if you need it." And I'm so glad that I was because uh it was 37 hours before I got home uh after that. But they were so overwhelmed. The sheriff will bring up some of the things
that they had been through and the fact that we lost our communications for 15 minutes with the radio system. And as a dispatcher, you know, previously being dispatched is that's terrifying. You don't know what your officers need. You don't know what your firefighters need.
You don't know what your EMS needs. And another thing that is terrifying for a dispatcher is our community's needs can't get to them. And so this uh this storm really impacted dispatch as well. Um but it was clear at uh 237. I need
another post uh just uh to alert people that uh there is extensive damage around the area, much of southern county. Please do not travel unless it is an emergency because we've had people stuck everywhere. uh in the few hours after that because it was nothing uh short of
all hands on back to get routes that we could get ambulances and fire trucks through. We had a medical out in the mission area which is a southeastern bel and u we couldn't get cast lake ambulance out there to send we couldn't get the hij there because there was no
route for them and we had to get highway department out there prioritize getting those paths so that we could at least meet the uh essential emergency needs uh of our community. Uh Brian quickly realized that he needed more uh opportunity on the solid waste division
uh and extended the hours and then he'll explain that he extended the hours and then he extended the hours and we're looking to extend to possibly more locations uh and probably more hours. Uh then um I was in communication with
chairs and um my recommendation was to declare an agency and he was in deterrence. Uh and uh so that uh action was taken. Um we uh briefed the administrative area and shared rigs uh and Craig actually came to where you'll
see offered his assistance not only to the community but to us that were stuck there as well. So personal appreciation for that commissioner. Uh immediately our community came again and if you look at the bottom right there's donations started pouring in everywhere and they were being consumed and not only for our
first responders but we had a number of uh residents that were displaced and needed temporary housing and uh uh as Tom mentioned and Amy is going to explain in more detail and is we were ready and I'm so proud to say
that and we prior to holding that training exercise. Amy did ask me, she said, "Those what are our biggest deficiencies?" And it did not take them very long to say shelter because we don't do it very often, fortunately. And I'm just glad that we were we were
prepared for that. Next cycle. So, this is just a um I don't have a lot of pictures. I think most people have access to on their phone. Um, and I don't need to go rip off a bunch of pictures from the the news and such, but uh, the uh, National Weather Service was
quick to send the team over. Um, they were two, uh, meteorologists that work out Grand Forks and we were looking at the destruction. They came into downtown. They came in on Adams Avenue and they're like, "Wow, you guys really got" and I was like, "Just wait."
And we went out there and neither one of them had seen this extensive of damage before in that w area. They've both seen tornadoes and hurricanes, but not in the northwest. And the fact that the core
winds hit one of the most densely populated areas in northern Minnesota is is quite frankly just bad luck. Next slide. Our EOC uh has been open. We did um uh make sure that we had all the meetings
met for the weekend so that we were able to take uh part of Saturday and sum it up. That doesn't uh use staff were not working. We still work. It was just that we weren't physically uh in the building. So with that is uh we did a lot of emails our coordination. Brian wanted a press
release out and you know I saw the alert and got on the computer and got that notification out. Uh as well as making sure that the state is arrested as to uh what we have going on um as well. And one other thing that I'd like to point out with the excellent partnership
between uh emergency management and public health emergency preparedness is one of the things that we identified in our EOC is we lack adequate technology or I should say lacked adequate technology and thanks to uh grant funding that Amy was able to leverage.
not only is uh public health and PP uh being served by the technology in there, we really utilized it for emergency management to this response uh as well. So another thank you and uh just about electric picture on the left there getting their briefing. Um I believe
this was a little bit deeper into the response uh when they were proclaiming that they had every customer back on. So an absolutely monumental uh response from both Ottertale Power Company and um I'll turn I'm not going to steal the
story Steve might uh share about that call on Sunday night at 10:20 when we were worried about this building. I'll let you tell that story. Next slide. Um as was mentioned, Governor Walls did come up here, met with our elected officials, listen to some of the
accounts of emergency management, our first responders, uh and what our needs were. And uh in the process which we'll talk about in a little bit here about getting state resources is we need that peace time emergency uh designation uh for the trend county. Our local state of
emergency declaration opens up our resource to go county department to county department and city department and have those uh different divisions and departments work together and shift resources. Um but this also allows the opportunity for uh state resources to
come up and assist us. So um I've had my uh state liaison Jennifer Wilson from HSCM or RP sorry acronyms to home security emergency manager the regional program coordinator uh has been here and when I'm too busy to type a call I hand
my phone she get some information and then get back to uh uh whoever it was. So um since then uh the governor has uh with the executive council extended the peace time emergency which is going to allow us uh to move forward um in the uh
recovery process. Last night I'm sorry Dan uh here is very uh non-comprehensive data with some of the analogies that we have. This is from the partners at the uh American Red Cross and they uh went
and did some windshield and uh windshield surveys as well as visited with some of uh the clients um in constituents that they were uh talking to. We did have one uh destroyed residence and I'm not exactly sure where it's on the the map can't can't see it
but uh 23 major damage 71 m and 97 affected. I will say that this number despite the American Red Cross efforts is this disproportionately low. You can drive around and you can see that my estimation uh even outside of the city
limits especially on the east side is probably one in four homes have some type of bloom tarp or tyveck uh as a temporary solution until permanent uh repairs can be made. So definitely one of definitely the most significant
disaster uh I've ever experienced outside of a tornado. Um but this is really where um we transition from that emergency response into recovery and that's where there's going to be a lot of new bugging people for numbers and I've already gotten some and they're
quite staggering is I got an initial uh report from the city of 1.5 million. They've already said double that. Uh Bruce gave me one at 500 to 750,000. I'm just going to double it now, Bruce, because we both know disasters just keep
getting more and more uh expensive, especially with the future work that we need to do. And Brian and I are going to be talking about that uh to ensure that our future work in response to this uh is taken into consideration as well. That's what we did uh during last year's storm that hit us is we were able to uh
estimate forward what some of the activities the solid was in winter uh and successfully got uh 75% of factory reimbured as well. So other entities that are uh potential uh applicants of this would the townships,
the school district, DSU, the DNR, the Lake Biji State Park, uh forestry trails uh in county departments and my advice to you is keep your seats documented and take pictures. So our IDA, EDA, a
declaration, holiday acronym that I digest or you to make sure that we uh come to a positive resolutions to recovery to this response. I will yield to further questions knowing that we're going to have further uh in-depth uh
report outs from our county departments here. Thank you, Chris. Should we just uh move through as you know we're wanting to probably make sure we get to everybody and then we can look at questions after we've heard because some of the questions that we might have right now
will probably get answered by those that are presenting. So, um, are we going in just in order around the room or there do you have a a method to the madness, Tom? Uh, thank you. We we did talk about this and organize an order. So, we'll do facilities and then uh the shelter, then
the sheriff, forestry, and veterans. Okay. So, Steve, take it away. Well, get an update on the downtown campus first. um sustained moderate damage compared to
Brown and structures. Um uh we have multiple broken windows on campus, seven uh trees that were down. Um lots of exterior flashing tore from the buildings. Um uh including uh some that are way up by
the historic courthouse near the dome. Very difficult to get at. Um air conditioning units tipped over. um uh rope vent covers that we'll never find. Uh uh and lots of windows uh that were
um uh trim pieces were tore off um or uh adjusted out because of the pressure the time storm um repositioned I should say. So, um lots of lots of uh those
type of issues. Uh lots of repairs uh still in the works. Um uh that Saturday morning early we had uh facilities management staff uh on site um uh making building assessments with me and making
repairs to our starting budget up our facilities and such. So, um we had uh all our critical infrastructure for downtown campus was maintained throughout the storm. Um
uh and utility power was restored. We have uh three electrical generators on campus. Um and they performed as expected, allowed the jail to function properly, allowed computer and IT services to be maintained
um throughout the the campus and then allowed our law enforcement center to be functionable for emergency operations. Um again, as Chris alluded, huge thanks to our utility companies um uh for my
perspective as well. um and to our outside contractors that helped us uh button things up during uh that weekend. Um and right after the storm, we had uh uh our facilities started uh
being powered back on on Sunday. Uh the admin building still wasn't um and uh uh at about 10 point as Chris alluded to five tele power trucks pulled up and and
they had power back to our facility for this this uh facility here. So lots of kudos to to lots of people uh to make that happen. So both uh within our organization and outside of our
organization. Um some of our remote buildings uh the highway department took a hit. Uh their cold storage building uh part of the roof on these sides that tore off. Um doors damaged. Uh we had on
the main facility. Uh we had uh lot of sophets that were you know missing and tore from the facility. Uh blashing damage rope fence. Um the radio tower that is located on the south end of the
office building uh there uh was about halfway up. It's just been dragged over. um add some multiple, you know, trees down and uh some outer uh doors that were damaged on some of the other
uh the uh remote uh uh highway shop uh sheriff garages out right next to the highway building. Um and we had some trees there. uh some flashing and issues there, but kind of inspected that with what we were seeing. The old fairgrounds
buildings uh behind Target, we had in the middle building had metal section was blown off. Um that was that's one of those buildings if you drive by right see uh I'm sure a lot of you have been around there and there's multiple trees
up and down. Uh we had two trees on the road. Um in RM we had a little storage shed out there and that was just flat. So we did see a lot of wind. So yeah, that's kind of my update.
Have questions? I know u Brian was going to give an update on solid waste facilities. Commissioner Sar, do you have Mr. Um, do we have buildings at the county fairground now with the current county
fairground? Yeah, I don't believe that any of those were damaged in the storm, but we're talking about the old fairground site. Yep. The but the new fairground. The new fairground site did not have any damage to my knowledge. Just Mr. The only damage that I know of
is that there was um about $2,500 worth of damage to the HVAC system on the one side. Okay. That's already in works and getting prepared. Um they had a few trees down um and just very very
Thank you. Great. Thank you. Go ahead Brian if you're next. Yeah. specifically for facilities. All four of our buildings at the transfer station site all took some type of damage. The main office building um actually blew a hole right through the through the wall. We
took significant water damage. The new half of the new roof that we just put on is damaged. And the transfer station itself, it blew um a hole through the other side. You can see it must just a pressure relief.
So that opened up the the storage building that uh that the sheriff uses over there that uh had the least amount of damage, but it does have a little bit of fixing on it. So that's that was a good news because we just put
a new roof on that last year. So um and then the cold storage building, it needs a new ridge cap. It blew off. So, that's the I guess the report for facilities there. I estimate we've already had some emergency uh repairs so we can stop the
leaks and we've had some water mitigation to try to dry out the the downstairs. I'm estimating about a million dollars worth of damage on our facility. Right. Who's next? reporting out on the shelter and the
resource center. So, uh you've already heard the irony of two months to the day I was walking into the Sanford Center with Chris Muller to set up for practice training for shelter uh response. Uh and that was no easy feat that day because
we were not only training our community and our county but our regional partners and that proved to pay off because the the amount of calls that I got outside of our program and say, "What can we do to help?" Um, so that was a a nice
reassurance to our shelter response. So, I received a call at 4:00 a.m. um from Chris and um Justin Sherwood um that I needed to come to the EOC, we'd be setting up a shelter um with the support of the Red Cross. So, around 8 o'clock,
I headed over to the Sanford Center. Maybe it was a little earlier than that. And uh one of the shelter uh the Red Cross volunteers, Dave and I, we started setting things up. Um and uh I immediately text each of my individual
staff members to check them in and see how they were doing and then to ask them if they could report to the um shelter. In addition to that, I also messaged an who was on vacation and uh tried to promise her to get her her vacation in, but she said as soon as I can get my
driveway cleared, I'll be there. and she was and she stayed with me all weekend. Um, and in fact, if it wasn't for Ann, I wouldn't have gotten her to go home on Sunday because we just didn't have enough staff um to staff the shelter. Um, so some of the things that we
provided at the shelter, we were responsible for registration. So, we have a very robust process in tracking who comes and goes using resources. um making sure we're tracking how many people were feeding, how many people were um giving supplies out to, who's in
the building and not in the building and who's spending the night and not spending the night. So, lots of paperwork and I will um get you some of that data at a future meeting, but for tonight, I just have some preliminary data you'll get at the end of my presentation.
Um so, we've provided a place for people to come and just get out of the store for people who didn't have a place to go that didn't have electricity. Even though we were running off of natural gas, we still had it better than than most people because they could come and charge their phones, they could come and
get some water, and we could serve them a meal. I couldn't be more grateful for the support from Bobby Anderson, the general manager for the Sanford Center. As soon as I called him and said, "I needed the Sanford Center," he said, "I'll meet you there." He came. He took care of us. Didn't take care of his
family first. A lot of you tell me that's dedication to your He went and found us hamburgers and hamburger buns so we could feed people lunch. He brought his own grill so we could grill the food because the electricity that we had, it didn't run the toilets, it didn't run the AC, it
didn't run um the kitchen, so we had no electricity other than some outlets and some emergency lights. Then after we got done serving lunch and cleaning that up, Bobby went out to um John's uh rental and service agency to go get us parties
because we didn't have any to play. So, we had a building, but we needed a place for people to be able to go to the bathroom. And when you're serving 5,600 people coming through your doors, you need a place for them to go to the bathroom. Um, one of our our biggest concerns on
that first and into the second day was the um access to food and being able to get the enough food just to feed the people that were in our building and our first responders who were needing a place to come and get a hot meal. So about 12:30 in the morning, our
electricity finally came on and Bobby and I devised a plan that we found um eggs, sausage, bacon, and tater tots. And so at six o'clock in the morning, Bobby and I were in the kitchen making breakfast. Um and we served about 500 people that day.
Um due to the cancellation of the lake, we received donations of cookies, hot dogs, and water, and that was able to service our second meal of the day. Um I think just for lack of or for lack of time and so everybody else gets an opportunity to speak I'm going to say
some of this maybe for our next PHP meeting if that's okay if you jump. Um so some of the data that I think I would like to report out on today and this is just preliminary because I haven't finished going through everything. Um, but we served a total of 4,830
uh 4,838 people and a total of 3,253 households. We served 1,50 meals, 164 people spent the night with us. We had 400 hours in volunteer work over the
last or the last week. And this doesn't include people that we put up at Airbnbs and at Super 8. Um, I would like to share in more detail um about how we decided to close the shelter and our process and moving into a resource center, but I think I'm going to save
that for another meeting um just for sake of time. But I do want you to know that it was a very thoughtful process and it wasn't because the Stamford Center did not want us there and it wasn't because they had another event. It was because people had alternate housing and there were only seven people
at the end of the day that we filtered out that said we need help. Great. Thank you, Amy. Commissioner Cher, I was fortunate enough to not be here during the storm.
Um but I am very fortunate to have excellent staff that uh saw us through this include director Mer and Joe Bik amongst dozens of other staff that gave up their time and effort
at home to come manage this with us from a perspective. Chris kind of elaborated on a lot of that stuff. I'll just give you an idea. Average we we average about 60 or so 911 calls a day. Uh during this 24hour period of
time we averaged about 464. That's undetermined at this time because um we lost a microwave link between all of our towers um for our portables or for our radios. But in addition to that, the 911 call
started being transferred over to our secondary PAP which county and unbeknownst to us, Cass County was also down with the generator. So, we don't know where those 911 calls went. So, we're in the process of determining that
right now. Uh the 464 calls coming in in the 24 hour period of time. I think it peak was like 101 hour. Am I correct on that? No. Yeah. During immediately following the storm is there's
so many numbers that can try calling them into dispatch and then they can automatic roll over to another agency. We have no real way of determining how many they uh were denied service from RPAT. But I also just want to reiterate that our administrative phone lines were
also every single company was busy. It was primarily alarm companies calling in because so many windows got blown out of businesses, but also the uh a lot of people didn't utilize text to 911 uh because they were not able to get through on a voice call so we were processing.
96% of our calls came via a wireless uh device. So that gives you an idea how our landlines were being used on that particular uh event. Uh, I started receiving phone calls at 11 uh p.m. that
night in Washington. Um, 1:00 a.m. here in Britain. Uh, I was on the phone subsequently all night long with staff, Chief Masten, Sheriff Well from Cass County. Um, I had I probably had six or
seven sheriffs from the Oliver area reach out, do you need help? And at that time, I've got to give uh an outstanding performance review to the Miji Fire Department. They did a phenomenal job of mitigating a lot of the the issues that
we were having with uh black roads, county highway as well. Uh but the the broken gas, the mains, those kinds of things, we just did a phenomenal job. Uh 464 calls for service coming in, that's overwhelming. Um over that period of
time we had an additional five dispatchers throughout that period of time come in and offer their time uh to the EOC and into dispatch. Uh, in addition to that, we had an additional five deputies in during that 24-hour period of time that uh left their
families, left their um their homes, their families in health. Um, I've got several people uh in my office that are uh displaced right now because their
homes were either uh destroyed or flooded. Um and so uh thankfully we've got you know family and friends that are are keeping those folks right now. um we will be getting to the bottom of uh
some of those a lot of those calls right and then in addition to that how many calls for service that we actually took as a sheriff's office um are headed out because our uh RMS system after 140 calls
or they they were there we no longer could see them so we don't know what happened to them and that's a question that uh our chief deputy has into our records management. So we hopefully we'll have that information here if anyone's interested.
I'm going to go ahead and refer. Thank you, Sheriff Riggs. One thing that um actually Brian brought up to me that I I'm sure that some of you have already thought about it and hopefully are already taking notes on any lessons learned, things like you just mentioned.
um you know any anything that we can do better or learn from this experience to to to take forward we need to make sure that you while it's top of mind jot those things down so that we can can gather up that information later. So
not only is it beneficial for us but we share those uh what what is called action report improvement plan uh and that's part of our grant requirements is to share those so that our neighbors. Thank you. Who's next? Yes. Okay.
Thanks, Shane. Shane National keep it very brief. So, we have thousands. I own two personally and it's a mess. We have thousands. It's a mess. I really believe. But we
got our um for the park specifically. public would be interested in Rockland Park had really significant damage. I went in on Saturday morning and checked all the parks specifically. We have over no campsite
back in the grace of God that people weren't coming until Sunday because they would be deadly destroyed. That camp is completely destroyed. Um Park is open. We have that all cleaned up. Will took quite a bit of
damage. Um, it's not being used as a resite collection site for just highway department purposes. So, as of right now, we're closing that part. The highway department has their their work done there. Moaz had some trail work
that was needed, but was largely spared and three island park where um only a few trees was really good. Um, a major problem for us long term is our timber. Um, we lost the Toronto timber in Jones,
Grant Valley, Turtle River, Fall Township. Um, many pine plantations, especially in literally million dollars are gone. Um, we're going to do salvage sales up there as soon as we possibly can. June or July
16 could be the first sale of the timber that may have sold $50 before buy. So, it's going to be a financial problem for sure. Um, and then the third kind of bucket of things that we have to deal
with properties. We have a couple houses in town that um we have many trees down there. Thank you, Shane. as well. Our mobile unit
had some damage 2500 bucks and then our mobile trailer replace that all as far as veterans 2700 plus vet community around 1100 live.
We know there's going to be veterans that experience loss and damage. Um we will be available evaluated based on grants. State has grant available. Uh we will take some new information from the state tomorrow of the emergency relief
grant for veterans right now $500 not a lot and we better community spouses tax like that next week. So we can
call the office and we can walk veterans and spouses and uh families through that process. And we also have the veterans relief grant as well. If it whatever doesn't apply under that emergency grant based on, you know, need, we can go the other route as well. Our local DAB
chapter, chapter 7, has been uh very good with their support as well. Uh have purchased some groceries for veterans who lost everything. So that that was a a great resource for us to tap into for veterans as well. Um, we're going to be on the back end of this mostly with the the cleanup and the grants and people needing some
resources. I just want to make sure that everybody knows that the veteran service office is fully functional and we're here to support the community, the veterans and spouses and family members of veterans as well. Thank you, Shane. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Chair, I think what we like to do is move on to the debris
management discussion and we have about maybe 20 25 minutes remaining with our time with you. So, we have to get through debris management. We also want to go to disaster reimbursement overview and then uh maybe a little bit on insurance and funding. So, uh just as a time check for the remainder of the
presenters, one of the things that I would like to see us try to get a handle on so that the board is aware of what are what are ongoing obligation, what what have we spent and what is our cost so far, but what are we looking at for ongoing
costs? and that's so we can get a handle on, you know, how are we going to how are we going to fund this cleanup and and everything else. So, um, you can keep that in mind as well. I'll try to cover both highway and solid
waste here together. Thanks, Bruce. The initial response, uh, highway crews were called out. Uh all staff was called out about 1:30. Happy to say we had most of the roads cleared by in 12 hours. About 1:00 uh we
had the roads open for uh travel. That means we've got it cleared to the white line to the edge line so traffic can get by. It's not cleared to the rightway. We did that by just pushing back the trees with equipment, little bit of cutting, but most of it was just equipment
pushing it off road. Um, we did have the loss of power at the highway facility, but we do have a generator, uh, which is key because that, uh, provides fuel for us and and a lot of other county vehicles. Uh, but we also provided fuel, uh, gas and fuel for the city. Uh, they
get their gas from pumps in town and there was long lines at those that were open. So, we did provide them some gas and fuel, too. on the solid waste side. Uh the again transfer station was without power. Um they had to set up a
temporary uh collection site at the transfer station. Um MPCA was notified of the situation which is kind of key helping get that side of things going. Uh but also uh the like Chris had
pointed out, we saw the need right away and Brian got some staff to help start covering the the demolition landfill, get some additional hours there for what was coming in. Um so we were kind of on say we did a pretty good job of getting
the initial response done. Uh but now our work is ahead of us with uh what we've got for collecting the materials and then even on the highway side of getting those cleaned up. Right now on the highway side we have six different
crews out cutting. Uh that crew is at skid steer uh guys on a chainsaw uh and piling material up alongside the roadway. So six crews, three of them are ours, two are contracted and one is from Lakewoods County. So we do have help
from others. We then have another crew that is going around and just collecting those piles and that is a complete uh contracted uh the loader and three trucks that are going around picking them up. Um and then we have our own crew uh they've been stuck on Lake
Avenue this whole time uh just working that one site, one side of the road um trying to get that uh cleared up. And so that is a kind of the the worst road for us was uh Lake Avenue, but we've got one crew there cutting cutting, cleaning,
and hauling that that away. As soon as we're done there, they can get out across the the county hauling more those piles away. Um but right now, we're expecting potentially a month of month of cleanup for us. Um on the solid waste
side, the demolition landfill uh is accepting waste. Right now we're open 7 to 7, seven days a week. We're going to be closed for the 4th of July. Um there's there's a lot of waste coming in immediately on on Monday. Um
but we've been uh making some changes out there, making improvements, making it more efficient for the for the public and for the commercial haulers bringing materials in. with that need that was seen on Monday. Brian got uh the target site going on
Tuesday right away. Uh that was with the help of MPCA coming in to help man uh oversee the waste that's coming in. Contractor is piling up the material. Uh and then now we also have a grinder there. That material at that site in
town will need to be ground and hauled away. And so, um, we're reflecting there. Uh, it's kind of the same hours, 7 to 7, seven days a week, and they close for the fourth. On the handout there, I kind of gave you
some of the what I'm going through, but we've got the the traffic or the volume of people coming into those sites. Um, initially we weren't tracking numbers and so we don't have numbers for all of the days, but the last three days um
around there we kind of had that rough estimate of 2500 cars a day, 2500 vehicles came into the demolition landfill on Monday. And so that was that was our big rush and need to show that we had to have that
additional site up. Uh the second additional site was um put up at the Pine Products. Uh we directed the commercial haulers there to begin with. Um but once we kind of got our feet under us at the demolition landfill, um
we closed that down. Plus, there was a there's a cost to having these sites open. And so we closed that one down at the end of last week. Um, overall we're would like to say we're past the peak
rush of people bringing material in. I think it's going to be a long drawn out process. Um, we're going to see it for a while. We're also going to see the increase in demolition waste. We're just starting to see that kind of waste come in at the landfill. So, we're again, I
think the it was a quick peak, but we're still got that increased volume of raw materials that we're going to have to deal with. um limitations. Um we are solid waste is short staff to begin with. We don't have staff uh or
elective duties. We'll say garbage is always coming in. We got to address take care of it. Um and so there is not the ability to to shift solid waste staff from the transfer station out to the demolition landfill. We've got right now
for demolition landfill, we've got a contractor and two two staff taking care of trees and a third staff uh taking care of the demolition that's coming in. And so normally there's one person out there. And so that is uh again two additional staff and a contractor right
now that is making that facility go. So we're short staffed uh with solid waste. Um and it's hard to go out mutual aid because everybody is the same way for on the solid waste at counties. They don't they don't have
those um staff that they can send over here. We for now we've been putting in a lot of overtime and uh some highway staff have been helping cover those those hours out there, but we just we are not going to
be able to sustain those those hours for those all of those staff. So that is something that will have to be addressed. Again, we kind of talked about it. The the the volume of demolition waste is going to be increasing, but we also are going to be seeing or have seen increase in just
regular garbage coming in to the transfer station. Um there we are dealing with that or have dealt with that. We've got an additional uh trailer we've leased to help with the extra waste and then we that is contracted hauling and so the contractor is uh has
geared up to handle that additional those additional loads going out. Um, we've been talking about additional sites, demolition sites, or sorry, not demolition sites, but tree debris sites, uh, different locations.
But there's a lot that goes into putting one of those together. Is it on public property, private property, on private property, now you got a lease. You got to deal with that waste at some point. uh inside the city or outside the city. In inside the city is more expensive
because you're gonna have to chip it that material and haul it away. It's outside then we uh away from the residents then we can uh most likely take care of it by burning. Um and so finding a a good site um we have some in
mind but um we just don't have the staff and the the contractors. I mean, we we scrambled to find the two contractors that we did to help operate our two sites right now. Um, they're all busy with their normal construction work and
uh andor dealing with this storm themselves. So, we're we really do not have the the ease of just opening up these additional sites. you know, they all come with a cost um and some
a lot of lot of work to get them going. And so right now with the two sites um there again just there's a cost and uh some extra a lot of extra work to put in some additional sites. Um there was also
the talk about countywide pickup and that would be a monumental uh cost for the county to take that over because I mean this damage went across, you know, two townships deep all the way across the county. So you're looking at 12
different townships. Um just at the highway department, we're dealing with 270 miles worth of damage and it's going to take us uh a month over a month to go around and collect that up. And that's just debris that's in the rightway or if
we were to take care of the debris that's outside of the rightway that I don't even know how you would uh what factor you would put on there. I mean, my own case, and I mean, I have the numbers here on this for you, but that's potentially like 10 times as much. The
township road I live on had three trees down. All my yards got 35 trees. And that's just me. There's plenty of neighbors and all of all of that waste were to be going out to the road right away to be picked up by somebody. It's just
I don't know what factor to put on. It would just be a huge undertaking for the county to be looking at addressing all the the tree debris waste across the county, taking it out to all the roads. Again, we got 270 miles of road in that
area there. There's over 300 miles of township roads. The city's got over 100 miles. I mean it I'm my estimate in here to take care of all of that is like a $7 million figure based on what we're just at the highway
department is dealing with right now. And that's just that's a huge undertaking for us to to do. So I I uh Chris will get into it also about what is covered, but the the reimbursement
that we give just for um restoring public facilities is not for the private restoring or hauling the private debris. And so those are not ineligible costs for us if we're out there picking up all of that waste. And so that's just a huge
huge undertaking for us to even consider. Um, on the solid waste side, there's a lot of different things going on. I mean, we're looking at what to do with the the chips, the mulch from these sites. Uh, the potential of utilizing
the wood for firewood. Um, we we just don't have a a good idea of where we're where we're at, how much we're going to be dealing with. Just like Shane has got thousands of parcels and acres out there to be looking at, you know, we're we
don't know what we're going to be seeing at the solid waste facility far as tree debris coming in or uh demolition waste coming in. We just don't have a an easy way of pulling that number out out of uh somewhere to figure out where we're at.
And so we asked for some of those assessments. Um and so hopefully some of that is in the works and can help us. Um some of the key questions that the board will have to be thinking about and helping us determine is what level of
service we are providing additional sites hours of service. You know is it seven days seven you know 12 hour days or you know what time can we reduce that level of service? Um,
there's different means of addressing this with different pieces of equipment. Uh, but they all come with with costs and I put a lot of that in those handouts for you to help um when we get to those questions and those those
decisions. Again, these are we're only days into it here for us and you know, these are guesses and best guesses and estimates of where we're at for what we can do. Um, otherwise
I'm going to say that's our summary. Okay. All right. Uh, Chris, do you want to walk us through the um process for reimbursement and eligibility and time frames and all of that? Emergency declared that it's not worthy
and we already have an extension right now. Bel is the only one in that but we do have other counties um that have been impacted by uh this storm and working with our regional program. She's been working out of art, but also serving the other challenges that have been active.
And some of the damage reports that they're uh bringing in are kind of trending towards this may be to the level um of becoming potentially one where we could see the governor request
FEMA uh assistance. That is probably quite a ways out yet. Um and then again, that is an entire another process. Um that is uh going to take quite a while if we do get to that $10.7 million uh
that the states collectively needs for one event um which what I'm hearing today is we're going to be contributing uh even more than I initially thought. We're approaching on $5 million just for uh Bel County. So for Belrana County specifically when we achieve uh our
$218,000 and change uh federal indicator is we move forward to homeland security and emergency management and upon that is if we get 50% of that federal indicator is that is when the disaster assistance
contingency account um is uh accessible for uh eligible uh activity. Eligible activity is in the seven categories of debris clearance, protective measures, roads and bridges, water control facilities, buildings and equipment,
utilities, recreation, and other. So, we've are collecting those numbers. I've already reported out um to HSM that we are going to be requesting a preliminary damage assessment even though I can pretty much guarantee um with high certainty that we are going to uh
achieve that even with MDOT's report alone uh that they're reporting that they have about $500,000 uh just on 1971 for those uh in Bel. So that process is already well underway. Um once uh HSCM
is able to schedule those um that's when we're getting a little bit more firm numbers. But sometimes they want that information numbers and numbers and numbers. um we want to get through this process as quickly as we can because we don't want to see the county uh expending a
tremendous amount of uh dollars uh and then having to uh to wait for the process to catch up. So, we're going to try to ride the wave because as we'll see uh events in the past and hopefully the reimbursements um will follow through that because the budget is set
so there you know the fund has been replanted. Uh so there is money there. It's just a process that goes through. Uh when HSCM does come up to do the preliminary damage assessment, they'll meet with potential applicants uh and just verify those damages and then we will work with the public assistance
recovery uh group down at HSN and uh that's when we will get the official declaration uh and we can start submitting bills. We can start proving that we've had these costs and these losses uh and start getting those personal. Um again the FEMA thing is a
little bit separate from going state disaster but whenever we think that there's a possibility of federal uh indicator being meant we treat all disasters as if they will be going federal um but uh you know the state process is a little bit easier but the
big difference between that is under Minnesota law when it comes to disaster assistance contingency accounts is if you do get that major disaster declaration from uh the president is 75% of that comes from FEMA and 25% comes
from the DACA. So that would be monumental for us if we did get a federal declaration and that we would have made 100% full versus 75%. uh and you know the numbers are starting to get up there where that 25% very well could
be a couple of million dollars that gap of 25% that bel county would would have to be um I imagine that it is going to be weeks before that next set takes place even though we're going to be in
continuous contact with HSN. Uh but Bruce is right. This is going to be an event that our community, our counties will be responding to for months and you know potentially into next year uh by the time all of the uh the damage is is
cleaned up. And then uh members of our community are expressing additional concerns um with if that timber is not collected. We are identified in our hazard vulnerability analysis that wildfire is our our number one hazard. We've got train mentioned millions of
dollars of timber, whatever that equates to as actual sticks on the ground. You know, that's going to be concerning for us moving forward. Um, is there anything you'd like to elaborate on on the reimbursement cost? I go ahead, Commissioner Winger. I have one
question, Don. Does the timber that he's talking about come into play on the dollar value? not clear, but they will be getting back to us. One question that was brought up in Shane confirmed that it was not is if it was insured. Uh because it is kind of
uh like a farmer having a corn crop and having a hail stom, but this was a windstorm that took our inventory, our product, and now we're out that money. But um if we had insurance and insurance deductible, we would have been reversible, but we did not get a clear
answer on that. But they were going to with the PA staff. Thank you, Commissioner Carlson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, Chris, how long a period of time do we have to be able to complete our claim? Is do they cut us off at a certain point or do we I mean, if if we
are still experiencing costs 12 months from now, I mean, there must be some cut off somewhere, isn't there? with the disasters. Thank um lifeguard disaster declaration last year was for the July 31 storm uh that
hit us where we were able to uh pretty much wrap that up within a couple of weeks with getting everything cleared up where this is going to be a long-term multimonth process depending on if it goes federal versus uh state. Um the state would probably be a little bit
more flexible for us and kind of get payment as both. That's speculation. promise um because you know we're gonna our departments are going to have another funding. We're going to do that pledge to continue that work. So uh we'll work closely with the uh the homeland security emergency management
staff um to make sure that we're able to get those dollars back as we can. Thank you, Commissioner Carlson. Anybody else have any questions yet? No. Okay, Tom, what's uh Thank you, Mr.
Chair. Just a couple other quick things as it relates to funding and insurance. Um, you know, buildings are insured. We do insure those. Our inventory is not. So, uh, there will be definitely losses that the county takes on this. And of course, as we work with our insurance company, MCIT,
uh, we'll figure out what's actually insured and for how much, depending upon what kind of damage was done, what exclusions we had on the insurance policy. you know, the same thing that everybody else goes through with their private insurance company. Is this covered? Is that covered? Why isn't this? Oh, it's covered when it's, you know, a rain driven event, but it's not
covered if it's surface water or subsurface water, right? So, we we get these same sorts of things that we're going to have to go through and and slle out with our insurance company to figure out what's covered and and what's not. So, we we don't have that yet identified in regard to specific dollar amounts, but we are collecting information. We're
documenting. We're collecting pictures and we're engaged with the uh with the insurance company on that. As it relates to funding available at least immediately for uh financing the continued activities that are associated with the with the response and the recovery, um you do have a couple of
options immediately available to you that uh do not impact local tax dollars. And that would be two funds that we have been um that you're familiar with that we've been holding. One of them is the local assistance and tribal consistency fund. This is money, onetime money that we received several years ago from the
American Rescue Plan Act. Uh it was a total of about $400,000. You encumbered about $5,000 of that. So you have 395,000 plus or minus a few dollars of that funding available. Uh you also have the remainder of the ARPA, the American
Rescue Act plan dollars, which was also a separate appropriation one time that we've been using over the years to buy one-time things and and sort of stave off um tax levy increases. And uh that
fund sits at about 1.25 million unencumbered. Uh I would like to request um consideration to hold maybe 150 of that for this next budget process. Uh which would leave you if you agreed at about
1.1 just over $1 million. So between those two funds um if you set aside that 150,000 you could have access to 1.5 million pretty much immediately without having to do any kind of local tax adjustment or or you know schedule for
that. Um, so I just wanted to provide that to you. Um, and you know, if that's where we end up going, we may come back for an authorization to tap into that money. If you have different ideas or other sources of funding that you'd like us to look into, we can certainly uh
investigate that as well. Um, but yeah, this is this is, as everyone has said, going to be a longtime recovery. uh it's it's going to require patience um both working with other agencies and in time to get things um addressed and corrected. But I did want to leave you
with that information so you knew that we had at least immediately uh some funding available to um address immediate needs. Uh Commissioner Summer. Uh Mr. Chair, uh thank you. So, with in regards to the LATCF,
uh if I might uh correct Tom, it did not come from the the U rescue plan, it came from NAO when Nico um lobbyed the legisl out the Congress for these uh funds for PILT um
efforts. So, that's where the LATCF fund came from. Well, but it was still part of the American Rescue Plan Act money. was financed through the American Rescue Plan Act, but yes, it was related to PILT monies that were identified as one, you know. So, I've always advocated, you know, to not
spend, you know, these dollars, but I think, you know, this is a type of situation where it's something that we should consider, you know, um allocating some of this. I mean, to hear um Shane talk about, you know, the this de the
devastation, you know, to the forest and and potentially um using this to, you know, kind of help uh with those efforts because I think we all know um you know, we depend on on
our forest for for a lot of things, especially when it comes to you know, the county development fund and uh you know, helping schools and townships and and things like that. So, I would I would be in favor of um having a
discussion about how to, you know, reallocate some of these funds from from the the ARPA and LATCF. uh you know uh I also want to mention that you know I think
um you know I want to thank thank the uh management team for coming in today and giving us an update. You know, I always talk about, you know, we're lucky here in Belrammy County because we have, you know, staff that, you know, can really adapt
and adjust to certain situations, you know, when called upon. And and I always brag that, uh, you know, Belcham County has, you know, a staff that are second to none. And I think, you know, this past week has shown that your guys' ability to help,
you know, lead us through this. um you know unfortunate circumstance you know has proven that you guys you know really stepped up when when we needed you guys the most and and I appreciate you know everything that you guys have done you know uh I know Chris has has gone a lot
of you know kudos and and and uh but he also mentions that you know he's not in it alone and uh today is just an opportunity to thank uh each and every one of you so I I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Summer. Um to your point, Tom, that that money is
one piece of the puzzle. I also I know I had talked to you about um where our reserve funds at cuz we got to frontload all these expenses and and what have how much have we how much are we already on the hook for and you know, if hopefully we get 75% reimbursement, but that's 6
months down the road. We have to be able to still maintain our our normal expenses, all of our normal operations and and just, you know, at some point here, we need to know what what we're looking at for a total bill that we have to, you know, front, you know, to pay
upfront. And then you know the one and a half million. So say we have a $6 million bill when it's all said and done here for the next few months. Um that one and a half million just covers for 25% of that six million. And but we got to have the 6 million to pay upfront.
And so do we have the 6 million even if that's what it comes down to. That's those are the kinds of things I think the board needs to know as soon as possible so that we can make educated decisions on on how we're going to how we're going to keep funding this cleanup program and everything. Yeah. To answer
your question just really quickly, you know, that we carry general fund reserves in a number of different areas and the board made a wise decision some years ago to increase those reserves from around 4 months to a range of 4 to 6 months. So currently we're running at
about 4 and a half or excuse me 5 and 1/2 months of reserves which would give you access essentially under that policy to about a month and a half's worth of reserves. So we could approach you know the 10 to maybe $12 million mark with that amount of reserves remaining so
that you know what you have sort of available. But that would put us in a precarious situation if we used every dime of that because you never know when the next disaster or the next situation is going to come. So, we wouldn't advise going that high, but just to answer your question, that's what you'd have uh
essentially um available. So, if you add that to your other dollar amounts that I just mentioned, you could get up to, you know, 13, maybe 14 million. Um but again, wouldn't advise taking all of that and setting it for this event. Okay. So, do we have the number of where
we're at right now as far as how much we have expended for, you know, the contractors that we've hired for the highway department, for the solid waste department, and other these other things? Do we have any any kind of total number that we can can say we're we're right now we're at 1.2 million or what what are we at so far? I guess it
depends on what total you're looking for, right? I'm looking for the reimburseable. Yeah. Total. So, I'll let um I know Brian's got some figures and I think um you know the reality is, Mr. Chair, that those numbers are coming in every day. Every hour they change. So,
I'm just looking for ballparks. You know, you know, more than 10,000, it's less than 50 million. Okay. Where are we at? We're probably in that ballpark. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I can tell you as far as solid waste, we're in that 190 to 200,000 right now. Okay.
Bruce or anybody else have any rough numbers of Yep. Okay. Doing some quick ciphering. Uh through the 25th. So that was 20 days ago. Y we were at about 160. Okay. So
we're And Brian, your numbers were as of pretty close today. As of today. Okay. So, we're not super high numbers yet anyways. That's good. Well, at least in those areas. I mean, you still have areas like
the facilities damage that we have that's going to get tallied up, you know, uh those types of things. But yeah, you're not Some of those will be covered by insurance though, wouldn't they? It should be, but of course you have deductibles and of course you're going to pay for that again next year when the insurance premiums go up like all the rest of us are going to see. Um
but yeah, I I think um it's safe to say although we are concerned about it, u we're probably south of the million-doll mark at the moment. Um but there's probably significantly more coming and depending upon how long we run the
operation um in certain areas, you know, that number is going to grow considerably going forward too. And the other part of the reason for me asking that is based on, you know, if we were already maxing out what we could spend and setting up another site that's more convenient for the the area that got hit
on the south and eastern side of the the city if we do have some some locations that are potentials where we wouldn't have to move it twice, wouldn't have to shred it. Um to me that would be logical that we would try to get something set up there if we can afford it. And it sounds like right now we might be able to afford it other than the fact that
we, you know, don't have the staffing to do it. And so that's a a huge part of this is we got to get, you know, outside staffing in order to be able to to do this so we don't burn out our guys. And and um you know, I don't know what the feasibility of that is, but I think we
as a board need to make make a point on or or what do we authorize to be able to to get that additional staffing to be able to um support that type of operation. Commissioner Carlson or Go ahead, Chris. Go ahead, Chris. Yep.
The sooner that we as the counties that are going to be going in on this declaration can get some pretty solid numbers at HSCM, the quicker they're going to be able to make a determination if we're going to go federal state. As far as some of the bigger expenses that the Iowa Department and South Division
are going to have outside of personnel and contracted work is the use of our equipment and you know that's billable hours as well. Um, I imagine that number is going to be fairly high considering the amount of resources that you deployed. We already have those resources and the numbers all have
dollars associated with them. So, that's money that we're not going to have to spend right away. It will get reimbursed for it eventually. Okay, Mr. Carlson. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um Tom, I'm just wondering because the numbers are coming in slowly
at this point and but we also know that they're going to be very large at some point. Um at what point do are you going to need board action? Uh would it be the next meeting or will it not be for another month because we just don't have enough numbers? I mean that's obviously
we can't take it sounds like we have we're okay for a couple weeks but by is it by the next meeting that we have to do some decision-m or is it beyond that? It's it's possible. I mean it would be um there's a couple things that you could do. You could authorize the use of
some of that one-time money that we've already talked about immediately to access and start reimbursing departments for their expenses and that sort of stuff and then and we just track it and then hopefully get reimbursed here. Um, so that was something you could immediately do. I don't know that you need to immediately do that, but if you wanted to, that would be something you
could do this afternoon um at the regular session. But we're going to be putting together um essentially a plan. I know Brian and I and Bruce have talked about another remote site, how much resources, how much staff, how much time uh and you know what that would cost to
to stand something else up. We're also watching the numbers at the landfill and at the um old fairground site which are dwindling down or going down. I shouldn't say dwindling, but they're going down. Uh we don't know if that's an anomaly. Uh maybe people are taking a break and they're going to come back up. So we we don't know what demand
necessarily is as well. We know that a lot of the material is going to remain on site. I mean, there's so much of this stuff that's probably not ever going to be pulled off people's properties, you know, who have 10 or 15 or 20 acres. Um, so, you know, gauging how much we
need to run and for how long and and and all of that stuff is still something we're sort of evaluating at this point in time. Um, but when we do um have that information together, we'll definitely come for u probably, you know, either a budget amendment or some authorization to access funding above and beyond the
budgets uh that have been approved by the board. So, we have spending authority. uh we are operating under the emergency um declaration and so that does give us uh a much more streamlined approach to procurement as well. Um but we want to be mindful about the procurement process and make sure we're
getting the best deal that we're cost conscious about what it is that we're purchasing. As you know, a lot of things are going on out in town now where there's um price gouging and those types of things and we don't want to be a victim of that either. So um so all of that's got to be considered as well. Um but yes, at some point we'll be coming
back and asking for formal uh movements of funds and that sort of stuff. And we also need to be tracking this because what we don't want to do is, you know, spend up to that limit, whatever that limit is. Uh we need to be conscientious of that. And you know, that may be a trade-off in service delivery, right? In
our ability to process material with the resources we have versus, you know, throwing a ton of resources and processing stuff really quickly. All of those are trade-offs. And so that's partly what um particularly on the debris management side of things uh is being evaluated at this point in time
too. I'm very thankful that the decisions were made, you know, by Brian and the and the highway department and you um to stand up the target site. I think that's worked really well for our our county residents and and um I want to see that type of mentality, you know,
not be a hindrance. And so if we need to uh allocate some funds, you know, the ARPA funds or or the LTCF, whatever funds, um you know, to make sure that we that we as a board aren't aren't a hindrance in making those good decisions to continue. I'd like to see us do that
sooner than later so that if if there's a you know, opportunity that presents itself to make things better, easier for the for the residents, I want to see that happen. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Maybe a question I can ask to help us uh put together a plan for the long-term debris management process. Um you know, one of
the things that um is very typical is that when you hire contractors is the rates contractors, the rates pretty high and right now it's tough to find contractors, too. So, we've talked about internally maybe hiring temporary staff um and maybe going after leases of equipment. So, we're resource limited on
equipment and we're resource limited on staff. So, uh, we may also bring with our recommendation, uh, the need to add a few staff, uh, for a short period of time. Of course, we have to work with the unions to make sure they're okay with that. U, we also have to work to find the equipment and
enter into leases. And so, we're we we need a little bit of time to sort of figure out where we can do that. Of course, getting staff on isn't as simply as getting them on and and away they go. There may be some training required. Um, you know, getting licensed people to run large equipment is is tough. I mean, we
can't do that now. Uh before the storm, it was difficult to be fully staffed. So, um so this is it's tough. I mean, if we had unlimited resources, obviously it'd be a lot easier, but we don't. And so, we just work with what we can, and that's why some of the answers are slow and coming because we're just not really
sure where we can resource uh a lot of the needs that we have in regard to the response. So, but we'll continue to to work diligently on resolving those issues and make those recommendations to you. Um and as I mentioned maybe to one or two of you on the side um you know we
do not necessarily have to wait every two to three weeks to have a board meeting. We can call a board meeting uh when it's prudent and issue a special meeting and notice it and then get you guys convened and and keep things kind of moving uh should the pace require that. So there are options available to
us uh and also continue to try to fastpace to the degree we can um our response to things. Thank you Tom. Mr. Yeah. M commissioner something you know hearing from Tom about you know the
need you know and you know hearing and understanding you know and and trying to understand you know the sense of urgency to allocate these funds. Could I suggest that maybe in a week or or next month? It sounds like
there still needs to be time to gather some numbers. Um, it's, you know, because I like to, you know, see these numbers, you know, in black and white before I, you know, approve of anything. And I I
think I stated that in the past as well. And and it's something I support, but it's just it's hard for me to support something that comes, you know, last minute, but I'm only one person. So, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Summer.
Brian, I guess I I got to speak for my uh my division that if if it's a week, two weeks, a month is way too long for right now my guys have they don't get any rest. They're working 13
hours a day and and uh they're all working. There is no time off. Um we're we're trying to get some of some of them ask for the Fourth of July off. Some of them we've been able to work a couple of things going on there. But again, we are
so limited in staff that doing this is it's wearing on the guys already. We've we've experienced this in the past during other emergencies. COVID hit us hard. We It took a toll on our guys. And
I just ask that we're more, I guess, response responsive to this. And um yeah, they're just tired. Thank you, Brian. That's my my point is that we um
should allocate at least some of those funds so that the good decisions could be made by the people that we have in those departments and we that we trust them to make the good decisions like they did with the the target site and and standing that up. We didn't have a
board meeting for that. It just got done and uh we need to have more of that as quick as possible so the residents can get things taken care of. they already have enough to deal with. Um, we need to give them give our the tools to our our staff to make those decisions. But, Mr.
Chair, y uh, what exactly are those tools? Um, ability to hire temporary staff, everything that Tom just said, you know. So, but they're having a hard time looking for for contractors now, right? Or on the handout that we gave. Sorry, I
didn't even make one all the way around over to Tom. There's an extra one. But we were asking for additional staff. Two additional staff would be temporary. What we were the temporary for us was
two years. Was this going to be a longterm again debris and demolition coming in? So we were our recommendation on the second page of that at the bottom um is the recommendation to hire two additional staff for a two-year period.
uh lease the material handler and then uh but then it's we need to figure out that level of service. What days are we going to be open that that's mean seven days of me 12 hours to the public means 13 hours for staff on um to at some
point we need to be reducing reducing those hours of that level of service. But again our our quick recommendation was that temporary staff additional staff object I'd like to follow on with that just and
that's not fast either because we got to go through all the stuff that Tom mentioned and post it and all that stuff so we're quite honest we're still talking month so Mr. at least for that to happen. You know, we do have some contractors out there. I would say that
yes, the target site and the landfill, they're being run very efficiently right now and there is absolutely no weight line. I just went drove by both of them before I came here to see and there was three to four vehicles using the sites.
Now, I I believe that's because it's a Tuesday and everyone else is working. So, I think we're going to see spikes in this, especially probably on weekends. Um, I don't think we've necessarily seen all the debris coming in just because of
the fact that everyone's like us. We have to go to work. We have to make some money to make this thing happen. So, um, that's why it's going to be for us. The last storm we had was two summers before
we seen relief from that. This one is going to be a lot longer than that. Thanks, Brian. Commissioner Summer. Well, Mr. Chair, so I'm just wondering, you know, if we if we do this, how is that going to uh impact, you know, the current staff? Are are they going to be
able to take time off this weekend or what what's the plan? I mean, if if it's going to take some time to hire two additional I'm I'm I guess I'm not understanding if we approve this uh funding,
how is that going to help so quickly? You know, uh I'm I'm asking, you know, if we can take a couple weeks. I understand, you know, that the the position that they're in and I'm thankful for for what your staff has done. you know, we we have also an
emergency manager that has worked additional hours, too. And maybe that's something that we should, you know, discuss if we're going to be discussing, you know, additional staff and the pressures that they've been under uh this past week um into consideration. Um
but I I am respectfully asking for at least a couple more weeks. that way we can get this in writing and I understand you know how this will all work out. Um but but if that's you know not the
wishes of the board you know then you know it's not going to be the first or the last time that uh you know I I would lose a vote. you know, I I I try to be respectful and and support, you know,
your guys' decisions when when it comes to times uh like this, you know, where we want to be united and uh you know, a couple weeks. It it's all I'm asking for. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Carlson.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I think if I understand correctly, maybe what we need is a head nod to go ahead to have Tom and your department go ahead and start pursuing these because you can't probably get someone
tomorrow or if you can great I guess but uh where where we are generally in agreement that we would like you to proceed to do that add a couple people. you got to go go through all the union stuff and everything else, but at least if you have some direction from the board with a head nod, they'd say,
"Yeah, please proceed in that direction and then come back with a a hard proposal at the next board meeting." That would that work? Yeah, Mr. Chair and Commissioner Carlson, I think that would work because um it would authorize us to engage with the union to identify these project employees and to work out
an MOA on that issue and to also then go ahead and post the position. And uh your direction could include, you know, do not hire, like do not offer the position until this that decision has been formalized by the board, but at least advertise for it right now. That that's part of the problem is advertising,
going through the interview process and that sort of stuff. Um, of course, we'd want that approval. If we could get it in the next two weeks, that would be great. I mean, that wouldn't compromise any of the, you know, candidates because, you know, we would have a decision well before we interviewed that they were, this was going to be a
permanent two-year position or whatever it is that you agreed to. So, um, I think that would be very helpful for us and then we can get that ball rolling. I also think it'd be helpful for the team because, you know, the team will see that the board is being um, proactive on this and that relief is coming and
hopefully sooner than later. Brian. Yeah, I guess to fill in the gap and I'm going to be requesting that actually on on the fifth is support from from Bruce as far as trying to take some of his employees and fill in some of the
gaps in the interm. So that's that's the stop gap. It's not necessarily the fix because he's got things that they have to do as well. I just don't have any after the fifth. I got guys that have committed to things
if it's a going to a resort or whatever family things throughout this weekend. I just can't support the fifth and the sixth and I couldn't support last Sunday. Last Sunday Bruce provided two individuals for that. So, um,
a benefit for the, well, the fourth is probably going to rain in the afternoon and then on the fifth for the current, uh, current weather. If it's holds true, I would also ask the board to look at that and say we're going to be closed on the 5th because if it rains all day, in
my opinion, there's no need to be open. Thanks, Brian. So, uh, Minister Barry, we we're running light long on time here. Um, at this point, do we do we have a a
consensus to to move forward with the the pursuit of hiring people? You look, are you you guys in general consensus of that, Commissioner Sumar? Okay. So, I'd say yes.
Bring that back next level. And by that time that we can then move uh these issues as well. And a lot more.
And if something does come up, um, since we're being overly cautious by not necessarily doing it tonight, then we might have to have a special meeting in between now and our next meeting and just pull the trigger at that point on the funding if we're not going to do it
tonight. So, okay. All right. I think uh we need to move on in the interest of time here. We're on to um environmental services department permit process. I don't think that should take
us a whole whole lot of time here probably. Good afternoon commissioner. Thank you environmental services. Uh there was just conversation around uh permitting and local permitting what's going to be required and different entities and I
know there's some confusion but I just wanted to really come here tonight and explain what permits are required from the county environmental service department when they're required and where they're required. So starting out by saying um our county environmental service department uh when it comes to
like buildings we don't technically issue building permits we issue land use permits and so we don't enforce a state building code. So when when you enforce the state building code there's lots of permits required lots of different things like roofing or drywall or footing. There's lots of different
things. We just require land use permits. it's more of a doming issue. Um, saying that yes, you can build a building of this size in this location and with this maximum height and it's used for this purpose. Um, and so those are records that are kept and tracked
and everything and um, long term. It's a program that works very well. It only applies to Bel County in the shoreland area. And so our GIS director, Kevin Trout, put together this little graphic for us. Um, if you focus on the bottom two rows of townships, that's where most
of this storm damage is. I really just wanted to highlight the the yellow areas are areas where our local colleagues, partners, you know, the townships and cities issue permits on their own. The county doesn't issue planning land use
permits in that yellow area. The white area is in the nonshorland area where no permits are required from the county office for like putting up a residential structure or a garage or something like that. The light blue, as you can tell,
is all the lakes. And the dark blue is the area where the county shoreline ordinance applies and building permits are required or land use permits are required. So, I I just wanted to this graphic I think is really good to show that we're really talking geographically
a really small area. Um so so those people what I want to be able to kind of get out to those people that are in those areas is that um our our intent and plan is to continue work as normal in that area. um we don't require permits for things like repairing a
roach or replacing windows or um replacing siding or doing all of those things where you know I'm seeing just myself anecdotally a lot of that type of work that's going to happen in those areas at least outside of PL we don't
require permits for that type of so just um if a building is destroyed and needs to be rebuilt we require a permit for that um there is a There is a fee with that. There's cost to the county to issue that permit. The fees are generally reflective of those costs
directly. And um unless directed otherwise, we'll be continuing to to move with that direction. And I just wanted to remind people that um my conversations with insurance folks has been that those permit fees are covered by insurance. Those are building losses
that'll be probably most likely insurance claims and they'll be those fees will be covered by insurance. So, um, we didn't think that at this point in time there's a need to spread that cost out amongst our taxpayers when insurance like
um, so that's that's really kind of all I have about permit process update just to clarify where and and and how that's going to work. Uh, the other two things I just wanted to quickly mention is that um I'm a little concerned about septic systems out there. Uh, so these people
are having trucks and skid steers and all sorts of stuff and ripping out and rip balls and digging and heavy equipment. So, anybody listening, just please be careful. Um, try not to damage your septic system. If you need information about where your septic system is, our office is here to help you. We'll have we'll give whatever
records we have. Um, some of the drawings are pretty bad, but some of them are really good and they show at least what side of the house might be on or where a tank is located. I don't want to see somebody dropping a piece of equipment in a tank or somebody ruining their septic system when they're just trying to pull a tree or something up.
And then the thing I'll mention is that our office with partnership with the soil water conservation district is already beginning the conversation about trees and replanting and how we uh a lot of people are emotionally impacted by the loss and our city will never look the same and and I would argue that um
that's not entirely true. Our city will never our area will never look the same in our lifetime. Um but we can do things to mitigate that so that future generations the same. Thanks, Brent. Anybody have any questions for Brent regarding the land
use permit and our processes or anything? Okay. We we don't have anything on our agenda for on our regular agenda for this and and nothing in consent or anything like that. Correct. No, sir. So, if there aren't any wishes for anything from the board, we will leave
it at that. That's what it looks like. Thank you, Brent. And we move on to storage building new construction. I think we're probably going to have to push the judicial ditch until another time by the looks of our time frame here, unless it's real quick when we have to get through the storage
building. Uh, Commissioner Carlson. Well, Mr. Chair, thank you. Um, I'm just wondering, is there any urgency, Tom, on the judicial ditch or can that wait for two weeks? Um, we can move that to the regular agenda so you could discuss it and make a decision on the public hearing date. My suggestion would be
just to take items seven and eight and move those to the regular session as additional items and then you can get through everything tonight. Perfect. Yeah, let's do that. Commissioner Winger, you can move number seven and and administrator update to the regular agenda. Um
and put those as whatever that is. 9 and 9 A and B. Thank you. All right. So, we're the storage building new construction. Who's taking that one? Steve and I are doing that. Um Okay. So Shane Bolley, the resource management director, myself, Steve
Shatter, facilities management director, um and then previous Shane was the previous enter director. We've been working for a couple years trying to uh come up with a proposal to replace the existing storage buildings that are on target. That's a that's a property that's been talked about um maybe putting up for sale at some point in the
future for commercial development for a higher better use. And we've been working and the buildings are quite they're old and not very they're not very nice. Uh, one does have a new tarp on it, though. Police are still planning things. Um, here I've just highlighted here's the
current location behind Target. It's those three metal roof buildings on the west side of the property. Um, ironically, there's our damage pictures. Uh, that's one of our parts of our storage building with water inside. Um, anyways, good timing, right? Here's a
rough drawing from a while ago. This isn't reflective of the actual currently, but I just wanted to show the main highway department building is on the north side of that. The impound lot is on the south side of this aerial. And the the big red red rectangle is roughly in the location where we're talking
about the storage building. The small one is a possible potential location for a future ski club building. There's a they'll come to the board at some point in the future, but uh we remember a while ago was born off president to explore the concept of doing that. And I
think they're working with director to probably that sometime in the next couple. Um here's the site layout. So, um we've been working with several different people. Freeberg and Grunt drew this up. Civil engineering stuff. Um site layout is it's kept as close to
Adams Avenue as we we pretty much could. Um laid it out so we can access the building between those two driveways that are already existing. Trying to reduce costs as much as possible. And we're and we're frankly trying to stay as close to Adams Avenue as possible so we can eliminate any potential future
impact conflict with any highway department work that might be coming 30 years. We're trying to stay away. Um this is a a drawing showing how the building is going to be separated out with um environmental services kind of
on the right, facilities management in the center and NRM on the on the left. Um the environmental services stuff is facing north. One of those sides is just storage. One side is our tree shack free distribution um that we currently have
at the box storage buildings behind target. Um NRM is you know a lot of storage snowmobiles, four-wheelers, trailers, that type of stuff. And facilities management is storing a lot of our building supplies and partitions and cubicle and extra stuff. So, um,
we're building a building as big as we can that we think we fulfill our needs and I'm quite confident that we build too quickly. Um, architectural drawings, uh, just rough side views, uh, north end, south end, pretty basic, pretty
simple, trying to be efficient and economical. We're not, uh, going over the top here with design features and things of that nature. Um, in the 2025 budget process that happened last year, this is the budget that was approved. It was $700,000.
We had $300,000 identified from a repairing aid reserve fund, $100,000 from an NRM storage building reserve fund, and $300,000 from that art dedicated to this. Um, so the really the trying to get the storage use out of the
behind target and allow for whatever the board decides to do with that property. Um, Steve did a great job of uh getting bid packets out, working with contractors. Um, they held a bid opening June 20th. Yeah, that Friday. And um,
bids came in uh, very good. We were hoping for the ability to build this building within budget. It's it's really been a struggle trying to come up with a budget for this building. Like we didn't know how much it was going to cost. So we had to start putting stuff out there. But high-tech construction out of Brainer, right, was
the low bidder at 498,000. That's been vetted and um and Steve's comfortable with that that crew there. So the this is the rough preliminary budget for the project. So we got high-tech construction on the top at 498. There is some upgrades because the like doors and
stuff will come on page 35 whereas at the end of day seven there's some upgrades in there. Heating, cooling, water line stuff is about 79,000. Electrical about 37. Utility infrastructure hookups natur, 78 left over at that $700,000 budget. So
we're we just put in there that um 10% of that 634 would be like contingency fund and then we also have FF built in combined in a pot there at the end so we can do fixture shelving that kind of stuff um with whatever is remaining. Um that's the overall budget. Steve has
gone out to different contractors and gotten quotes for like electrical and heating and cooling all that stuff already. So we're pretty comfortable with these these numbers these feel solid. Um next steps. So we would need request board action to approve the
project and award the bid to hightech construction. Um the the construction bidded packet everything said construction is planned to be completed by end of year 2025. So substantial completion was like early December. Substantial completions December 15th
and final completion December 30th. And then uh once that's completed, we'll work on getting everything moved over into new buildings and old storage buildings will be vacated as soon as possible. Okay. And I see it is on the consent agenda for this evening. So
Commissioner Carlson, thank you, Mr. Chair. So Brent, did the storm help clear that land out for us or do we still going to have to cut some trees? You know, we're gonna have to do some prep that's in the bid package. And I did try to talk Bruce into doing some clearing there just saying it was starting. He said he's got other things.
Yeah. Otherwise busy. Yeah. So any further questions for Brent? Mr. Chair, just uh one question. Uh is is Kitech Construction are they local or were they Thank you. Thank you. Thanks guys. Um
it sounds like that's okay to leave it on consent and we move the other things to our regular Dennis. So, Commissioner Winger, you've got those on as 9A and 9B, and we will adjourn until 5:00 for the regular meeting. Part: 2
for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thankful for all of our county staff and
community and all the mutual aid that we received from all the other communities around us. um for all the emergency work and efforts that everybody's been doing to pull everything together and and uh it's just been really good to see our
community shine in this tough time. And with that, we'll go on to citizens addressing the board. And anyone wishing to address the county board on an item not on the agenda may come forward at this time. To be recognized by the board chair, please state your name and address for
the record. Comments are limited to 5 minutes. A personnel complaint against an individual county employee may not be heard initially at a board meeting. Personnel complaints may be submitted to the board in writing through the county administrator's office. Person addressing the board may not use profanity or vulgar language. Is there
anybody wishing to address the board? Not seeing anybody here. I assume nobody online. Diane. Okay. We will move on to approval of the agenda. Commissioner Winger. I'd move to approve the agenda with these additions. Move 7F
to 9A and 8 to 9B. Thank you, Commissioner Winger. I hear a second. Second. Second by Commissioner Carlson. Any discussion, Mr. Chair? Yep. Just to be clear, it's item eight from the work session, correct? Not item
eight from the Oh, yeah. regular session. Yep. So, so Commissioner Winger, um you've got item 9A is the public works um uh regarding the uh the judicial ditch.
Correct. Correct. Yes. And 9B is the administrator's update. Correct. Y and you're good with that, Commissioner Carlson? Yes. Correct. All right. Hearing no further discussion, we'll call for the vote on the agenda as amended. All in favor say I. I. I. Any
opposed? Motion carries four to zero. On to the approval of the consent agenda, the amended consent agenda. Look for a motion to approve the consent agenda. Uh Mr. Chair, I move to approve the
consent agenda items 7 8 through 7E. Thank you. We have a second to that. Second. Second by Commissioner Winger. Any further discussion on the amended consent agenda?
All in favor of approving the consent agenda as proposed, say I. I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 40. On to the regular agenda, we have number eight is the opioid settlement funding
awards. Um, who's got Amy got that? Good evening, commissioners. I am Amy Bulls, your public health director, and tonight in your packet, you have four of the five opiid settlement contracts. We have one more coming, and with your blessing, I'll put that in a future
consent agenda when we have all the necessary signatures. Um, tonight, I would just like to provide you with an update for the remainder of the year for our plan for the opiates during committee. We currently have nine standing members that are county
employees and we have um seven members with three uh dropping off of our committee members leaving us with four. So for the month of July we plan to review our membership and post applications to replace one up to three
of those individuals who will be dropping off. In August, we plan to uh review the applications that we get and we would bring them to the board for your approval. In September, we will advertise um for our annual meeting that
we have consistently hosted every October and that will uh be an invitation sent out um individually to our municipalities also to meet the MOA uh agreements for the state in October. Then we will not have a regular meeting
with our committee. Instead, we will host the annual um update and meeting with municipalities um at the second board meeting of the month. Um last year we had had it at six o'clock following the board meeting. Uh and so with your blessing, we would do
that again. In November, the committee will have a presentation from any of the awardees that have spent money to give the committee updates on how uh their programs and services are doing with the funds that we've allocated to them. And then we would cease to have another
meeting in December um and begin again in January with the release of our next RFP. Um I'll now stand for questions. Any questions for Amy? Mr. Chair, since we already approved these settlement dollars, do we have to
approve the contracts? Is that is that what are before us tonight? So then, Mr. Chair, I would move to approve the four memorandums of agreement that we have before us this evening for the opioid settlement funds. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Carlson. I
hear a second. Second from Commissioner Sumar. Any further discussion? These are all the same as what we already approved for the dollar amount. It's just a formality basically of approving the contracts that have been presented. So hearing no further discussion, all in favor say I.
I. Any opposed? Motion carries 40. Thank you Amy. Thank you gentlemen. And that brings us to item 9A, public works with Bruce stepping in just in the nick of time for his topic here on the judicial ditches.
Yeah. Sorry, I thought I had more time there. You're going to fill the judicial ditches with trees. Judicial ditch two uh is located within the city of Biji uh from 15th Street roughly uh down to Division Street and
then down into Lake Urban. Um uh brought this uh issue in front of the board before. We're trying to get rid of these inactive systems or make them active, start collecting assessments so we can maintain them. Uh but with this one here uh being in the city of Biji, we can
transfer jurisdiction to the city of Baiji. Um then it would be uh theirs to deal with. They wouldn't actually be a judicial ditch anymore. They fall underneath the different rules. They have their own storm water system um that they could be utilizing to take
care of it. So brought the idea in front of the board. Board was supportive of it. Brought it up in front of the joint county city council and there there was support uh did some leg work on the resolutions
uh and that resolution and then there was also a kind of a engineering report that needed to be done uh to help determine uh what's in place. So there's kind of a um information there for the city going forward uh but also that it
was a u viable to do the to do the transfer. um that was uh given to the city and the city passed a resolution uh asking to take over jurisdiction of judicial dish two and so now the next step is to hold a public hearing and so
I've requested a date for that uh public hearing which would be well enough uh to ahead of now to give us time to advertise and get word out to not just of the meeting but also to the beneficiaries of that ditch. Um, and so
we're asking to set the public hearing for August 5th at the five o'clock time frame. Mr. Chair. Yes, Commissioner Carlson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would make a motion that we uh hold a public hearing for the judicial ditch transfer to the
city of Biji on August 5th at 5:00 p.m. Thank you, Commissioner Carlson. I hear a second to that motion. Second by Commissioner Sumner. Any further discussion hearing? None. All in favor of setting a public hearing for the judicial ditch
number two to transfer to the city say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Bruce. Appreciate it. Thanks for staying late. All right, that brings us to the administrator's update from our administrator. Take it away, Tom. Thank
you, Mr. Chair. I think I'll pick up um talking about the storm update just a little bit. we we didn't cover uh one aspect of it which I want uh the community really and and I'm sure you're aware of this but invent you're not then you also to know and that is um that we
have the United Way leading a very strong uh local response along with community resources connection um and a number of other partners including the county, the Salvation Army um Bamichi Fire uh American Red Cross and local
area donors Um there's a tremendous amount of resources that we're trying to funnel people through to the United Way that they can offer. Both some of that's financial assistance, some of it's food and supplies, uh water, those types of things. Um but in addition to that, you
know, hot meals, uh and even volunteer services. So they're connecting volunteers in our community that are willing to go and help those who can't help themselves. Um maybe clear debris from their their homes or help in other ways and that sort of stuff. So, I just want to put a plug in for them that the
posttorm resource center is open daily um uh you know until uh essentially tomorrow at this point in time. Um the hours were 11 to 6:00 p.m. and it's located at the old First National Bank building at 429 Minnesota Avenue. Um
after that then people can contact the United Way directly and also they'll continue to pair them with u resources as well. They can also call community resource connections as well. Um, and those numbers, um, they could either call the county for or they're available in the on the internet or phone book as
well. I said phone book, but we don't have those anymore. Sorry. Uh, all right. Let's continue then with the jail project update. Um, the concrete pores for both the footings and the peers continue out at site uh, in the central and eastern part of the
building. Uh they're also continuing with foundation walls getting that prepped uh to receive later this month uh the actual pre-cast walls. So the site will be looking pretty different here in the next couple of weeks. Uh they also are back filling uh the north
northeast section of the building as well uh once those pores have cured. So um as far as storm damage goes to the actual site itself, the site fortunately, you know, came out pretty unscathed. Most of the work was at or below grade which is good. The job site
trailer was shifted a little bit and also the skirting from it was you know you know essentially removed. Uh the trampoline we had to take out. Neighbor's trampoline ended up in the excavation site as well. So that had to go. Um but essentially um other than that there's been really no additional
time or resources required to get that site back to uh you know construction again. So that that's a that's a good uh good sign. I mean, had this storm come through right after the pre-cast walls went up, this could have been a whole another story for us. So, um the good
news there is that we do have insurance uh that we're carrying through the contractor uh for stuff like that during construction. Uh but certainly that would be highly disruptive. So, um just an update on union negotiations. Uh we do have six of the eight unions that we're planning to meet with are
already scheduled for this month. Uh various times throughout the month. Uh and the other two I'm sure are coming along. We had a a seventh one scheduled, but they had to pull out uh and they're looking for early August to re-engage with us. Um so both sides are preparing
to meet on that front and um and we'll we'll be hopefully able to get through that process here fairly um quickly. On the legislative side of things, as you know, the legislature did hold an emer uh a special session, I should say. Um and they did finish their work. um we
were affirmatively able to avoid several of the largest cost shifts. Um but I think that's I think that's temporary. It would appear that uh you know this working group that's been developed to study um the waiverss and the waiver program and how to make reductions uh is
promising but if they don't come up with ways to do that then all those cost shifts that they were talking about will be added to the second wave of cost shifts that we're planning in the second bianium. So, we may have we may have taken a 4-year problem and compressed it
into a 2-year uh solution. So, we're we're concerned about that and I think you'll see that reflected in our budget this year. We'll probably devote some funds for contingency uh so that we don't that we can cushion that blow when it comes. Um cuz we do believe strongly
that it is going to come. So, in any event, um there were some cost shifts that did come through. Uh a couple hundred,000, uh maybe as much as half a million that we're expecting. Um and when you add on top of that some of the other cost shifts that were essentially
funding reductions or formula changes, uh that number continues to grow slightly. So, it's not near as bad as the 2 to 3 million we had initially thought, but you know, we're certainly probably around the half million, slightly above that. Um,
so, uh, one of the things, uh, is that we're expecting our lobbyists to come make a presentation. Uh, you probably got my email some weeks ago that, uh, indicated that Eric Simson is no longer with the firm. So, we'll have somebody else from the firm, Bradley, or one of
his, uh, staff, come up and make the presentation. I'm trying to work that out for the next, um, board meeting. And so I'll be conferencing with them next week and try to go over um all of that. Uh the county budget is uh continuing throughout all of this stuff. We still
have to put a budget together for next year. There's a lot of work to do with that. Uh line item budgets, the CIP, the narrative, uh all those sorts of things have been developed and the staff have done a nice job uh following the guidance and also u the instructions associated with this year's budget
assembly. Uh Jody and I have been reviewing the budgets and I've also been meeting with department heads to discuss um their budgets and and see if we can't make adjustments where we need to and find additional savings and those types of things. And those meetings have gone well so far about halfway through those
at this point in time. Uh the budget committee is going to meet in early August. I think at this stage of the game and I don't want to speak prematurely, but I think um because the staff have done such a great job so far in um in utilizing the budget principles
and priorities that the board put together and in following uh previous instructions or whatnot that maybe the work of the budget committee is not going to be quite as um difficult as we had thought initially. uh probably in large part also due to the fact that
those cost shifts that we were expecting to come um didn't just yet. So, whoever's on the budget committee two years from now is really probably going to have the heavy work uh because that's where we expect all this stuff to really Yeah.
So, I just gave you a little preview so you could work that out. See, see how you guys are. Yeah. Uh one thing that is unknown that will be a bit of a challenge for this budget committee and the board is going to be what the federal government's doing uh
particularly in the way of their cost shifts. We are hearing quite a bit about cost shifts i.e. reductions uh which will likely be cost shifts to the states for uh SNAP supplemental nutrition and assistance program uh maybe being cut in
half. uh and then also Medicaid uh reimbursements which are significant for us too. So and the state. So if the state doesn't have the money to absorb those and wants to continue those programs uh or is required to continue those programs, guess where the guess
where the ball will roll downhill, right? It'll it'll come to the county. So um that that that's an unknown right now. we can make estimates and we may need to include those estimates right now in the county budget and then if those don't come to fruition, you can
always pull them back out in December when we get to our final budget approval. But it might be prudent to include the anticipation of some of those cost shifts uh at least early in the budget. Uh I want to also let you know that on uh Monday
uh sorry that's the RSVB tape on um Thursday, July the 10th. So, we will be having a staff appreciation event. Uh, this is what we kind of do annually over in the courtyard of the of the county courthouse. Uh, it'll go from 3:00 to
4:30 and uh we'll have um a burrito bar, you know, kind of thing like we did last year at trivia and other games and such. Um, you know, we're inviting the county board to attend. Would love to see you there. You guys have been great about coming in the past. Just want to make
sure you have that on your on your um calendar. And uh you know, you can just let me know if you're able to come. That way we'll make sure we get a food count um accurate. So if you're able to come, that'd be super. Um again, on Thursday the 10th uh from 3:00 to 4:30 in the
courthouse courtyard. And then lastly, um don't not sure if you're aware of this or not, doesn't necessarily directly involve us, but you know, we are indirectly involved. that is that a public hearing has been scheduled for the northern township incorporation
and also jointly the city of Bumiji's annexation uh proceedings and that's going to be held on Tuesday July 15th at 1:30 at the northern town hall building. So in case you weren't aware or want to participate, it's going to be kind of hard because we have a board meeting
that day too. Um but just so you're aware that that's going on kind of in the background. It's my understanding that that's basically just going to be them opening the the not actually hearing people speak at that meeting. And that was my understanding. I believe they will be taking testimony both
written and verbal, but I think they're going to keep it open for some time as well. So, yeah, they're definitely take keeping it open, but one of the town board members told me that they wasn't probably going to be um testimony taken at that time, but I could be wrong. the
paperwork that I received in the mail that's what I thought too but that wasn't what I was but yeah maybe they've got another plan but so at least that was the impression I got in reading the paperwork that's what I thought too and and they made me think otherwise for some reason so we'll see it's um the proceeding is being led by the
administrative law judge that's been assigned to both cases so I suppose it'll depend on her to to decide that but yeah so that's all I have for you but I'll stand for any questions you might have anybody have any questions for Tom, Mr. Summer. Uh, yes. Thanks,
Mr. Chair. So, uh, Tom, I'm kind of curious and and thinking about the, uh, upcoming budget um, session you guys are are having. Uh, what what what is the lobbyist contract? Do you know Do you know how much? It's 30 grand. It's
$30,000, but it it's for the year. So, although most of their work occurs during the legislative session, uh, they are under contract to continue to lobby and work for the county. uh with a scope of work that we kind of put together at the beginning of the year. And so um I
in fact I've already talked with the lobbyists about some of the things that we're going to want worked on over the um next several months uh as we prepare for the next legislative session. Some things that uh we've started this year um particularly on the cost shifts uh
but you know that is something the board can u decide not to renew uh next year. And I think you bring up uh my next question is is is it something that the board is thinking about renewing?
Uh you know, we're asking you our departments and our department heads to look at their budgets and and is this something that the board might be considering uh of not renewing the lobbyist contract? Because when when we
um brought it up a couple years ago, it was kind of for a specific reason. Mhm. Mhm. And now that it, you know, we've had a few specific reasons, but now I get I agree with you. You know, is it are we going to see a return on in under investment? Yep. You know, so I'm hoping that, you know, the budget committee and
and Tom and and the board, you know, you know, possibly reconsider this until there is a a time to, you know, maybe revisit the the potential again, but maybe in two years. When when is the renewal um date for it? Is it the end of
the year or is it It goes January to the end of the year. So you've got you've got them till the end of the year. Um and there's a payment schedule I have to I think it's like every two months the first six months and then it rides for the rest. But so I think you're practically paid in full at this point
in time, right? Um so no need to like cancel the contract at this point in time. Might as well get what we paid for for the remainder of the year. Maybe tee up some concepts and some language and that kind of stuff for next year. um you know some of we could talk a lot more
about this but one of the things that I was trying to advance was this concept of a economically depressed region and being able to utilize that to avoid some of the cost shifts with some of the statistics we have as a very unique county um both with uh limited taxable
land uh area and also um you know poverty rates and other economic depress depressive um figures and we started making some progress through the lobbyist on that. In the end, the cost shifts um that we were most concerned
about didn't come through. You know, how much of our lobbyist helped on that? I mean, AMC was behind it, Maxa was behind it. There were a lot of organizations behind it as well. Um, and one of the questions you'll have to sort of toy
with is do you do you want um an organization like AMC or Maxa or or MRC to be your voice? If you don't have, you know, a particular lobbyist that's sort of carrying your specific message, then
your message gets somewhat diluted or maybe not carried. I know that's been some of the frustration with AMC is that well if AM you know if we're one of two or three or four counties that have a problem but all the rest of the counties don't does that necessarily carry over
into action at the AMC level even though we're members and and often it does not. So you know that's something to just kind of consider uh as you evaluate whether you want to keep that contract going forward or not. we can leverage our our local representatives as well and and you know I know representative
Duran um he even when the governor was here for the the you know he he made a point of commenting about our poverty level and and so on and um I think he would be more than happy to try to champion legislation for us without a lobbyist too. So I think that you know it's not an urgent thing for us to
discuss at this point but I think I think we're probably you know in consensus towards the degree it's looking like but Commissioner Carlson. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm glad you brought that up, Commissioner Ser, because personally, I don't think I'm in favor of continuing to pay a lobbyist. I
what I found is that Representative Bedell Duran has been doing an outstanding job of advocating for us and I know he will continue to do that. Uh, at least he has one more year to do that and then if he gets re-elected, whatever. but he has done just yman's
work for us and I and that's that's what he's there for and he's and he's doing it and and and Senator Green and actually uh Representative Bliss as well. All three of them have done an outstanding job of of representing us and I I'm glad to hear you say that because of being on the budget committee
I I wasn't in favor of adding that to the budget. So unless I'm hearing otherwise I that's kind of where I'm going to be coming from. Yeah. Well, that is now is a good time to say if you'd like us to take it out because we could take it out and rebalance. I mean, those those like that direction is good
for us and it's timely for us right now so that we don't bring something to the budget committee that then has to be redone. And so, yeah, I that's my my thoughts as well. So, unless unless there's some specific thing that we think we can't do for some reason, but I don't I don't see what that would be at
this point. I mean, we I would say that we would just pull it. You guys agree with that? Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. Thank you. Anything else, Tom? No, sir. That's all I had for you. Let's run through the
commission commissioner reports. Uh, Commissioner Sumar, uh, I'll keep it uh, a little bit short tonight. All right. For the sake of time. No. Uh, I attended the, um, Black Duck Ambulance meeting after after some discussion. We weren't
too sure if it was going to be on or not because of the Junth holiday, but uh it was it was held. Um it did attend. It was a good meeting as as always. I I do enjoy going up to black duck. Uh the
following day I attended the the AMC board meeting. I was um reappointed to the NACO board uh to represent the association at the at the national level and also want to let the board know that
uh we discussed the the dues uh for for uh AMC and they're I believe proposing u uh $1,600 increase uh for next year and
that is to help retain, you know, our our analyst, uh, our policy analysts that we have there. Um, AMC employs probably the least, uh, paid, uh, policy analyst, uh, out of the
counties, cities, and townships. Uh, but, uh, our analysts do great work for us. uh seen it time and time again, you know, with with uh with their presentations, you know, throughout the district meetings and things like that. So, um that is uh what we discussed at
the AMC board. And with that, I think we were all pretty much on the same page last week with the with the dor storm situation. So, uh um want to, you know, thank Tom
and and staff, you know, the board for for your guys' uh uh willingness to me last minute and and you know, I mean, it was if if my phone was busy, I you know, imagine everybody else's phone was busy.
And it was, you know, my Tuesday, I forgot what day it was because it's just it was this same, you know, trying to figure out, well, how are we going to, you know, deal with this situation. Um, so glad last week is over, but this week
presents a new set of challenges. Um, but with that, I just want to invite and and remind folks that the Red Lake Powell is this weekend, uh, 4th through the 7th and open to the public. Uh, everybody is welcome. That concludes my
report. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Summer, Commissioner Winger. Yeah, I really didn't have anything uh as far as meetings and things went. Um, you know, again, like everybody, I'm impressed with how the community's come
together with this storm stuff. Uh overall did get a lot of phone calls from some pretty frustrated people and I understand that it there were times that we all got frustrated and short and things without sleep and and all the work we a lot of us been doing. Um
but I keep going back to the fact nobody got hurt and that's pretty impressive. So, I did think of one thing today when I was climbing around up on a whole bunch of branches and things and thought about all the people uh down south who get hit with hurricanes every year and they're
out there doing that and I thought, you know, they got to contend with poisonous snakes on top of all this. Thought I was pretty fortunate that I didn't have to think about what was under those branches that was crawling through. But, um but uh anyway, I got chat about tomorrow, I guess. So, that's it for me.
Thank you, Commissioner Winger. Commissioner Carlson. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, we had Bumiji Regional Airport regular meeting. Um, and then Greater Bumiji Board meeting. Um, and while I'm on the topic of Bumiji, Greater Bumiji Board, uh, Bum the
Greater Bumiji, uh, Dave Hangel and staff put together a group of folks including Northwest Minnesota Foundation, Headarters Regional Development Commission, uh, United Way, uh, I'm going to forget somebody. I hate that. Um anyway, a number of of number
of agencies got together locally. Bumiji Chamber of Commerce, the city of Bumiji. Um they put together a program called Bumiji Business Rebuild Program and uh did all the commissioners get a copy of
that? Um Tom, can did you get a copy of that? Oh, I'll make sure I send it to to Tom and then Tom can disseminate it out. So, it's uh a storm recovery support for small businesses. There's going to be emergency loans available up to $10,000
with 0% uh interest rate for 12 months to help businesses that were severely and some businesses were really severely impacted. And um loss of of um inventory, uh buildings destroyed, that sort of thing. Um and so
we the uh this group of of agencies got together to try to figure out how can we help these businesses uh on a real quick basis where they don't have a lot of um uh hurdles to go through to get get some
money. Um it'll be a quick uh approval process. Um, and uh, I think there's up to 20 I want to say $250,000 were put together very quickly to support to support that. And so kudos to
Dave Hangle and his staff and all these agencies that got together to uh to do that. Um the uh our jail design and operations committee uh has targeted August 19th board meeting to have an
approval or to have to bring together the u different options uh and a recommendation for the old jail site. So if you can look forward to that. Um and my apologies to the Farm Bureau. I didn't get out Sunday to the breakfast and I think I hope hopefully it went
okay. I there's probably a lot of people that weren't able to make that. So, um, sorry about that. Anyway, I'm done. Thank you, Commissioner Carlson. I actually did get out to that. It was very well attended and, um, was real good as usual and fun to, you know, see
a lot of people. We actually had our local representatives were there too. Representative Duran and Senator Steve Green was there. Um, had a lot of lot of township people and stuff. It was a good event. Um I had uh as you mentioned that we had
the airport authority meeting. It was fun. Uh we got to do a tour of the planning area three um prior to the meeting and that was interesting. That's the area on the western part of the airport that we're developing and you know getting you know hangers and stuff
like that uh put out there. That's where our new our um self-service fuel station is going there and so on. So that was good. Um had our HRDC meeting. Um, we're getting prepared for our annual meeting coming up. We're doing some bylaw changes. So, got a exec board meeting
coming up for that. Um, and spoke with the executive director of of HRDC about meeting with Dave Hangle and that group and using some of our revolving loan funds to to help with those, you know, building our businesses and and u fortunate that we have a bunch of money
that from back in the the COVID time frame once those loans got repaid. Now, we have that money available. And so we've got a fair amount of money there that's available that we haven't loaned out or you know whatever to be able to to do for this. So that's that's uh nice
to see. At a Mississippi Headarters board meeting that uh was pretty uneventful and a planning commission meeting. We just had one one fairly quick uh deal to approve there. So busy but not uh not anything too heavy lifting this this last week here. So
that's it for me. Anything else for the good of the order here? Uh Mr. Chair, before I make a motion to adjourn, uh I just looked at my notes here and and um remembered that I will be attending uh the Niko conference uh July 10th through
the 14th uh returning back uh the 14th. Uh uh so unfortunately I won't be able to attend the uh staff appreciation. Um but uh it's always a good time and uh that I look forward to and hopefully next year I'll be able to. You'll be
you'll be able to be here for our meeting though. Yeah. Okay. As long as nothing happens on my return. All right. But I'll make a motion to to adjurnn. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Summer. I hear a second. Second by Commissioner Carlson. All in favor of adjourning, say I. I. And we
are adjourned. Thank you.