##VIDEO ID:F4eLzUhxCpM## e e e e e e e e e count work session to order and at this time I'll accept a motion to go into close session pursu to Minnesota statute 13 d05 subdivision 3 to discuss the purchase or sale of real or personal property I hear motion so moved motion by commissioner Carlson second second second by commissioner Winger all in favor say I I I any oppos all right we go to CL session e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e time I will accept a motion to end the closed session and return to the open meeting do I hear a motion Z motion by commissioner Carlson a second second by commissioner Winger all in favor say I I hi any opposed motion carried we are back in open session of the work session so we will move on to introduction of new employees do we have any new employees it looks like candra has one good afternoon Commissioners I'm just gonna have uh Ben introduce himself hi I'm Ben rier um just started back on December 3rd here just test it out um came up to Bidi here with my wife was working on the East Coast Flight service um moved up here got interested into Corrections for my brother he works down in henpen county and loving it so so great well welcome aboard and happy to have you what part of the East Coast where you uh Northern Virginia right by Dallas airport okay great anybody have any questions for Ben welcome all right thank you thank you yeah um yeah um maybe I I misheard I didn't hear what what position were you filling or uh corrections officer oh okay thank you welcome great thank you any other new employees not seeing any we'll move on then to identify future work meeting topics anybody have anything they want to bring up uh Mr chair yes commissioner something um I think it was last week uh you know we got some some news that there there was a executive order on federal spending so I I called the administrator Barry to maybe put something together I don't know if it if he's gonna if he had the time to uh report but maybe at a future work meeting um I'm hoping that we can get kind of an overview of um what kind of federal funds that we receive at the county and and if there are any uh potential impacts that we uh may experience if there are any ongoing uh freezing of funds and things like that and what our our action plan is to if if uh things uh should last longer than we're we're financially able to to manage so um yeah okay Mr chair I would piggyback onto what commissioner suner said that we include the state also with with the uh severe reductions that have been in the governor's budget as well you got that partner agencies basically you know because this could affect it's affecting Bap which is a partner agency of the county any related organizations Mr chair yes uh this is a bit of a moving Target and impossible task I will just say we can do our best to talk about what sources of funding we receive as a county um but as you know what alarmed us last week with the freezing of federal funding uh either directly to local governments or through States back to local governments uh was rescinded and so each time we have one of these situ s uh it becomes extremely difficult given the variability and the time the timeliness of it for us to run analysis like that so what we'll do is I'll work with the auditor's office and we'll attempt to evaluate uh the sources um that we get from directly the federal government and also through the state from the federal government uh but it will be very difficult to know on a day-by-day basis at the federal level what coming next uh given the last couple of weeks that we've seen so uh you know there could be elimination of entire programs for example that are that are going to happen tomorrow or maybe next week or whatever we just won't know that and some of those that have been threatened have been rescinded so we'll do our best to see what we can I know AMC is on top of this as well um I will share with you during my administrators report some preliminary impacts uh particularly from the state's uh Governor's budget uh but as it relates to the federal uh things we'll we'll we'll do our best but just understand that's going to be a very difficult sort of thing to track on a Mr I I understand it is it's difficult because I remember correctly majority of our budget does come from the federal or state so I mean I think they're if there's going to be a reduction we we should have some sort of idea of clue of of you know the potential impact so I mean I'm not looking for a a a a thorough um numbers but you know at least you know give us a better understanding of of how this could impact the county and you know obviously we have what five five months of reserves you know um we can run through those really quick you know so it's like I want to make sure that we have a plan in place you know if if and uh something should happen at the federal or state level so thank you I think we probably should give it a little bit of time and give give administrator Barry a little bit of time to um let things flesh out a little bit especially with the state being as dysfunctional as they are right now to you know to give us an update on on both federal and state at the same time um we probably should give this a month or better um to let things shake out out um since they're not even really working at the state level right now um nothing's going to probably happen a whole lot until that time so um but I think that's be nice to get a a little little bit of an eye 10,000 foot view of where where this potentially could affect us in in uh moving forward anything else all right well chair y um I would like to see a presentation or an update and and plan for uh bigi day at the Capal I know administrator Barry has been providing updates and and I think those are super helpful but um maybe having Scott come in from the chamber or somebody from BSU um you know I I I haven't been attending the meetings uh I My worry is that uh there's um a lot of inexperienced people trying to put this together um so in the name of transparency and if everybody from the bigi community is invited um it could be a a good way to um advertise for it too uh so um I'd like to know uh what exactly the plan is is there a bus uh can people sign up with their legislators uh um what are the specific issues and asks being made um I don't think I think a general unfunded mandates uh theme is going to cut it um you know that phrase gets tossed around every other election anyway um so um I I think it would make sense for somebody to come in and and uh let us know exactly what the plan is administrator Barry do you have uh any comments on that or any suggestions on how we might accomplish that I I definitely think that our main focus from our lobbying is unfunded mandates I think it'd be good to have a variety of specifics to back that up to you know hear examples from various organizations not just us sure um I'm not sure exactly how it'll shape up but what I and I was going to share this during my administrative report but since it's come up now I can I can share some of this now that the registration has gone out so people have been invited and they can they can log on to the chamber's website and they can uh choose to uh participate uh at two levels one is to you know just show up and participate and provide your own transportation or take their bus and then uh and then that transportation is added to the to the cost of your registration uh it will be held on uh Wednesday uh March the 5th the bus is going to leave at 6:00 am in the morning there will be a legislative reception that'll be held at CH field uh later in the day uh which is the home to St Paul Saints baseball team um the chamber has the details on their website for those that want to attend I'm not real clear on what the messages to be honest with you uh what the asks are what the schedule I don't think that's come out just yet uh I can ask Mr turn uh the chamber executive to uh see if he'd be interested in coming and making a presentation of the board uh that next uh meeting would be of course on the 18th which would be timely since that'd be just about a little over two weeks from uh the expected event date so I'll just reach out to him and and see if you've got anything more I know it's still being developed uh maybe by that time there will be more to share as well but unfortunately I don't have any additional information to share oh that sounds good thank you anything else all right we'll move on to background checks for pertinent employees and get that good afternoon Commissioners um so I'm here tonight to discuss the joint Powers agreement that was required for the HR department to continue running background checks for certain individuals so individuals that need to go through the national fingerprint background um HR would process or is processing those non-criminal Justice backgrounds and what that means is we have to have a joint Powers agreement with the BCA in order to to you know meet all the requirements in a policy format that we're following their rules that we have the right people in our office backgrounded that we're protecting the data so all that kind of comes into play for us to continue with these backgrounds a couple years ago the county did apply for the the their own oi number so the sheriff's office has their own number the attorney's office has their own number and HR also has their own number and then after that the next step was to get the joint Powers agreement those did take a couple years to come out from um the agency that was creating those that has come up or has come out and then now that is what is here tonight for approval uh which will keep us in compliance when we have our next audit which will be I think it's next fall so 2026 but that's all any questions any questions right guess thank you an and next we have Health and Human Services client supports I think we've got some success stories that you're going to share yes that correct good afternoon commissioner it's an linth I'm the director of Health and Human Services and we do have some client support stories and success stories that we want to share with you today um thank you for allowing us to continue to come to the board quarterly with these stories I think it's important to talk about the work that we do supporting your constituents so I'm going to have each of our division directors come up and share one story that we have done within the last quarter so thank you good afternoon Commissioners Jeff Lind Social Services Division director um usually I'm here talking gloom and doom and all the challenges that we Face uh today I'll will be talking about one of the one of the situations that we've worked through that has actually had a positive resolution so we have a we have a youth um that is the he had he was adopted prior to adoption he had um experienced a great deal of trauma um and Al adaptive behaviors um he learned that uh if you behave poorly you got attention and he got and so those behaviors continue to escalate um he had been in um while we had made referrals to over a 100 facilities in the state of Minnesota he had burned through enough of them and his behaviors were so bad that no one would take him um he he had been kicked out of uh uh a prtf he had been kicked out out of let's see one prtf um he had been kicked out of a qrtp which is a qual qualified residential treatment program the other one is a is a psychiatric um Residential Treatment Facility both of those he'd been kicked out of um we had we had gone to every residential program we could find in the state doing referrals everywhere his continue his behaviors continued to deteriorate we even looked um outside of the state I think we pursued uh well every every facility we knew of outside of the state to try and find placement for this individual we ended up placing him in a local um uh Residential Group home um he was there for a little while he ended up um failing from there he ended up um at Northwest juvenile at the Northwest juvenile center his behaviors continued to deteriorate to the point that we actually County Attorney's Office what's what's interesting about this story is a whole bunch of different pieces within the county worked to find the resolution so at Social Services we had we had Children's Services working with the individual and we had our adult mental health um Team working with the individual because of the because he was on a waiver so we were doing two different staff for work two different directions to try and find services for this individual his behaviors were such that he was um he was injuring people and he was uh the Outburst would come unexpectedly you there was no way to to know when they were going to happen so County Attorney's Office pursued a mentally ill and dangerous commitment on a youth which is almost never done in the state I think I only know of one other one that's ever been done in the state we pursued that and and his behaviors are such that we actually ended up with a MD commitment in place but it was put on it was put on uh uh was on hold while he was at Northwest uh and we were waiting for for an opening at St Peter which they of course don't have a children's unit so that was going to be like he was probably going to be at Northwest for years um his behaviors were continuing to have problematic and they were he was being um had to end up in isolation because he was GNA in he was injuring other staff he was injuring other kids so he was actually in isolation for a long period of time well we were through through our adult mental health worker and our children's mental health worker um we worked with a local psychiatrist um we worked with county attorney's office we worked with um we we found a new drug that they were able to give him that this this youth wanted he didn't like his behaviors the way they were he couldn't but he couldn't control it so we ended up on a 30-day injectable um that would have cost $1800 um and there was no money for it you didn't have Ma so that would have been County dollars but between staff and the psychiatrist they were able to find sample be able to get a sample for him so he took the sample and his behavior changed almost immediately um within uh within two months with well within a month he was back in general population at at Northwest and then um within about a month and a half later we had found a facility that was willing to take him um he has since been moved to a group home not in our area but in to a group home here in the state um and he has had one Outburst in the last three months um this was we had law enforcement working with us for on Transportation with the county attorney's office working with us on the commitment I had two um adult mental health an adult mental health and a children's mental health worker working on it making referrals everywhere this was a this was a success that happened because the silos that separate us were broke down and we were able to work together to find a solution um that's the best part of the story and then me the best part is is the youth success and the hope is that he will eventually leave a group home or or at least be able to become a functioning member of society and get a job and do all those types of things um but he's and we were also because his behavior changed so much we were able to remove the dangerous part of the commitment because he would have carried that with him the rest of his life um so instead of being mentally ill and dangerous he was he was committed under mental on our mental illness statutes and um he actually has a chance going forward that's the success if I may um question for a Jeff the you mentioned about the cost of the drug and and it's injectable and stuff so it because he's mentally ill um committed or whatever is does he get basically forced to get injected with that and is it daily weekly monthly in in this case um we were we were able to make the because he was under commitment we were able to make the decisions for him um but he wanted it he he he actually when we talked to him about it he asked for it yeah um and it's a monthly injection I believe he is still getting that same injection mhm um and I believe it would be covered by Ma now okay initially it wasn't because you all the different formulas that go into it but it wasn't covered but we were able to get the samples for free because of the psychiatrist working with us on that one so thank you anybody else have any questions and we run behind so um so this individual he's he's under the care of of the county and and and your department social service department so does does he have family or are are you working in in helping support the the family or how how is how does that work right he he has a has an adopted mother um who is still involved but due to his behaviors she can't handle him his I mean even even as he is improving um he's going to likely be in group care but his Improvement is such that you know the hope is he's going to actually be able to be in group care and still be a able to be a part of of society get a job do those types of things anybody else all right thank you Jeff thank you mean like I say we're running probably about 15 minutes behind or so so we get try to keep that in mind thank you thank you Commissioners uh Kurt Anderson economic assistance uh division director and uh this County resident uh support story uh the county res requested their name to be withheld but they did consent to sharing of the story the resident was enrolled with our Bel tramy County Workforce impact team in January of 2024 when the client enrolled they had already used 50 months of their 60 months of Minnesota family investment program eligibility for themselves and their three children um initially as the client went through overview with our Workforce impact team the client determined they did not want to work with us from that that client then started to slide into sanctions which affected the benefits that she had been that that client had been approved for um due to nonparticipation and non uh compliance this created a very tight financial situation for the client and then the navigator at Workforce impact Amber asplin proactively was able to obtain the client's email address and began non-verbal communication through emailed really to build that trust uh between herself and the client once that trust was established the client began and verbal Communications with Amber this allowed us to then complete overview via the phone and the paperwork to get the client back into compliance so that they could receive their full Grant amount to assist their family as Amber worked with the client it was discovered that the client had a medical condition that made human interaction challenging for the client normally for clients this could be a condition that could limit participation within our Workforce uh Employment Services but the client through the trust that was built up wanted to continue to work with Workforce impact and participate in our job search and job Club offered courses the client was then able to secure employment after a few weeks of training that then allowed that client to transition to full-time work and employment this job provided the client enough income for themselves and their three children and the client exceeded the income limits for the cash program and the client successfully transitioned off of enip by September of 2024 Amber was able to support this client during this time with gas vouchers to help cover Transportation until the first paycheck of the new job arrived as well as to help the client with vehicle repair to ensure that they had trans Safe Transportation to and from employment the job that the client had obtained was working overnights in a group home monitoring doors and handling client emergencies this lowrisk minimal contact position aligned perfectly with the client needs for self-sufficient and provided the support and flexibility that the client needed for family emergencies thank you again for this opportunity to highlight some of the work that your economic assistance division completes on a daily basis great Kurt any questions thank you Kurt appreciate it Commissioners my name is Amy bus and I am your public health director and today I would like to share a story I like the positive impact a staff had on a family in our community the story is written from the perspective of a nurse my name is Dorothy Walton and I'm a registered nurse employed with belamy County Public Health for the past 24 years I have had the privilege of providing home visiting services to families offering everything from parenting education and self-care support to promoting overall health and well-being in my role I have seen firsthand how a proactive individualized approach to care can make all the difference today I'd like to share a success story that highlights the importance of the work we do and how it can truly impact lives currently I'm working with a family who has a young child with Down syndrome and a heart defect called pton ductus osis this child who is scheduled for open heart surgery at the Children's Hospital in February requires weekly home visits for weight checks and health assessments under the guidance of their primary care provider on December one December day during my routine visit the child's mother mentioned that her child hadn't been feeling well for a few days and had developed cold symptoms she was concerned but thought it would pass as her other children had recently experienced similar symptoms when I assessed the child I discovered that both of his lungs sounded very congested given his heart condition I felt it was important to take extra caution I offered to reach out to the primary care provider to see if the doctor could see him right away when I returned to the office I contacted the clinic and they were able to schedule an appointment for the very next day that weekend the mother called to update me her child had been LifeLight to Fargo diagnosed with pneumonia and was expected to stay in the hospital through the Christmas holiday the mother expressed immense gratitude for my recommendation to seek medical attention as another provider who had been in the home earlier that day suggested she simply wait for the illness to pass the doctor later told the family that if they had waited any longer to seek help the child's condition could have turned dire given the complexities of his heart condition fortunately with quick intervention and treatment including IV antibiotics the child was able to return home just before Christmas the story underscores the importance of our work as public health professionals it also highlights the value Val of home visits early intervention and the proactive approach we take in assessing and addressing health concerns by being present and and attentive we can prevent health issues from escalating and provide families with the support they need during critical times I am proud of the work I do with belamy County Public Health and I am grateful for the opportunity to serve families like this one thank you for supporting programs like ours that enable us to make a positive impact on the health and well-being of our community thank you okay all right we'll move on to the current jail facility condition review thank you Mr J I'll try to make up a little bit of time here as you know we have made significant progress on the design and construction uh and bidding of the new jail and it's now time for us to turn our attention to the question of what to do with the existing jail so uh before you uh you have in your packet and then also on the regular agenda tonight is a proposal from K Anderson to evaluate the building uh condition of the current jail facility this is of course the first step in a multi-step process to determining what we should do with the old jail project of course we probably need to know and find out more about the condition of the existing facility its internal systems and its infrastructure um it's Fireproof in it's HVAC and electrical systems Foundation Roofing uh all of that sort of stuff uh once we know that information then we can use that to inform uh the the answering of the question okay now what can we do with this facility uh now that we know it's its condition and and its uh its cost to move it to some other type of condition or use so uh in order to do that work as I mentioned the proposal that's been developed in front of you uh is a proposal to evaluate the condition of the existing Jail uh the cost is $12,800 to do this work CR Anderson which is our construction manager at risk on the current project uh has has submitted that proposal I think it's reasonable given uh the work that they're going to be doing which should take anywhere from about three to four weeks to complete uh this is again as I mentioned the first phase of the analysis the second phase will come in what we would determine or call a feasibility study and that'll be done by an architect and the architect will essentially then take the building condition assessment and they'll take all that information along with the shop drawings and all that sort of stuff and they'll evaluate uh what the options are given that information and the primary three options that the county is interested in uh through the dno committee's recommendation of evaluating are you know can we remodel the whole and and reuse the whole uh existing jail in some new way uh or can we re use part of it and remodel part of it and and then maybe the other part you know we might have to demo or we might have to abandon or or whatnot or the third option is you know if the thing is just so unusable or too costly to reuse you know what about just demolishing the whole thing and and holding it over as campus land maybe a small Park until it's needed for future growth for the camp for the for the county campus so those are kind of the three options we're moving towards as a design and operations team as I say this initial work is to understand what the condition of the existing facility is uh it will follow or what will follow is that feasibility assessment together uh both contracts and the amount of work that we have will probably take on the order of about six to seven weeks or so so we're hopeful that we'll have preliminary um analysis hopefully by say maybe April time or so uh but I just wanted to stand before you and let you know that that's what the contract is that's before you uh and that that was also on the regular session for your consideration questions for Tom y um so you mentioned that there's going to be a $122,000 cost uh to Carl Anderson and then is there going to be an additional cost for the engineers uh evaluation there will be an additional cost for the architectural evaluation correct okay and where is that money coming from all of this money has been uh set aside as a in a separate project fund for the jail that's being being financed through the sales tax um uh pris or sales tax revenue and of course we have a bond that we issued the $40 million initial issuance is financing this all of this has been approved in in our sales tax uh initiative and you might recall that the savings on the project that we had informed the board about I don't know a couple months ago or so after the bids uh that money also went into this particular project so we're holding over probably six to seven maybe eight million of funding for answering the question and implementing the the solution to what do we do with the old jail so and our final question is um do you have any estimates what the entire cost would be for um determining what the old facility will will be used for so if it's 12 I'm not too sure what the engineers or the architect yeah I would it's hard to know uh commissioner suer just yet I mean certainly we have the estimate for what it would take to do the building condition assessment 12,800 uh I imagine it would probably something like that or possibly more uh for the architectural um sort of wh ifs uh then there's going to be some cough estimating that'll have to go through with that and depending upon then what the board decides it wants to do let's say it at at a at an initial high level says okay we like this option let's explore that more there could be additional fund or additional expenses to sort of far it out or evaluate uh that that particular option that the board chooses so it's hard to say at the moment what that might run if I had to put a guess on it you know I think you you might be somewhere in the 50,000 or less for both studies uh but that doesn't include like an architectural design for example if if the board chooses that hey we we want to do X then we'd have to go into a whole design and you know just like we're doing with the jail project that that's a totally separate process a totally separate cost and all that the good news again is that that that cost has been included in the budget from the very beginning in regard to what to do with the old or the existing jail the last thing I might just mention is there there's something that we have to do to figure out how to do the sally port right in order to get inmates from the new jail which is offsite to uh the Justice uh Center uh you know we're going to have to do something there does that mean use the existing tunnel and create a sally port on top of that does it mean put a sally port directly in the um the courthouse into the courthouse and abandon the tunnel does it mean some variation of the two or or something those are things we don't really know but we also need to have an evaluation on as well thank you commissioner M Barry just wondering when we did the initial um seven options for what to do with the old facility wasn't there research done on the condition of the facility at that time that CR Anderson could capitalize on no the um because we looked at you know options of remodeling it and so on back then correct we did and and the the level of detail that was provided in that analysis is not sufficient for us to really use in determining with a real cost basis what the feasibility is for repurposing the building altogether okay uh so so it's it was a different analysis I would call that analysis like a 50,000 foot analysis and this one is more like a 10,000 or maybe 5,000 foot analysis so just want to make sure in case people are you know watching that they know that there's a reason sure yeah that's great clarification thank you did you have a question I do go ahead and commissioner Winger one quick question um this first step will that give you an indication of whether it's worth proceeding or is this just a formality that you have to go through no it does answer that first question uh it is quite possible uh commissioner Winger that we get an analysis back that saids okay this is going to be way too costly to really do anything with at which point we would be kind of silly to move forward on okay well let's let's explore the options so there is a cost estimating aspect to this too if if it comes back that you know maybe the only thing we can salvage is the kitchen um well that's probably as far as we'll go we'll figure out what to do you know um but yeah that that's intended is to try to get some sense of of knowledge else all right thank you thank you move on to the county newsletter request and that um we had a request and with a couple of different options brought to us and I actually um have something a letter that was or not a letter but a summary that was written by the lead person on the redistricting committee that I'll pass out here to um the highlighted portion is uh let me get get one down to to um Diane and Tom down there and the highlighted portion is a section that I actually added and and the things that are highlighted that I either added or changed the verbiage on um on a couple of things because I thought if we if we're going to do this we would want to um include an accurate accounting of why the maps were were chosen it wasn't the the red original redistricting committee that chose these Maps they were actually asked for in a board meeting by myself commissioner olssen at the time and then the third original map map one was just a minimal configuration the least amount of change and so I thought that that that history of where those Maps originally came from um would be critical because that's wherein the um population shifts and and the ultimate lawsuit came from and so I'm proposing that if we are going to move forward with it that we would do it with these changes um I would want to make sure that we uh got the author's blessing for these changes since her name is on it that's Laura bual so I'll open it up for discussion here commissioner Carlson Mr chair um I've read through this article I wasn't here obviously I wasn't a commissioner at the time but I thought as I read through it it was good information that I wasn't aware of before um you know you a lot of times you hear stories and different sides of stories and and if and if and if youve as a commissioner that were was here um find that this is all very factual information um I'm in favor of of moving that forward to the newsletter um I think the issues been put to rest uh I don't think we need to really do anything with this uh it's kind of beating a dead horse at this point it's kind of my opinion commiss Winger or suar have anything they want to comment on I don't know I looked at you know I knew this stuff was here and so I looked up everything online and there were several articles in the paper uh there's videos of of people talking about it um to me it seems like all the information has been put out there quite a few times did you know what I had put have you seen that specifically I you know I'd have to look back through and see what all it actually says specifically um you know uh I guess if this is something that you wanted to put in as a County employee that's one thing but you know well Mr chair and and I think you know the same could be said for uh commissioner Winger as as commissioner Carlson uh neither of them were were here uh same same with uh Joe um so we know my concern and I feel that you know this has been discussed um in in the media several times um I believe the the the individual came to a few board meetings and actually this is the first time that I've seen any type of letter and if you're asking me to uh to agree to something that I just seen it's not going to happen tonight that's for sure and if you were able to add wording to this letter um I would like that same opportunity as well um you know being that I was you know on the board um but I just think you know I mean I I I think we need to put this to rest you know if we open this up to to you know an individual I just think we're we're open the floodgates for for a lot of others to uh submit their uh grievances uh to the newsletter which you know it's my understanding that the newsletter has always been uh just for uh County information that pertains to our departments and what our departments are doing um you know I think we we all understand that as Commissioners we're not even allowed to uh submit anything to the newsletter so I mean it's like I I I think we're we're I think we're better off you know just not allowing this and uh um that's that's my thoughts thank you commissioner suar and I'm not suggesting that we have to move forward with this or anything I just if we were going to move forward with it I was not in favor of doing it unless it was somebody impartial which was Laurel from the the redistricting panel um that that authored it but when I saw what she had authored I felt that this was critical information that that um um because I think there's a lot of misinformation out there of people that thought that that there was U targeting um of moving a Township out of a district and putting it into my district um for the sole purpose of getting rid of of that commissioner and that was a byproduct of the request that was made and that's what I wanted to get out there it it wasn't just a intentional thing to to get rid of that it was just what I've stated here is that there was you know the facts of the matter is because of commissioner Olson asking for that that particular version of a map putting all the city Wards into two districts instead of three that they currently were in put as soon as you put that third or that second City ward into that District 5 that added so many people that you literally couldn't put or you couldn't keep Turtle Lake Township in that District anymore that's what I wanted to get out there so I'm kind of getting it out there right now by saying this but that's that's the the The Snowball Effect from there and because you took that many people by taking a City ward out of my district you took that many people out of my district I I had to have Turtle Lake Township and a whole bunch of other things city of black duck away from you and everything else in order to get enough population back into my district to make it legal um it legally wasn't able to have have Turtle Lake Township in District 5 after putting a second City ward in there um so the redistricting original redistricting committee was um simply doing what they were asked by coming up with these Maps the map that was ultimately chosen by yourself and and olon and and Anderson at the time that uh that ultimately was um you know found to be invalid because of such a huge population variation and um you know that's uh that's really all the states so um I think it's it's not on the agenda I don't know if anybody wants to to make any motions or anything in the regular meeting but at at this point that's that's the information so anybody else have any further discussion or well Mr chair uh it's been common in the past that if a commissioner would like to bring something forward to the regular meeting agenda then we would discuss it and if there and if there was a positive uh from from everyone that that that it could be brought forward so I'm just asking that it gets brought forward is there anybody else that would like to see this brought forward to the agenda for tonight are you saying for tonight or for as soon as possible the letters the deadline for the letter articles for the letter February 14th so we don't meet until the 18th so if we don't do it tonight then it would be three more months down the road correct so there wouldn't it' be even less point in doing it at that point correct so anybody else uh in favor of bringing it forward for an up or down vote tonight I'm not comparison to what's there to what's here to what's in the in the newspapers okay I want to look at those before I okay so it sounds like we do not have consensus to bring forward tonight the commissioner Carlson yep so that issue is put aside um I don't know if we want to Comm Carlson do you anything that I mean if we're going to have it for over three months down the road is there anything that that we need to to do or we just G let that go then well at some point I'd like to see it brought to ACC counted board vot so so however we do that that's we want to give you time to review what I've handed out here or whatever and and potentially bring it up at a future work session there's not going to be any rush to it because the next newsletter won't be for three months so so it sounds like it you know if if you haven't seen any or if you want to review it more then it's going to end up pushing it beyond our our newsletter deadline and the therefore I don't know if it'd be worth it to address it three more months down the road but we need to keep moving here so and we if we you know we certainly can bring it up at another future meeting if uh if people want to review it and Mr that but I and I I know um I mean there's consensus that you know we kind of just want to put this behind us so I mean like if if we're going to vote on it you know like well you you had said that you didn't want to do anything that you just got now and he said basically the same thing so I'm just saying we can kick the can down the road if we decide that we want to bring it up at a future work session after you've had time to review it we can if we don't we won't so we'll we'll leave it for now and move on um update on carbon credit marketing opportunity Shane well Commissioners I know we're um thanks for having me I'm Shane Hy from the nrm Department um and I know we're super short on time so I'm going to try to shove this through as fast as I can but thank you to cut to the chase um when I first heard about the carbon credit marketing opportunity I didn't think there was any Val validity to it to be honest I just kind of disregarded it um I want to thank commissioner Gould who asked several questions of me that made me think about it more um and then made me analyze it through other people as well a little bit more um and I would ask like I had to do to put political views of carbon credits off to the side um I'm asked to run the nrm nrm department as a business become as profitable as possible so to save the the taxpayers money as much as possible um so a little bit of background you guys all know what carbon credits are um one one thing I wanted to highlight on the first slide is that these are voluntary markets there's um there's no requirement that anyone purchase or sell or do anything with these credits which makes it a little bit of a fuzzy fuzzy science [Music] um um going on to the county requirements the biggest one to think about here is that it is a 40-year commitment so this is a big deal um it's a long-term commitment the first 20 years um the consultant is working with us and that's when credits are developed the second 20 years the consultant is off to the side um we then continue monitoring to assure that what we promis to do in the first 20 years is um continued so the biggest question for me was why would anyone give us carbon credits for doing the stuff that we're already doing and the easiest way for me me to think about it and for hopefully for you guys to think about it too is that um we have many low productivity areas we have isolated Parcels we have a bunch of repairing areas both around Wetlands that we have a lot of also a lot of lakes and then we have a lot of low value Timber Products um even Oak is everyone thinks of an oak tree as being the most valuable tree out in the forest but for us it's one of the least valuable but it has a really long rotation it stores carbon for a long period of time belamy count is a really good fit for this program because of those reasons um so the benefits I mean increased revenue is the biggest one it Al also diversifies our Revenue stream um which is beneficial because um Timber markets can fluctuate a great deal um so then to move on to the biggest part of the presentation just what are the risks um so it is a voluntary market so we have changing e ecomic climate um what if no one wants to buy credits anymore what is what happens um changing social climate um if people don't have money for the economic side if people don't have the desire and the social side it changes what the profitability of the market is um and then changing Timber markets it limits signing up would limit our our ability to respond to the different market conditions and the big one that we've all just heard about in this past week is tariffs um if Canadian Lumber can't come down um Mills need more lumber from us we are a little bit tied to we're tied to our management plan currently and we've always stuck to that but this would um further tie us into a long-term management plan um large scale disasters like if our entire 140,000 Acres of woods burned down it would be a problem in this whole scenario but it's a really minimal risk um and the land transactions this is probably the biggest one to me land transactions become more challenging it locks in the land that we have for a longer period of time to not do as many trans um transactions as um as we could otherwise Um this can be mitigated by and it's too long of a discussion to get into here but it can be mitigated by um some our land's belamy County fee title land some of it's tax forfeited land and strategically placing Parcels into those different tools would allow us to um minimize the damage that that would cause or potential damage um and then I looked really hard into how can we diversify our risk how can we make this um less risky for us um and it's really challenging to do that a couple ideas that um I've talked about a little bit with commissioner Gould is co-oping with other counties in the area um or also doing a smaller enrollment can we enroll half of our acres and leave the other out but um how the credits are processed um those really aren't options that we can look at um I can talk about it more at some other time but um to move along what happens if we do do it we have to enter into a contract with a credit developer it takes about 18 to 24 months for the first credits to be to start coming in to be credited to us so that's the first opportunity that we would have to make Revenue um the developer like I said works with us for 20 years um and then we close out the project by monitoring the the forest for 20 years internally in the nrm department um one potential negative um that I also looked into a lot and when I talked to other counties that have enrolled um this potential negative image to the logging Community the timber industry because just like me they're saying we need Timber if we're not going to cut timber anymore what's going to happen and it does not change how much Timber we Harvest um and so all the other counties um they're all in Wisconsin um all the ones that I talked to said that that never became an issue at all they didn't even receive calls about it um and they informed the county boards about it and and it never became an issue um so what happens if we don't do it we can continue operating as business as usual we're a profitable Department as is um it is a missed opportunity and that's the main risk that we face if we don't do it um because if carbon markets do take off um we lose that Revenue um and we can always reassess it in future years but for me and my recommendation tonight is to move forward um to start developing a contract with a company that does this um and the reason for me is that there's a bunch of counties in Wisconsin that have done this there's a couple private um land holding groups in inota that have entered into contracts there isn't a County in Minnesota that has done it yet and there's an opportunity to work with a developer that doesn't have um Forest credits with a county yet and so the biggest part about this voluntary Market is how do you Market the credits how do you sell them and you develop well they develop relationships with different businesses that value these credits um they have a backlog of people that are looking for credits and I think to get in on the leading Edge for Minnesota companies that want to purchase these credits and to get into their pool of clients that are looking for these types of credits I think it's a better opportunity today than it is two years from now commissioner cman uh thank you Mr chair um Shane sorry I mean sorry you didn't get very much time I this is an interesting topic that's going to take probably an entire hour hour and a half for us to review so is is there an urgency today there there is no board action then then can I ask respectfully that we set this aside for another day because we just don't have the time there's no way I'm going to vote yes or no on anything like that today so so so in the interest of time I I would love to have you come back and and we allow a lot longer discussion period is that okay can I start moving forward with a a developer and the contract would take months to develop anyway um can I start getting that process rolling or you need to do that just to find out what kind of Revenue we would get from this I haven't seen any numbers at all I mean is is this a $10,000 deal $100,000 deal millions of dollars I mean that that would you know potentially influence me but it's Millions Mr chair is as long as there's no cost to us other than Shane's time to do that I think it's probably prudent for you to gather more information to bring to us yeah I would be okay with that as long as it's not going to take an time for you and as long as long as there's nothing binding for us yeah yeah yeah is that correct that there would be nothing binding and that it wouldn't take you a ton of time correct I would for sure well I'll come back before the board to talk about a more fully and to get is anybody opposed to that all right go ahead thanks Shane thank you and we move the administrator's report to the board meeting because we don't have time right now and U Mr chair i' like to move item 7j from the consent agenda to 9A on the regular agenda all right so 7j you said yes move pull that and go to 9A and then we'll put uh 9B for the administrators report perfect Mr chair uh 7h as well 7h approval Township maintenance with city of Wilton MH you have an issue with that okay so we'll put that as uh you want that to be 9B and the administrator Point 9C probably yeah that matter to me whatever one yeah so we'll make that one 9B instead and administrator's report will be 9B or 9 C got that Scott hour rate what's that the last one will be the admin well 7h is going to become 9B and administrator report will be 9 C all right so we will be adjourned for need a break anybody we good all right so all right well --------- ##VIDEO ID:t8p1UIdHxFA## e e all right call the regular meeting of the County Board to order please stand 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 liy and justice for all right interest of time I don't have any general comments tonight and so we'll look at the citizens addressing the board 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 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 a person wish addressing the board may not use profanity or vulgar language is there anybody wishing to address the board not seeing anybody we'll move on to approval of the agenda approve the agenda with the following changes move item 7j to 9A and move 7h to 9B and the administrative report to 9 C thank you do I hear a second second by commissioner Carlson any discussion all in favor of approving the amended agenda say I I I any opposed all right look for approval of the consent agenda as amended your motion to approve it to approve the amended agenda consent agenda okay we have a motion by commissioner Carlson to hear a second second by commissioner Winger any further discussion on the consent agenda hearing none all in favor say I I I any opposed motion carries 5 Z on to the regular agenda so item 9 a is a natural resource management approval of the easements with the city of buiji sorry oh or item eight if you wouldn't mind oh oh yeah sorry current jail facility getting ahead of myself all right current jail facility condition review so we addressed that or discussed it during the work session um we have a uh a bid for doing that facility review is there any anybody want to make a a motion in a second and have discussion Mr CH I'll make that motion motion from commissioner suner I'll second that second from commissioner Carlson discussion about the jail facility condition review anybody have anything they want to comment on Mr chair I would just say uh I'm on the uh the design and operations committee and I was quite surprised that that the bid was that low when Krauss Anderson came back I guess we were kind of thinking and we're going to be in that 20 to 30,000 range and and when K Anderson came back with that I the DNL committee um supports that and and recommends that so that's yeah thank you for that information commissioner Carlson Mr CH I hope that I hope they don't come back with their revised uhal too late too late all right any any further discussion hearing none all in favor of approving the jail facility condition review say I I I any opposed all right that is approved 5 to zero now we're on to number 9A which is a natural resource management approval of easements with the city of bidi that is also something that we wanted to pull off and discuss um Mr chair go ahead commissioner Carlson I have a concern about the baseball fields and all the activity that's going to be going on around there I think it would be helpful for us as a commission to have Sam Anderson come to our next board meeting and talk to us about the difference between the eastwest corridor the north south Corridor and and and and really let's get down to the nuts and blls I'm really concerned about the safety of the baseball fields yeah I am as well had both my boys were in baseball and I parked in the area that they were planning on blocking off there and I I think there'd be a lot more traffic north south there so I'm puzzled why why the bypass wouldn't go through our Fairgrounds property and that way and and keep Middle School Drive more open so I would I would agree with that so um I I don't know if we um table it to a future meeting or or what uh it would be it would be my preference that we uh table it until the next meeting on the 18th and have uh see if Sam was able to attend Sam can attend and address that would somebody else like to second that uh Second okay so all in favor of tbling that item until the next meeting say I I I okay any opposed all right item so the natural the U approval of the easement will be tabled until our February 18th meeting on item 9B which is the approval of resolution for Township maintenance with city of Wilton commissioner G you would wanted to pull that what yeah I just I just wanted to abstain from the vote uh to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest I do have a uh a vested interest in in uh some residents there and the city so okay um I'm just gonna abstain from okay we'll do a roll call vote then on that uh um so if there's nothing else on that one uh look for a motion to approve the resolution of the township maintenance agreement with the city of Wilton I move that make that motion motion by commissioner Carlson second second by commissioner Winger and if we can have a roll call vote to Diane do you want to call for that or do you want me to okay commissioner Carlson yes uh commissioner gain I will vote Yes commissioner Winger yes commissioner suar yes and it passes for with one abstention thank you and on to the administrator's report M administrator Barry thank you Mr chair how about little bit of a lengthy report so it's probably fitting that we've moved it to this meeting uh but I'll try to move through it pretty quickly uh this has been a tumultous past few weeks for local governments um in regard to what's going on at the federal and state levels particularly Minnesota um at the federal level you're probably aware of many of the leadership shakeups the national funding frees that was on and then it was off the uncertainty around several uh Federal programs now and agencies um this has a lot of local uh governments particularly Minnesota concerned uh much of our funding this was brought up a little bit earlier at the work session much of our funding from the um or for the county comes from federal and state uh reimbursements or program Aid or th those sorts of things um and as we talked a little bit earlier in the in the work session we'll be pulling together some of those numbers for the board and I'll present those at another time um it's essentially at the state level you know we had a $17 billion plus Surplus you know not too long ago and now that swung to A5 billion deficit in just a short period of time uh this is concerning uh because many mandates were passed over that same period of time which added costs to local governments particularly counties uh that provide services on behalf of the state um and so uh our legislated platform which as you know uh was an attempt to kind of push back on some of those and get some of those mandates correct Ed and such uh has been stalled as well uh we were hoping for Relief uh through our legislative platform and our work at State Capital uh to see a push back or a correction um but with regard to what's going on at the state level that's been very very difficult to get any traction uh essentially the Minnesota house uh remains at a standstill as the body's not yet produced a required established quum of 68 members uh and the Secretary of State uh despite calling uh the meetings of the house uh four different times last week with all GOP members showing up but no dfl members attending they're not able to make any progress in that uh in that body the Senate does continue to meet under a power sharing agreement which is good news uh however there's concern that now that the dfl endorsed um uh candidate uh was elected to the body in a special election last Tuesday that maybe the power sharing agreement might be dissolved uh and that might create additional challenges uh on the Senate side of things we just really don't know how all this is going to shake out uh but with those kinds of things going on at the State House it makes very difficult to get heard our issues on important matters that involve our residents and citizens and the like and of course we're not the only County or the city uh cities around the state are having the same problem as well um the governor's budget has also been uh something we've been watching very closely and is a very big concern for us particularly with regard to uh what we've uh analyzed on the Health and Human Services front uh there's been several service cost shifts that are uh have us very worried I should say um the uh cost shifts do result in either an unrealistic or unaffordable increase to County taxpayers uh if they do move forward or Advance uh which is looking unfortunately more and more likely as uh as we see what happens in both the Senate and the house side of things and in regard to the fact that uh we are headed for a major deficit in the uh state budget um at this point in time a high level cost estimate of the state's Health and Human Services cost shifts to the county our particular County that the governor's bu Governor's budgets proposal uh has uh the potential to increase our County costs by about $2.6 million annually that's significant that's approaching a 10% increase uh in property taxes alone just on that one uh those several issues that are included so obviously this is a major concern to us um and it's something that we need to watch closely uh naturally we are going to monitor uh what happens on this budget and in particular we we've been already uh conversing with local area legislators uh we've been conversing with um The Association of Minnesota counties the Minnesota rural counties uh and we've also mobilized our legislative lobbyist on this uh this is probably one of the most significant uh cost shifts that we've seen um in recent history so uh it's it's very concerning um this will of course be top of mind when we go down to uh the capital as part of the benij day at the capital um it'll it'll probably be one of the most important topics we can discuss I mean there's lots of things so um this kind of came out of the blue for us and unfortunately uh didn't get included in our legislative platform and initially because we weren't aware of these um roll backs and cost shifts that were being developed at the same time we were developing our legislative platform um anyway as I mentioned already that bidi day the capital is on Wednesday March 5th uh I'm intending to to go if any of you are interested uh let me know and we can convey that information Al also to uh uh the Chamber of Commerce uh lastly I was just going to mention that as a reminder uh Monday February 17th is a holiday it's President's Day and so offices will be closed on that day that's what I have for you in regards to an update and I'll stand for any questions you might have anyone have any questions for administrator Barry doesn't look like it thank you thank you that moves us on to legislative and lobbying and we'll just combine that with commissioner reports uh commissioner suar do you have anything you would like to report on uh thanks Mr chair um last Monday I believe was uh the Bel tramy County Extension committee meeting and that was a pretty interesting meeting I'm looking forward to meeting quarterly there um so thanks for for the uh committee assignment I have commissioner Winger I yeah I was also at the same meeting um one of the things there was a couple things that were really interesting there they should have a new education person hired soon sounds like they had a lot of applicants which is really surprising but they said they got some really great ones um and they talked about Audrey Roy starting one in Red Lake and that's outstanding that they that they have some things happening there and then uh Eva and Nate talked about what's called superhell and um I don't know if they've been here and talked but it it would be great if they could get to one of our meetings and and tell everybody about what that is cuz it's really an outstanding project they get going so hopefully that's something we can do in the future uh today I did go meet with uh Kim from excuse me the beltram area service collaborative and she kind of filled me in on what all was going on there because I'm I'll be on that committee and so we'll meet next week but um just kind of getting the rundown on what all they do and all the different services that are there so I get an understanding so that was really educational today too so that's where I'm that great thank you commissioner Winger commissioner G yes thank you uh a couple of AMC meetings lately mostly uh legislative updates and information uh I attended a joint Powers natural resource board meeting last week um updates from the DNR um I did the chatabout interview um there was a Northwest Minnesota juvenile center meeting on I was voted in as the next treasur for the next year so um those will uh those will start um towards the end of the month the officers meet um at the end of every month um and then the board meets every other month I did a ride along with uh uh Deputy Summers on Sunday yeah Sunday and pretty uneventful um but uh learned a lot from him uh yeah I was no no serious incidents uh during my uh ride along and and it was uh but it was good um kind of went um different townships outside the city of buiji and and uh he kind of filled me in on his background and and uh it was it was good uh definitely encourage uh encourage us to do that once a year if you can Minnesota rural counties met on Monday morning I zoomed into that um some more legislative updates and uh one thing that they mentioned was uh a couple of bills of concern that Senator icorn has introduced that would kind of limit County's ability um to um collect property taxes it would set Levy limits and kind of uh um hinder the assessors work a little bit so um I did contact a couple of itasa County Commissioners that know uh to see if uh see what they know about it too um MRC didn't seem super thrilled about them so um we might have a couple of extra bills to pay attention to there so that's it um couple of meetings coming up uh in the next week or two thank you commissioner G commissioner Carlson thank you uh newsletter committee uh met we have a February 14th deadline for articles um Diane always does such a great job of putting that all together together for us so thanks Diane uh jail design and operations committee met and we reviewed the what you already saw we what we and uh so we're looking forward to getting that started now that we've passed that resolution to have Carl Anderson do the U rehab look um uh I did zoom in with Joe on the Minnesota rural counties just because I had time and it's a zoom meeting so it was and I did I I share uh commissioner G's concern about Senator I Horn's uh proposed legislation um I have a personal relationship with uh Senator iorn and I will be reaching out to him to ask him uh what his intention and what what's really going on with that so I will have maybe more to report on that at the next meeting um and then I had a visit with uh Turtle Lake Township uh folks last night just to get acquainted with them now it's a new to my district so that was a good good evening that's it thank you commissioner Carlson I had uh Mississippi headquarters board meeting and Planning Commission meetings both of which we approved the plat that was on our consent agenda for Andia Shores and we had another one that was a a quite a bit earlier pla um that we approved at the Mississippi headwaters board as well had a fairboard meeting um that was relatively uneventful uh um getting prepared for the next fair already of course um Cast Lake Fire association meeting um I actually recommended uh we have a um newer board member there he used to be a firefighter he got injured was not able to be a fir fighter anymore but his his dad actually used to be the the um the fire chief there he's got a long history of being involved with the fire department and so I asked him and he was willing to to step up to be the the new chair of the fire Association um so I I nominated him and he accepted and got voted in as a new chair I was voted as the vice chair so I could kind of help him transition into that role um just to to get more Youth and and uh um he's he's on a Township Board in in the gas Lake area so that's how he's on that board in the first place so I think that'll be uh his his name is Ryan riplinger and uh uh he's the new chair of the gastic fire Association um and at the Mississippi headwaters board I also we we kept the same slate of officers I'm the vice chair of that as well and uh that's my report anybody have any last minute things or El look for a motion to move to a journ what's that move to a journ you just about ate the microphone there so I didn't catch it motion by G to Second by Carlson to adjourn all in favor say I hi we are adjourned