--------- e e e order and we at this time I will accept a motion to go into close session pursuant to Minnesota statute 13 d05 subdivision 3 to discuss the purchase or sale of
real or personal property motion by Winger go hear a second second second by G and I believe since we have commissioner Carlson on Zoom we will do a roll call vote commissioner Carlson oh is he there was and I know I
saw him but oh sure oh he might have okay well we'll can we'll continue on commissioner suar commissioner Winger yes commissioner Gould yes and I vote Yes so we pass
for to N I guess we go to the other room 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 at this time I'll accept a motion to end
the closed session and return to the open meeting do I have a motion motion motion by commissioner G I hear second second by commissioner suar and we'll do a roll call vote uh commissioner Carlson
you're on mute we you might not hear us yes yes I heard a yes out of commissioner Carson commissioner SAR yes commissioner Winger yes commissioner Gould yes and I vote Yes we are back in open session of the
work session and do we have any new employees just to introduce not seeing any so we'll go on to identify future work meeting topics anybody have any future work meeting
topics they want to bring up not seeing any we'll move on to easements with the city of buiji and I believe there Sam here to talk to us about that come on up
and I've never been in this role here first time I've ever been in Chambers during a normal work session or meeting so it's a pleasure being here Sam Anderson city engineer director of Public Works um here any questions you have I did have a brief presentation that I don't know if um Diana is able to get up it's not a super lengthy one so
just yeah here to talk about the easement I thought I would use this platform to just update the the board and those listening tonight about the project that are maybe unfamiliar I hope that's very few at this point but um it's a joint project with minda we applied for some Federal funding um we
got a federal raise Grand project that's been in our pocket now for about 3 four years so we've working on design the city's going to go first um looking to tackle if you maybe Dian if you in mind switch or just a click oh perfect um the city streets of Hannah Avenue and Middle
School Drive um we are going to look to reconstruct this summer 2025 um we would leave ourselves just short on the north end up by the trunk Highway that project mot is going to take on and bid that and construct that
in 2026 so that's kind of the scope of it some of you have maybe heard about this on the radio it's been pretty active part of my life at least in this world um the county does not have any legs of this on any of these intersections so you guys have been kind of in on the outskirts of this one in particular um the request that the city
has of the county is specific to um a couple properties that the county owns specifically where your remote transfer station is there the recycling part behind Target there um that property along with the Southwest quadrant at 23rd in Middle School um we need some
permanent and temporary easement for where the ball fields are um in order to accommodate a temporary Bypass Road and then obviously permanent easement for trying to fit a circle and a square essentially with our roundabout so um that's been the request I think you've seen the offer as part of those previous
closed sessions um some questions came up that I got wind of as of the last meeting um the temporary bypass roads primary function is to essentially provide um we're going to build it on the south side of the intersection from east to west the goal there is to keep
some function instead of creating that intersection as a dead end um we're going to keep it as a three-way intersection so folks can get to 23rd Street from middle school coming north from 15th Street um the reason we do not want to bypass North and South around
the East Side trying to leave the orthodontist office Alone um is essentially um we don't want to detour traffic and promote that movement um through our project um we hope to have a lot of what's already shown kind of in
bold there to the north completed this will be the last part of the project is essentially um building just that that roundabout at 23rd in middle school will be the last piece of this project I'm assuming everything goes forward as planned um so we hope that the impacts
to those facilities as far as youth baseball youth softball um we actually think that this will probably be completed more in that late um August September time frame and so we actually think schools are going to be back in session we're not expecting a lot of the Youth Sports to actually be in service
um and so I've actually met with the School District transportation folks a couple weeks ago talked about how this is going to impact them on both the fall or their their rest of their um year this year in May and then again what it might look like in the fall and keeping those conversations going um the other
thing I wanted to note is that it's in the contract um for the contractor to provide those Portable Concrete J J Jersey barriers J barriers um you see them on the edges of some of the county Bridges um those will be placed on the
extr the extremities of the bypass road to delineate those private parking lots with that bypass road when we get to that phase so I wanted to hit on a few of those topics I'm certainly available for any questions that the County Board may have you have a question or okay go
ahead commissioner Winger okay my my question is you said you don't want to make it a dead end but you're making it from the north which is more traffic coming from the north than there is from the south because you want to run east and west which East and West has the least amount of traffic currently um you
know I've spent some time watching the intersection and everything else and then you said it's not going to affect the youth sports but the Youth Sports starts in May and goes to end of July which is the time you're looking at so
you are going to seriously affect the use baseball especially which is all that uses that facility so yeah good question I'll clarify a little bit better on my part uh um commissioner wer um the bypass road itself we aren't necessarily looking to construct until
the latter half of Summer and so the construction extents we would expect that we would close down the ability for folks to go north of 23rd and and middle school that intersection you couldn't go north because that'll be under construction up by Target that whole stretch that intersection will be pretty
much unaffected so at least folks can go from 15th using Middle School to 23rd they can go east and west they just won't be able to go all the way up to Target because we got to rebuild that part um the bypass road will only get installed in order for us to construct that physical roundabout which is the
ladder half of construction so we'll do a lot of that work to the north well into those early months well before necessarily there's going to be any actual impact to that intersection we're just not going to allow traford to go north of 23rd during that first phase so
youth organizations can still access the ball fields use Middle School Drive they can get to that intersection they're just going to have to go East down to Ridgeway where kenk Thompson you know one of those other intersections in the interim um but it keeps some of that flow going at least through those early months so Sam when would you be
anticipating actually putting in the concrete barriers and the and the bypass of you know that eats into the parking lot of the ball the baseball fields and when would that actually get installed would that be after the baseball season is over and August sometime or or would
it be later in the season like I'm just you know concerned about tournaments that they might be hosting and have you actually talked to the baseball association the youth baseball about this at all or you know try to coordinate that just like when we're you know doing some work with the Fairgrounds Road and and and the and the
main Highway out in front of the fairgrounds talk to the you know the a Association and made sure that the timing was right so that it wasn't going to negatively affect our fair and the same should be done here for the the baseball um I'm I'm actually questioning why we need a a roundabout there as a
bigger question I'd like you to speak to as well um you know I don't I don't know that there's been accidents there and I'm concerned about you know with that many roundabouts in a row if the people will be able to pull out to you know potential salability of our property right there um you know how that could
be negatively affected and so on sure uh Comm I will um answer them as best I can the the intent I guess was the you know we took a guess at what we think the contractor is going to do based on the scope of work and the phasing we're
anticipating that it'll be the latter part of the summer I'm going to say somewhere in that August time frame we would expect that Bypass Road would start being under construction I have not t talked to any of the youth organizations um I've been a little hesitant to do that because I'd like to
get a Contractor on board have them produce the scheduled a think and then and work from that to give people notice but we do we do Envision that the impacts will be lessened enough that they'll still have quite a bit of parking available um it is the nature of construction we're trying to try and
keep it as best we can you know we're trying to do the best we can to your comment about the the we did an analysis of that whole stretch as part of the mot Corridor study and determined kind of the the issues we're seeing on that Corridor and the big one is obviously there's two-way stop control now which
obviously makes that queuing time for those streets so 23rd Street as residents are parking at that top those PM peak times which we would say like 3:30 when school lets out they're sitting there for over a minute sometimes trying to take a left out of the intersection some of you maybe are familiar with that so the roundabout is
warranted in the sense that it's it's some of those delays we're seeing there are actually I think three um significant crashes that have been recorded there within the last I think decade we pulled some of that data because the council asked those same questions why is this warranted a driver got waiting too long took a right out
and obviously got impact and these are pretty significant these are those right angle crashes where somebody got hit on a driver's side and had some um injuries I don't know if there's any deaths um but some serious injuries so it has been one that's been kind of on the cusp I know if those are familiar with the um
fourth and fifth grade Dyan school was looking at across from the Middle School this was one of those intersections that was going to kind of get pushed into needing to be upgraded when that got pushed out to a different location that's just kind of SAT but it's been on the cusp of needing an improvement and so we pulled it into this project because we have the funding to do it as
part of this I hope I answer I don't know if I missed any your question commissioner go um just I guess the main thing would be you Consulting with the the ball fields and and instead of you know getting it committed from the contractor standpoint and then asking
forgiveness instead of approval and and that it would be nice to talk to them and find out when when is their their last tournament of the year and maybe putting that as part of the contract for the people doing the construction that they wouldn't construct it and block off the parking lot and everything until
after X date you know that's that's what I would like to see I'll make a note John U online do you have questions for Sam thank you Mr chair I do have a question a couple questions number one I I also
Echo your concern about the need for a roundabout there um so but I guess Sam's already answered that so um not that I still think that we need one but he has answered that um
I am concerned about giving up some property knowing that the city of leiji has had some pretty hard lines on percent of green space and if we um are reducing the amount of our lot
size and and and if we should decide to sell that property in the future uh what AFF smaller property will have on the amount of space and I'm just wondering if there's anything that the uh attorneys can do
to um assure us that the calculation for green space and all of that sort of thing that comes in with with the planning uh Department um that we get to add back the full amount um before the
sale and so maybe that would just require a little addendum or a little change to the uh agreement for the purchase of of uh of that thank you commissioner Carlson Sam did you follow what he was getting at
there yeah I think I I don't know if you wanted me to weigh in I think um in these in these senses the the permanent acquisition is actually quite a bit smaller than the temporary the temporary is pretty expansive because of the bypass road so keeping in mind that all that's going to go back to the county there's no impact once we remove that
and restore everything the way it was um clipping a little bit of those corners for this future roundabout I don't Envision any issues these are very sizable lots that are currently undeveloped in a sense I mean there are functioning to an extent but if a larger developer came in um I don't necessarily in the in the vision I have as an
engineer not a planner I don't see the loss of that space necessarily being detrimental to the value of the property this is very insignificant in the scale of a multiple acre parcel um but certainly I I wrote up something similar in a planning case that um we may or or
not know there's some work being done at the old Westridge Mall um the marketplace food section there we're taking a fairly significant portion of a corner of their parking lot and there was some concerns about how would planning view this if we're eliminating 15 parking spaces for in and keeping in mind they have 500 to begin with and I
wrote up a nice little thing that said I mean to me as a city engineer if we're doing a benefit for the public good that affects you know traffic safety and the benefit of a driver what is that impact in relation to if there was a sticking point on the Planning and Zoning side where now it triggered you to be out of
compliance so to speak and I felt comfortable in that regard weighing in from that position to say at some point you have to have kind of a list of who has priority and when you're doing a a traffic Improvement thing that Sav saves potentially lives and lessens risk to the public but you're giving up a little
bit of a green space percentage if that becomes a sticking point I felt comfortable having that discussion with the planning office and weighing in as I will be aware of these projects but at this point they're blank slates and I don't Envision that being an issue for the county on resale with the um if the roundabout
here goes through the access that we have just for that um transfer site the solid waste Transfer site and the buildings that we have there um I would assume that that probably would need to get moved or or what you know because
it's so close to where the roundabout would be um the plan is to put them back where they are today really that existing access there would remain we're going to we're going to put it back okay and if we were to you know in the future sell that property um how would the
roundabout affect the Ingress egress to that property um would there the ability to put a another access on on the the main Middle School drive there um or would do you have any rules on how many accesses can be along there
yeah there's certainly guidance out there for the what I'll say the proximity and the closeness of them um to me I view it as a blank slate that does have the benefit of basically touching Hannah Avenue 23rd Street they each have water and sewer utilities I think a developer is going to look at
this holistically and say what serves me um I think for parcel of this size assuming it stays one concurrent property could easily arguably have maybe one to two if not even three access points depending on how that business entity um residential
environment would operate um there would be guidance for necessarily proximity of the roundabout I think even your County engineer Bruce hbor would weigh in on that that you don't want everything so close I can't have an access coming out of the middle of the circle for instance but certainly there'd be a lot of opportunities there to figure out what
works best I just try and get them to up across the road from other ones um and so I think that's going to really probably figure out who is going to be developing it what ideally would they like and then that's a conversation I can have but there's a lot of flexibility in a site like this having three sides of public right of away okay
thank you Mr gou do you have any yeah Mr chair a couple thoughts uh Sam I just want to thank you for your work on this uh it's um a lot of stuff um and I trust the professionals on this uh City staff
and and and mot uh and the engineers so um you know I I think uh we're looking at a a fair dollar amount in our um consent agenda item today for the uh um
easements um I did have a question about um may like with any of the four roundabouts here are any of them going to have a temporary bypass um for people to drive kind of uh past the construction site or
is there or are they all going to be uh detours so the ones that take place kind of more within the project limits this one is on the outskirt so why we thought we could accommodate something to go around um folks might be thinking of when minda did the 71 project built the an Street roundabout they had the big
bypass they had enough right of way there that they could construct something I would have pretty exorbitant amounts of costs and maybe be impacting other people's maybe getting too close to those existing buildings that we just talked about on the Target property so for the ones that are taking place more within kind of the extense of the
project we're just going to build those and phase them within that project no detour because what we don't want to do is we're not trying to promote that through traffic movement we're just trying to get those folks that need to get to a particular location in and out of the construction as needed for those particular businesses that still have to
operate we just don't want to somebody that just wants to get to the highway we don't want to promote that movement so you're not going to see those kind of detours built in it just delays projects and it just makes it too cumbersome to do in one construction season so to your point Joel that's a a long way of saying just we're just trying to accommodate
that southerly part to kind of keep functioning traffic on the cell side of the project yeah and I too have heard from uh parents who have kids in baseball and um I've heard both things i' I've heard concerns uh but I've also heard people that are supportive of the
project uh they're not going to like the temporary pain of course but that's with any construction project uh I've heard them talk to me about you know how it's going to be better for Public Safety and and traffic safety um you I'm convinced it'll reduce accidents uh potentially
even save lives so I just want to appreciate uh the city staff and and the city council for um what I think is a no-brainer decision here um that's going to reap um economic benefits in the future um so yeah thanks again for
coming in appreciate the info here commissioner suar uh thank you Mr chair uh Sam I appreciate you coming to you the the County board meeting today I guess I got a couple of questions
um and and I know that my colleagues had probably asked you know these questions as well what I'm just kind of curious what what has been the community's response and then it sounds like you haven't talked
to uh the the baseball association but what about the the Greater Community um I imagine that with a a project uh this complex and and uh you would get some
community and um input or or what what is there been involvement been I'll summarize that we've been add it for about three to four years to exactly that point commissioner suar we''ve we actually had had a couple different alternatives for
how these even our streets could have looked aside from even the comprehensive study that mindat has done a couple iterations of with public input in a panel um so the short answer is we've done this for probably two to three years now I've had public open houses um
relatively well attended I think the community struggled a little bit with roundabouts I think we've all heard that in all different forums um there's a there's a time and place for them I think there's only a few different options you really have to pick um so that's been some of the consternation I
know from the direct businesses that I've had inperson meetings with Target Home Dep all of those individuals I've had iners meeting with talking about the project um obviously construction is no fun yeah and so it's making sure that they're as comfortable as they can be that we're going to be doing the project
in a way and while you're seeing are doing a lot of phasing um is to try and keep access as open as we can to those businesses as we're doing peace meal we're not shutting anybody down completely and so of those conversations have been had over the last 18 to 24
months leading up to why this design is even phased this way is trying to accommodate as many as we can to limit that stress for folks and keeping them up to speed on what the plan is so that they know what it is as they get into the construction so that's that groundwork has been laid to your point
Thank you so um my next question was how long has this project been into work so it sounds like 18 to 24 months I got here here in I got to the city in Fall of 2017 and we kicked off the for first Corridor
Community review panel um about early 2018 we did an 18mon process there um couldn't come to a consensus on the Improvement I think most people remember that there was like six roundabouts I think on the entire Corridor of the mot Highway we ended up pausing it we went
back to the drawing board I served in another panel for 18 months came to the conclusion we today so Sam would the like this specific roundabout um that wasn't in those original ones though was it the the improvements on their city streets that only came to
light as part of the second go around which was pretty recent and that that's that was my you know like this was kind of took me by surprise know if that's what you were getting at question or something that was uh one of my next questions was um how long has the county
been involved in this process and and and is the reason the the county is involved is because of that portion there on uh on the fairground site is that what in the ball fields yeah yeah what is that
what's bringing you to to the county correct okay yeah um and how long has the county been involved with with this then I that's a good question I guess directly I don't I don't know I mean there would be notices and public
engagement and how that would be responded to okay so have have you had any conversations with any uh with our the highway engineer or the administrator or because to me it seems like this is kind of coming up in the last month or two and and um um and I
appreciate you know you're coming uh and and presenting but to me it seems like we're we're kind of wait to this ball game and and you're asking permission after you you've done
everything um Without Really the County's input so that that's one of my concerns and also um you know with the with the fairground property I'm not too sure how much of
that you your the roundabout is going to affect you know the the property or the property value so I I'm just not too sure if I'm really in support of of something like this you know being so late in the in the game with you Mr
chair uh commissioner suar I think now is the time for the county to be involved I mean he's he's here now because because uh everything that's been done up until this point now is the time to start talking to the county and you know commissioner Carlson requested
he come in and uh at our last meeting and and he's here now and um so I think anything we want to share um with Sam or or the city is now is the time so I don't I don't think we're late to the game or we've been ignored or anything
like that it's just that we're at this point now right thank you Sam I appreciate you coming yeah just just a brief clarification I guess I have to think back to those folks that was on one of those Community review panels I know the first one I don't know about the second
one but we invited a lot of those Community stakeholders um to weigh in this is an unusual one to be a project this and doesn't intersecting any of the intersections so that would have obviously been a whole different um not to put you guys in a box because you're
not mind but you're kind of getting treated as if you were a private property owner and I'm just pursuing what I need to do than I want to do in the public right so you know I don't know if I would have expected in a different circumstance if he needed room for a county roundabout and he needed
city property I guess as they would have approached us when they knew the design was what they wanted it to be and you guys come to us and say well this is what that's kind of where we're at it's not that I'm trying to be in a black hole not involve you um I just think
there's different looks like depending on how directly impacted the county is on a particular project um and so just trying to lay it out there a little bit more broadly that it's not as if I was intentionally trying to be um it just ended up that this is an unusual one
where Bruce might be thanking me that no County Roads intersect this road he got a lot he got out of a lot of meetings and I'm gonna never forget to remind him of that so well we better get moving on here Sam Mr chair Mr chair commissioner Carlson you have something yeah yeah just briefly uh Sam
thanks for coming in I appreciate you're taking the time um I I'm going to request that this be taken off the consent agenda and be put on the regular agenda um I just feel like we need to get some more direction from Bruce and
then maybe take it up in two weeks but so that's just a [Music] thought hey thank you commissioner Carlson and thank [Music] you thank you we'll move item 7j to to
10 [Music] a regular agenda okay so we gota get back on track here U next up is the on sale licker license application discussion
um let's see who's the are you coming or oh our County attorney is coming up Jord and leel are just stuck in the middle so I volunteered take the brunt of it and really I'm stuck in the middle on this too as is the county this is
more just an FYI for you guys the situation is there's a land owner in 10 Lake Township who um has a liquor license they had one for years the township um has withheld consent for the
renewal of that liquor license uh the Landor then came to the county and said hey you guys give us our liquor license you know you guys don't need Township consent for this and happened last year Bui and Lea came to
me at last year um my review of the statutes it was pretty clear that upon initial application of a liquor license pound ship consent is required by State
Statute it is vague on whether you need it for a renewal um based on my research my advice to um the license center was you probably do not need it on a renewal however Bel
trammy county has had a past practice where we do require it or we not necessarily require it we've just gotten it from the townships and so I also advise I would not peac meal Grant only this liquor license you know I I'd
either change your policy or not right in the inter term I also had a conversation with the attorney representing the landowner and an attorney representing the township and they were able to work things out last year and it all kind of smoothed itself
out for one year fast forward this year again uh Township declined to provide consent it has come to a head um the landowner sued the township and for
what's called a RIT of mandamus uh the district court in their legal analysis came to the exact same conclusion that I had come to which was it's needed for initial license but not for Renewal and they basically the
district court basically said Township or you know land on your fight's not with the township it's with the county and so we are now present they've now come back to us and say please give us a liquor license and so I am advising the
license center Vis A you guys uh what do we want to do with this you have a choice of just you know letting me advise the license center to change our past practice and no longer um require
or or receive um consent for the renewals I believe that could just simply be an administrative thing if you want to all nod your head and give blessing to that you sure can if you want to vote on it you can probably do that too if you want us to not Grant this liquor license um you know let us
know that as well I will tell you you'll open yourself up to a lawsuit if you do that so theoretically you could open yourself up to a lawsuit from the township if um we Grant the liquor license and you're kind of stuck in the middle I think the the case to defend
that would be much stronger than against so really I'm just gonna stand for questions after that little presentation anybody have any questions for Mr chair hold on John let commissioner
Winger go here um when I read that I thought it looked like the judge had um ruled against the petitioner on that I'm trying to look it up here but yes so they did so it say this a technicality
situation say um saying entity government body we want want to force you to do the thing that you are supposed to do and so they sued for randus upon the T Lake Township say
please grant that consent the judge is saying hey back up that's a level we don't even need to get to the town the county doesn't need the Township's consent so I'm not going to rule on the mandam issue to the township wink wink
if a mandamus petition were given to me saying County grant me this liquor license I would probably grant that mandam this so the the judge kind of gave us the road map to say County this is your decision you don't need the Township's consent you do on new
applications just not on renewals commissioner Carlon you're muted sorry about that um so I noticed that there is no um item on our agenda either consent or
regular about this issue so um is this something we have to add to the agenda or is this just something we're trying to give guidance to Leela and Jody it's more of a guidance thing again this is just a past practice of the license
center we didn't want to because it's got a lot of political aspects to it um I know that the township has kind of raised some on who's also you know been willing to go to court on the issue it's
more of a FYI to the board that um I'm advising the license center to change their past practice of no longer needing consent from the townships technically that's really your
guys' call if you if you don't want the license enter to make that change if is kind of this is just the FYI to you guys so if you take no action it's going to result in my advice to the license center allowing this license to go
through if you want to stop that this is your chance I so go ahead John so so thanks David I appreciate that so the question then um has there been any complaints against this establishment because of their liquor license has the sheriff come forth has the township come
forth with reasons of any kind of abuse of that license that would warrant us not granting a renewal no uh just like every other liqu license that goes through sheriff and County Attorney office review both the
sheriff and I have already signed it you know we've held off on processing it until this conversation uh the Genesis of the complaint of the township or the lack of consent of the township towards the
landowner is a zoning issue which from my perspective and from the sheriff's perspective has nothing to do with whether to Grant or not Grant a liquor license now they might very well have a legit zoning issue but that's a different uh different battle for a different
day um does so Mr chair if you're looking for head nods I would nod my head and say I think we should allow the license for you thank you commissioner Carlson I'm just wondering what the if Jody if your office would prefer for us to actually vote on it we could add it
to the agenda or if you're okay with just going with the the head nod and um and changing of the administrative policy do you have a preference [Music] [Music] there as David Hansen said if it's okay
and he has advised us to change our past practice on what we're doing um it's not in the ordinance correct right so we wouldn't have to change the ordinance it's just changing what we require for past practice and if that can be done with just a head nod I'm
okay with just a head nod okay thank you shair y commissioner G it sounds like this would be a great item for a possible policy Review Committee if we happen to establish that so so are you for tonight uh you're okay with all right how about
commissioner Winger suer you guys okay so yeah we'll go ahead and thank you for your help with us attorney Hansen and thank you John all right we'll move on um we have mid day at the chamber uh thank you for your patience Scott turn here to to talk to us about the chamber
and and the day at the capital I should say yeah thanks for having me um it's been a while I think since we've been in the county so it's a good opportunity to come back um maybe just a little recap I'm I'm Scott tur I'm the president of the Chamber of Commerce here in buiji um we are celebrating our 118th
year as a chamber in buiji that's even older than uh the Minnesota Chamber itself so feel like been around a long time uh we're at about 450 members um we're kind of all over the place we're
up in Red Lake we're you know Clearwater County where membership in includes a lot of different it's not just buiji so um a lot of different members through our territory we 100% membership funded we don't get any money from the city or the state um we're 100% membership and
event driven in terms of our Revenue um our mission is to advocate for the business Community both as individual businesses and the business Community as a whole and one of those things that we do is bmid at the capital this will be our 18th year already it
seems like I must be getting old I think I've gone to all of them um but it's a great opportunity just to kind of talk about all the things going on in the midi um there is life north of Brainard a lot of our legislators have not got have driven up north of Brainard so it's
kind of nice to tell them what really is going on here um some of the help we need and things so the County's always been part of this we've had um Tom last year we've had previous County an was here last year um so I'm coming to you
today uh Tom's been at a few meetings that we've had um your summary sheet of kind of your pro priorities is in this as well there's things in this packet from Minnesota Chamber um that our local chamber has adopted uh you know some of those things
are we have kind of a draft itinerary so we set up all the appointments um we're looking at setting up about 60 appointments 60 to 70 this year uh we had 60 last year uh we get teams of about three to four people so we might have about 15 teams going uh
with about five or six appointments for each team so so we get a lot done in those four hours we take a bus here from buiji down there um some of the local projects going on here there isn't uh for my understanding anything from buiji State
this year um they've had some buildings that they've done in the past um I don't think the Count's had anything real lately either in terms of infrastructure um but a couple of local ones you might be interested in the BCA Expansion Project I'm not sure how well
you know that one but they're looking for some planning dollars uh to double the size of the BCA here uh to take it from about 27,000 square feet to about 55 so that's a great one obviously for um law enforcement in the area part of
that is just kind of to speed up the process of how long it takes to um do their work there so uh I think from what I hear there is um it's in the governor's budget and it does have a lot of support at the capital so um I think this BCA here pretty much
does everything from north of St Cloud to the border and then the St Paul office does everything north of there or south of there so that's a good project and then I'm sure you're familiar with the northern Township sanitary sewer project um they're looking for some
funding as well down there this will be the second year that we're taking that down um to the capital so as I mentioned you you have that packet that shows the County's initiative I think there's maybe 10 or 12 of them um we can either
just discuss it now or Tom and I can talk later but you know it's good to get that down to maybe two or three we usually get a solid 15 minutes with each um legislator so although we want we' love to talk a couple hours with each one about everything all the needs we
have and things but um you know maybe to pinpoint a couple of those whether it's the landfill issue whether it's a lot of the Health and Human Services stuff I mean there's I know the County's got a lot of stuff going on but that might be a way to kind of narrow some of that down uh the chamber itself we have some
things too that probably you're hearing through the community you know we had 35 new work work uh workplace mandates um in the last session so you think about small business in our in our state 90% of them have less than 20 employees so
if you have 35 mandates you have to navigate you probably don't have an HR you probably don't have an attorney on staff so you know the the owners got to figure all that that out so we're hoping for maybe a delay in the year we all feel comfortable about that one uh before we get through but um that's a
big one and then permitting is really really taking a long time in the state of Minnesota um similar permitting might take five or 10 times longer in Minnesota compared to other states we're not saying change in anything about the laws of the regulations those shouldn't
remain the same just we have to figure out how to make a lot faster because we're losing business other states for that so um those are probably the biggest ones and then balancing the budget um you know we're we're anticipating maybe a five or six billion
dollar deficit as a state based on the figures we have right now we can't go into that and tax more businesses we have to figure out how to get a balanced budget based on what we have now so those are probably the three part priorities from the chamber standpoint um and I guess I could open
up to any questions that you guys have on any of those initiatives or ones that you feel really strongly about as a county thank you Scott commissioner Carlson you for shot if you have any questions for for SC turn uh no but thanks for coming Scott we appreciate
your time commissioner SAR Winger or G have any questions for Scott yeah Mr chair go ahead commissioner G thank you um you mentioned the number of legislators you're meeting with uh that's great um
but I was wondering um how you decided on those particular legislators if you could talk about that really whoever says yes honestly it's not a one side of the other yeah I mean there's the first you know we only have
so much we can get in in a day so I'm emailing everyone uh we're in the middle of that right now as you know there's lots of things that change um so it's pretty fluid up until about the last couple days but um we don't really you know we try to match though initiatives where who's on what
committees now there um nothing against F freshman legislators or anything like that but if there are not on a committee that uh we don't think it's beneficial or as beneficial I guess if you can get someone on an education committee or houth and Home Health and Human Services
committee we want to prioritize some of those and and make it worthwh being in there so but we don't really I I we don't say no to anyone for sure I mean we reach out to everyone the first first ones we can fill um the better to me
yeah and then do you plan on doing this uh next year again and and year after year or yeah you know well we had to take a break or two uh during covid but yeah I mean we as long as there's people that want to go we're going to keep going um we're hoping to have 55 on a bus this year um we're trying to
encourage young professionals to go we have a really good young Professional Network at the chamber there's about 50 60 people in that group and theber Chambers committed to letting those folks go down for free uh because we think that that's great leadership and those are going to be the next leaders
in our community so the more that they can get engaged in what's happening in our city and our County and at the state level um I think it only benefits everyone so yeah very good yeah thank you great thank you I just had a couple things to add since I'm here I just go ahead coming off maybe the last
conversation that I heard um you know about the lot even that you own behind Target and we do a lot of uh we do a lot of tax based St is pretty important right so um I know the Count's tax base about 40% comes from taxes you
know if you even talk about $100 million budget you have maybe 3% inflation there's there's a gap there aund about a million dollars that needs to come from new tax revenue every year tax base or whatever so you know as a city and as a county um we need to figure out how to get how do we get that pool of tax money
bigger not just the same people paying more right how do we get more and more businesses um going on in our in our communities you know we have a lot of Border C counties to us and so you know I think we do a pretty good job but if you think about there's probably going
to be some conversation later in this meeting too about like housing crisis right we don't have enough housing well we I don't even think we had an apartment built in belamy County last year I know we didn't have one in the city and I can't think of any City within Bel chami County that builts an apartment complex so so we have to start
thinking about that either properties that cities and counties own or how do we get more private development in here to add to our tax base every year because we're kind of in a weird position where on paper it looks like we have a lot more tax base than we did four or five years ago but I think
everyone would admit that on their tax statement it's because property values went up it's not because we've added a bigger pie right so those are ones that that the chamber is really concerned about we have a lot of taxes on our business Community right now um the alternative is not to keep raising taxes
and and I'm I'm not saying on a county or city level I'm just saying in general uh we have to figure out how to get bigger tax Spas here and only other suggestion I would I would mention to you is trying as a County to buy local as much as you can and I I know that's hard
I know sometimes that's difficult um the state Cooperative purchasing agreement I can tell you that it's not always the cheaper I can tell you it's fastest and I can tell you it's the easiest but it's not always the cheapest and if there's ways that the county can look at things where they can purchase locally or give
locally a shot um all things under $175,000 do not have to go through the state purchasing they would like you to but um you know we have four car dealerships in town we have Bobcats we have all that kind of stuff so just something to keep in mind if you can
take a little time to maybe try to do more locally we'd appreciate it so that's all I had I thank you for your time and thanks for having me thank you for coming in Scott and giving us an update we appreciate it yeah you're welcome all right we'll move on to the opioid steering committee spending
report I think Ann Amy is doing that okay good evening are you okay if I start what's that are you okay if I start yeah go ahead okay yep all right uh Amy Bulls Public Health director and I am here to do presentation on our
spending report from 2022 to current of uh January of 2025 there is no little oh thank you okay keep talking okay I'm just going to get us started you do have a PowerPoint
in your um packets so uh the first slide that you have talks about our community engagement so I'm really excited that the committee that you um appointed to overse and and give you advice on how we should be spending the money successfully commit committed committed
oh my goodness completed Community presentations to raise awareness and engage our stakeholders um and through that um we kept the community um involved we kept the community updated on what we were doing and we also um moved to allocating
dollars to support our community organizations so I just want you to be aware that in 2022 we received uh $331,700 some odd cents and we did not spend any of that money because we got
it at the end in December of 2022 in 2023 we received um $82,400 and we actually spent 94% of that we were commended uh by the um AMC uh organization if you remember in June
of this last year for doing a great job of forming a committee um and that committee's work in a pretty uh quick timely manner um and the allocation of the dollars out into the community and then in 2024 we received five uh 501
259 and we only spent uh $67,000 of that our current balance remains at uh $771,000 all right so our biggest accomplishment was in our funding hope campaign so if you recall every year we're required to
host a community um session where we invite municipalities and the community come and give us advice what we took away from our 2024 one in this last October was the importance of funding hope and so that's what we titled our
campaign and that's how we are going to be um funding the initiative um of the dollars that we spend through the um OPI settlement funds so in uh January of 2025 we released our campaign of funding
hope in addition to um starting the campaign and the RFP that uh recipients for 2024 we funded the Reset program we funded um work through the nameless Coalition we funded the drug court the
north homes um Services Stellar Human Services and ours to serve House of hospitality and then as you'll um probably be remember we also released another RFP um in January of this year
and those applications are due the end of February here and we will um work on bringing to the board another presentation of how we would recommend um allocating up to $70,000 to fund our applicants
all right so as you know in the um opiate contract that we have with the state they require us to use the funding to support treatment prevention and other strategies and so what I did um to kind of make it more visually
um uh I guess appealing is to show you that these are all the categories that the state says that we can spend the money on right we can spend it on treatment use disorder we can spend it on neonatal absent and syndrome we can spend it on prevention and treatment and
recovery and so every area that's highlighted in black or that's bolded are areas that are money touched that's it Amy um the money you know we got a pretty significant balance in that account I I hope I assume that we would
have that invested and and are earning interest on that or you know so what we've done with that funding is we set a budget for us to um allocate approximately $140,000 every year in spending and so
what I can tell you is every dollar that's been allocated year-to date if we have paid like if everybody submitted bills for the money that we we gave them that we said we were going to spend we would only have I wrote it down a
balance of like it's just o just over 500,000 and so if we put that money right now into some kind of like savings I don't think that the committee is ready to make that recommendation um
we're just starting with the RFP process and and setting a budget we have had that conversation we just haven't gotten to that point yet and do you have something to add there just wanted to add hello Commissioners andin sou director of Health and Human Services um one one of the limitations
of investing the funds is access to it we can certainly work with our auditor Treasures Office to look at ways that we could invest where we would still have access to it when we do request for proposals and have um individual entities billing us we have to have the
funds available to pay those invoices but we can certainly look into what that would look like to invest some of the funds I just think it would be prudent to you know the amount of money that could be accumulated with interest rates on that large of a sum could pay for the Reset Program money that we got
potentially that we allocated you know I mean there it's just have have that money make some money commissioner suar Mr chair um I know when I was part of the the committee we did spend uh quite some
time talking about you know Investments and savings and ceds and and at the time it just didn't seem like it was uh the right opport Unity but I think as as time goes on uh the further we get into this there there might be you know an
opportunity to um you know make investments because I I agree you know it it doesn't make sense to to leave your money there not making money you know so I'm hopeful you know maybe within the next year or two um we can
revisit that again um but Amy I had a question about the the dollar amounts you mentioned there some dollar amounts that are in the in the fund how much oh yep our total balance right now that we have is
7711 1603 771 okay thank you thank you Mr chair thank you Mr chair oh yeah go ahead John um Amy is there any regulations that we
can't have that in an interest pairing account until it's used uh no then okay so then I I guess I'm going to Echo commissioner gig's comments that that's that's sort of a der elction of Duty of not having that in an interest
bearing account that's a lot of money that we could be making a lot of money on that that would fund a lot more opioid kinds of projects and how do we expedite doing that yeah so of the 77,000 we have about
200,000 that is encumbered so we are at about half a million going to be RFP out another 70,000 and so the remaining amount we can certainly work with the auditor Treasures Office to invest that great thank you yes I think we probably
better keep moving on then if there's no further questions thank you Amy and we'll move on to the the housing collaborative update who's got that one aan good afternoon Commissioners an linth director Health and Human Services and I'm here today to talk with you
about the belamy County Housing collaborative belamy County Housing collaborative in G graphy as we are a group of about 18 entities that work together around the housing crisis so you do have the PowerPoint in
your packet so I'm just going to get started um we came together um as these 18 entities in 2023 and we came together in response to the Red Pine vacate order so there was a community housing crisis and to be quite honest the community um
was not ready to respond to that type of crisis it was very unique in its makeup it didn't necessarily meet emergency response guidelines um so we came together very quickly to talk um as a community about how we were going to respond and so that's how this group
originated we had our first meeting in July of 2023 and at the beginning we were just triaging that red pine crisis we met weekly we were trying to respond to it um and I I do think that um we did
a fairly good job of trying to help those residents there was 48 residents that were affected and all of them were relocated into housing by September of 2023 but following that crisis the group of agencies wanted to talk about do we
continue meeting and what does that look like and so we did have an after incident review in late 2023 and I did come to the um board to report out the um results of that after incident review but at that point in time is when we re
branded um the group to the Bel tramy County Housing collaborative and we agreed that we were going to meet monthly and we created a mission statement which you guys have in front of you um and we also created subcommittees to do the work that was identified in that after incident review
and so we identified a number of areas um one being training uh our agency staff they are experts in what their agency provides but there is there wasn't a lot of cross um agency knowledge so some by what bcap does they
are experts in but they didn't necessarily know what other entities did and vice versa so we wanted to create a way to have some training around um training agency staff on housing housing is really complex and multifaceted not just in belamy County but across the
state there's a lot of entities that are involved in housing and everybody has a little piece of the pie that they're the expert in so we're trying to put that pie together so that we can share more information and serve the community in a better way we also wanted to focus on the discussion around Cod change and we
do have the city of buiji um both their attorney and uh their building inspector as part of our group and they are really integral to the topic of code change um we also had a subcommittee around resource development not just for agency staff but for housing Seekers and people
who were struggling with the housing maybe that they were currently in um we also look to develop a crisis plan because we did feel that we were ill prepared to manage that crisis when it occurred and so if something else happens in the future around housing we
want to have some kind of plan on how agencies in the community are going to respond so that was the subcommittees that were created out of that after incident review and today I just want to talk about what we accomplished in 2024 based off of that and some plans for
2025 so so these are our member agencies there is a great representation here and I'm very excited at how invested all of these agencies are in housing and in attendance at our meetings we have great attendance at our
meetings um we have great input good feedback good follow through and we have representation kind of across the Continuum um as far as nonprofit and public entities you can see we have um Stanford Health legal services in
Northwest Minnesota but we also have um nonprofit entities like bcap uh we have hrdc so we just have a lot of good representation that I think makes this collaborative very successful in the work that we do so the 2024 year in
review um this is a lot of work of the sub committees and there was a lot of entities and people that were very involved in accomplishing these things we did have an agency housing training it was a three-part Series where we trained each other um and and many
agency staff attended this so that we could serve the community in a better way we could make those cross referrals and we had the knowledge that we needed in order for people to successfully be housed or keep their housing um that was done right here in this boardroom um and
so that was a really exciting project we also did a written housing flowchart so I did hand out some things to you and that is two of those pieces of paper are the written housing flowchart one is specific to agency staff the other is
specific to housing Seekers um you will also find in the packet that I handed out the crisis plan that was completed by one of the subgroups and it is not perfect it is not going to address every single crisis that would occur but what it is is a road map so that we as
entities can come together and say this is how we're going to address this if we have something that comes up so it's a generic crisis plan but it gives us somewhere to start we also at our meetings do a lot of information sharing on buildings that
have concerns or buildings with openings and we certainly do that in a solution focused way so if there's buildings in the city or county where there are concerns we talk about what can we do as this group of 18 agencies to support either the land Lords in that building
or the tenants in that building or both um so we're very solution focused we do not need to talk about challenges just to talk about challenges we want to look at how we can solve those challenges and so some of the ways that we have done that is through some landlord Outreach
we do call up landlords and say hey here's some of the services that our agencies provide could we help in this way and so you have probably heard of neighborhood connections that's an example of wraparound services that we provide both to tenants and landlords to
help build community and kind of manage some of those challenges that at times Bubble Up um we also have worked with legal aid to do some targeted Outreach so if we have a group of individuals who are struggling with maybe landlord tenant laws things like that um we have
had the pleasure to have legal aid use their mobile unit to go and address um the questions that maybe the the residents have in some areas which has been very helpful we've done some a lot of collaborative support between our agencies that are involved as far as in applying for Grants or looking at
different development opportunities um we like to write letters of support for each other we're doing everything we can to address um this housing Continuum care challenge that we have in our area and all of our entities are working very hard to look at whether their focus is development or
whether their focus is keeping people housed it's different for all of these agencies but we work together to support each other in each other's work um we also did follow up with the red pine residents we wanted to ensure that was a very traumatic thing that
occurred for them and we wanted to ensure that they were still housed that if they were on a voucher program that that voucher program um was still serving their needs that they were somewhere that they could afford to stay ongoing um and so we had a couple agencies that really stepped up to the
plate and helped us to follow up with those red pine residents we also serve as an advisory committee to the Housing Trust Fund cabinet and you know I've been here before about the Housing Trust Fund and we have the cabinet the cabinet is made up of a lot of Private Business
Specialists so Bankers developers landlords our group the Bel try County Housing collaborative is made up of a lot of nonprofits or public entities so we have different lenses on how we look at housing and so I think it's really important that we have that lens that we
can provide to the Housing Trust Fund cabinet as they they make decisions and recommendations to this board um we also partnered with the city of beiji to host the first annual first city housing seminar it was in August of
2024 it was held at the Sanford Center and we had a lot of housing resources on site um we also had the building inspector on site and that was a highly attended um session where there was a lot of questions for the city building inspector um but we want to do a the
second annual housing for housing seminar in 2025 and so that's a big goal that we have for this year is how do we improve upon that the first of anything you're going to find things you maybe could have done better and so we did that um after incident review the city
did a good job of reviewing how that first city housing seminar went and what we can do to make it a bigger and better uh seminar for 2025 we also have really delved into hearing presentations from landlords developers Community agencies is and
housing Seekers um because what we want to do as a collaborative is look at the full Continuum of housing what's needed what are some of the S systemic issues and challenges around housing there's a lot of them um and is there anything that we as a collaborative can do to
improve that process um so that was our year review and we accomplished a lot when I was doing this slide it was getting pretty long and that made me pretty happy with the work 2020 25 goals we're going to continue to collaborate share
information work together we want to support both people who are housed who are maybe having challenges also people who are unhoused and then the landlords and developers um it takes all of those entities working together and being successful to improve housing um so
that's our goal to support we want to hear more from our housing Seekers from our agencies from our developers and find ways that we can meet some of the gaps that we're identifying and then we want to hold that second annual first city housing seminar so in
summary as Scott from the chamber mentioned everybody is a stakeholder in housing the housing the availability of housing along the full Continuum from lowincome housing all the way through is really important to the success of our community um so that in it of itself is
so important and why we all are working together on this challenge the different perspectives and experience coming to the table helps us to look at the full Continuum and the systemic challenges that come along with housing and if we work together we're going to be able to achieve more so the goal of the belamy
County Housing collaborative is to provide that space that space to learn more share ideas throw things at the wall see what sticks um and hopefully it's going to help all of our agencies in our daily work it's going to help us serve the community better and hopefully
it's going to help us meet our mission statement um because our mission statement is quite lofty uh together we promote collaborative Partnerships that work to develop resources and create Solutions focused on reducing housing insecurities in Beltrami County ensuring
everyone has stable housing so that is all I have for you Commissioners do you have questions for me Mr chair yeah go ahead commissioner G yeah thank you um I'm just wondering if uh if you could share something that former County Commissioner Reed ol has
shared during this process these meetings because he really is the expert on homelessness in the area and and uh really has a brain for housing in general so um you know uh we don't talk as much as a lot of people think so um
if you could um I'm really because I saw the homeless uh Coalition uh nameless Coalition was one of the agencies there uh if you could share something that stood out well I can say that Reed Olsen has been involved in our meetings and is
part of our feedback and input at as we move through some of the solutions and challenges that I've talked about today I can't give you any specific quotes from Reed but the nameless Coalition is an important piece in the Continuum actually I can tell you
something that Reed has said shelters are not the solution to housing so while shelters are extremely important in the continuum they are not the solution and it would be great if we didn't have a need for shelters because there was enough
housing for people to access and so I think he's very invested in in development of housing along that full Continuum because he does not believe that shelters are the answer to the housing crisis okay thank you and if you
could name something that the County Board here could be supportive and helpful in with your efforts going forward looking at the goals for next year um you know what would you say that would be well I would certainly appreciate
attendance at the first city housing seminar when we hold that second annual one I think that would be really impactful if if the Commissioners will be interested in attending and I will certainly send that invitation out I was going to bring that up actually because
uh um I think one thing that kind of hind hindered attendance last year it was at the same time as the the pride festival which brings thousands of people out every every summer so um if you could look at maybe a different day
um than the whatever day that was in August last year certainly that help yeah we can consider um a different date I know it was thrown together rather quickly because we wanted to have a response and provide something for the community
around housing but yes we will consider that in the future thank you did you have something commissioner Su uh Mr chair thank you um and thank you for the uh upda and presentation um couple of things is um
what the first sheet here yeah um step one it says if you're you are an enrolled if if you are enrolled with the tribe contact them to inquire about housing options
so I'm kind of concerned with that because I'm wondering are are these folks are they living in the community here or or what how did that come about um I know most tribes uh have difficulty
with housing as well so I mean if if they live here in a community I would imagine that the community would help with Services correct or that's just one option for people so we don't want anybody to miss out on any resources so if their particular tribe does have
Housing Resource maybe their tribe has something to pay for first month's rent because some do um we don't want them to miss out on that opportunity okay yeah I I was kind of wondering about that because I I often hear you know that the county receives uh
increased funding uh for tribal U members who reside within the county so I I was assuming that there would be some sort of funding available for for housing or or other types of
services um for the county to receive that funding and then send you know the tribal members back to their tribes that didn't seem kind of right only speak to the count is funding for housing so um we have our
Housing Trust Fund um but the only other specific housing funds through Health and Human Services are emergency assistance funds which are are accessible to anyone who is income eligible for emergency assistance the problem is that many housing funds not
just the counties but this applies to the house the county funds as well you can only use them every 12 months you can only use them for specific things and so we don't want people to utilize a a resource and then not be able to
utilize it if they need it for something else again so we want to this collaboration this group of of entities we want to work together for to help people find all the resources that are available to them and then help to use some from each of the entities so that
people are able to access what they need okay thank you Mr great thank you an I think there nothing else we better keep moving on than you thank you appreciate it jail project payment Authority
Tom good afternoon Mr chair commissioner I wanted to run through a policy that uh we have developed as a design and operations team associated with payment for uh construction related activities for the jail as you know uh the jail project is going to really start taking
off here probably around really April or so and we expect uh very large bills to be coming through uh for the construction and uh oftentimes as large construction projects evolve there are things that happen that need to be addressed very quickly uh that would
necessarily lend themselves to 3 weeks before we can get to the board to make a decision because we have mobilization demobilization uh time incurred cost those types of things so essentially what we did together as a design and operation team has put uh together jail
project payment Authority and approval policy uh that's in the uh packet for the work session but it's also included on the consent agenda as well so I wanted to give a few minutes to walk through that policy at this point make sure that you had a full understanding of it and uh if you had any questions
that we could get those addressed um and if not we should pull it from the consent agenda and have a a longer conversation the regular meeting first of all I just wanted to uh let you know that the the primary process and the way that we would we would be paying bills for construction
would follow that first paragraph there essentially suggesting uh what is currently done in practice every day inside the county administrator's uh office so essentially you know when we get a bill we ensure that that bill is accurate um in this particular case the
there's going to be a two-tiered accuracy review one of them is going to be done by the semar the construction manager at risk the second one is going to be done by the um architect of record which is Klein McCarthy Architects and then the third will be by myself and if
those three um reviews find the bill to be accurate we'll we'll have the County Administrator myself process that for payment provided that that payment is within the budget the scope of the project and all that sort of stuff that that's really what's been going on I mean that's kind of what the job is uh
as it relates to any kind of project provided that the county has approved the project in advance and also set budget budgetary dollars aside for it what is a particular um note worthiness is the the next couple of paragraphs as it relates to change ORD so a change
order or a CO or a potential change order that means we're going to have to make a change but it's not yet being made that's called a potential change order PCO uh we want PCOS and cosos to follow an approval process um that goes through
the design and operations committee essentially we've got that committee they know what's going on on a daily basis in regard to the project if we have an issue come up um that requires a change order or a potential change order we would like the design and operations
team to have authority to approve that potential change order or change order provided that that um change order potential change order remains within the project scope and also within the Project's budget whether that budget is the the primary budget or the
contingency so that's that's the first step um if it is outside of the time frame that the design and operations team can meet and make a decision uh then we enter into this situation where
you know time might be of the essence we might be charged a large dollar amount for waiting every day to give direction on a change order or potential change order uh to the contractor or or contractors or maybe even um the construction manager and we don't want to incur those costs so the design
operations team has developed a secondary process here which would allow for um in the absence of the dno team coming together in quick fashion and being able to take on uh the review process that the design and operations committee chair uh which is John Carlson
and the County Administrator jointly would then make that decision up to $100,000 uh if that change order potential change order goes beyond um what is originally budgeted now that is um provided also that the potential
change order or change order is within the project contingency so as you might know we have several million dollars of the owner's contingency we have several million dollars of um km or uh KRA Anderson's construction contingency also within the contract those contingency
were originally set up for this purpose well we don't want to spend them and we'll do everything we can not to spend them in fact the majority of the change orders that we've process so far are deductive change orders that means there's savings to the project so um you know that makes perfect sense especially if it doesn't impact the project in a
negative way so what we're asking here in this process is that in those situations where we can't get the design operations team together we've got up to $100,000 in a potential change order changer that has to be decided on very quickly uh the chair of the DNL committee and the County Administrator
would would give be given the authority to go ahead and make that um adjustment as long as it's within the uh contingency fund now in the event that it's not any potential change order or change order that exceeds the budgets or the contingency funds we would say would
have to come to the board okay and that way the board retains uh control of that budget outside those contingency funds so if we're adding a million dollar or half a million dollars and we don't have contingency that covers that we would want to bring that back to the board that we may incur some additional costs
associated with delays and being able to make that decision if they were significant enough I would just call a special a special meeting and uh see if we can't get a quorum of the board together and try to process it that way U but those are the options that are available to you and that's what's been drafted up in this um payment policy so
I just want to make sure you were familiar with that and if you're comfortable with that it's on the consent agenda if not you have additional questions or concerns want additional time to process it yourself uh we can pull it off the consent and then uh either talk about it later or schedule it again there's there's no rush on that particular policy at all
for uh for approval that's all I have for you on that anybody have any concerns or questions that they want to ask Tom about that nope Mr chair NOP yeah um generally supportive of The Proposal
I think it looks really good overall um this looks like a an excellent topic for a possible future uh policy Review Committee that we might uh vote to approve as early as next month um but
specifically to this policy um number three it says in some instances da da the County Administrator and do committee chair jointly shall have authorization to approve a change
order up to $100,000 I do think um one other County Commissioner should be involved with that um and I do think that all three would need to jointly agree to that change I
know there uh I'm pretty sure there's another County Commissioner on the on the deal the D and O committee there isn't okay well still I think another commissioner should be involved um and I'm glad the committee chair is a
commissioner I think that would have to I think that makes sense um but you know I just I'm not super comfortable with with only one elected official um I have the utmost confidence and Trust in
in Tom um our administrator but I just for transparency reasons and the significant dollar amount to me we really do need one other County Commissioner to sign off on this um and doesn't matter to me who it is as long
as it's uh um yeah they don't have to be on the committee or not just somebody else from the board well I mean I would certainly as a board chair be willing to to do that if this if this should arise um I'm mostly
always available so um if you want to make that change if you be if the board is okay with that I would be fine with I I don't I think this will be a rarity if it if it happens at all but uh if if that happens you know certainly
could add me into the and have it be a three-way thing if that if the rest of the board's okay with that yeah I think uh I think it could say uh um County Administrator DN committee chair and
board chair sure or alternate if you're not available for some reason I think that would be just fine if if that's what the desire of the board is we have to should we uh vote to make that change in the
meeting or well this is on this on a consent so we'd have to pull up from consent to um um to to vote on it if we're GNA have actually vote on it separately otherwise I'm fine with doing it here or or polling otherwise you could make that that adjustment I think
and leave it on consent too could you uh no we'd actually have to have an we do have to pull it because you're making a slight change to it okay let just put on your regular meeting and then we'll word Smith how you'd want that and then and then make a motion to approve and get the board to approve it but we would want a formal approval with that is
everybody in agreement that we need to make that change uh Mr chair Comm Carlson um I would I I don't oppose uh commissioner G's idea I think that's probably an okay idea but I think rather than say the uh
County chair because this is going to be a two-year process I'd be more comfortable if we named commissioner gosig because he's been on the finance committee and that's probably the most important board member uh besides the dno committee with regard to budgets and
such and so I think what we'd rather do when we make that change in in General Session that we named commissioner gsig um having been the chair of the finance committee if that makes sense that way next year when we change the board again
we're not trying to bring somebody new into the project with regard to spending just just an idea well we can we can discuss this we're run up against the clock here so we'll we'll make item 7f as item 10B on
the the regular agenda for the jail project payment and then we'll probably end up having a move of federal and state funding sources uh to another work session maybe or or is that something you want to do in
in the regular meeting that not I don't know how long that was going to take uh maybe 10 or 12 minutes it's up to you can't that wait until next meeting that's what I was saying may we just put that on the work session for the
following meeting I'm going to be out next meeting so I hoping that we could do it tonight re question yep that's fine we can make that item 10 C will be the uh Federal State funding and then the administrator's
report will be 10d that'll work this F okay well we'll adjourn and be back in a couple minutes here we'll take a quick bathroom break and be right back Part: 2
e e e we'll call the meeting of the belamy County Board to order 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 liberty and justice for all right we'll go continue on to 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 personal 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 a person addressing the board may
not use profanity or vulgar language is there anyone wishing to address the board hello Jim lukach 13318 Wildwood Road Northeast uh back again just wondering if we're making any Headway on
some transparency and trying to get some information out to the general public on the redistricting issue I continue to trying to Lobby people and ask people and just a lot of people don't know what took place and I think
that is a pretty important happening in our County and I would appreciate Commissioners paying attention to people that come up to the to the microphone to speak I've been here a number of times and some Commissioners don't even raise their head and acknowledge me it's kind
of rude I feel uh not really not good about that um with what's happening in Nationwide I think you all need to really try hard to think about transparency um I know as a county
commissioner sitting for 14 years there was way too many closed sessions as far as I'm concerned but I know it always came down to county attorney legal issues certain things by law you can't discuss openly all of that but I I just
really encourage open meetings transparency um get more information in your county newsletter don't let that just become a a a regular old dissemination of information there should be more in
there and let us know what you as County Commissioners are thinking about think about some long range plans think about uh things that the general public doesn't know about but really should know about that there there just seems
to continue to be at a local level at a county level at a state level at a national level there just gets to be a feeling for constituents that you don't know what's what's going on behind closed doors and if anybody's watching
the network television boy there's a lot of things coming out and I've off I've often said difference between Washington DC St Paul belamy County city of buiji and the townships
are simply decimal points there's just as much things going wrong there's just as much potential for fraud um you have to keep a very basic concept in mind and that's been getting out of hand in the last 20 years I asked
uh commissioner Carlson to get me some uh data on how many people have been coming into our County how is our County grown and how has our budget grown in 2009 when I stepped up our basic spending expenditure budget was about
$50 million when I stepped out 14 years later in 2022 20123 that was up to $100 million now I realize that's passed through it's coming from St Paul it's this and that and the other thing but that has to stay comparable to the
growth of your County so I just encourage you to do your homework look at the numbers I always told everybody I was a numbers person and I tried to look at numbers and look at budgets and look at comparisons and I just encourage you
to reach out to the constituents be transparent share as much as you can be positive and try to move the county forward and I just would really encourage you all to give another consideration to an article regarding
the redistricting that's my personal matter that I'd like you to do but overall more transparency the better off you are you're going to gain those constituents trust the more things you can tell them the more transparent and get away from those closed meetings
those are just a bugger so appreciate your time thanks I do appreciate what you do I know exactly where you where you're sitting uh had my shoes in that seat for a long long time thanks and I get to go
home thanks Luke anyone else and no one's online I assume no okay we'll move on then approval of the agenda commissioner Winger do you have
that I want to move to approve the agenda with the following changes move 7j to 10 a move 7f to 10B move the federal and state to 10 C
and the administrativ to 10 b d is the so commissioner Winger has made the motion with those changes to the agenda do I hear a second to that I'll second it then and we'll do a roll call vote commissioner
Carlson yes commissioner stumer yes commissioner Winger yes commissioner Gould yes and I vote Yes the uh amended agenda is approved on to the consent agenda look
for a motion to approve the consent agenda okay Mr chair Mr chair y go ahead I I would move the consent agenda uh as amended by removing 7j to 10A of the regular agenda removing 7f to 10B of
the regular agenda and moving item 11 from the work meeting schedule to 10c of the regular agenda and moving the
administrator update from the work meeting to 10d of the regular are you seconding it commissioner Winger already made that motion will you second I'm sorry I I can he has to turn his mic on I can't hear him oh yeah he didn't he didn't have his mic on sorry um so
you're seconding the motion yep okay sorry that's right thank you and we'll do a roll call vote to commissioner Carlson yes commissioner suar yes commissioner Winger commissioner G yes and I vote Yes so the consent agenda as
amended is approved on to the regular agenda we have assistant County attorney new hire okay hello again gentlemen um for those who don't know I have had a vacancy since August that has gone on
filled since August uh I also had a um attorney going leave for several months so I was actually down two attorneys for most of the Fall so I've been in a fairly massive crisis Staffing wise with the assist attorneys um I have finally
found somebody who is willing to take the job in order to match their current pay in at step seven I am simply asking permission to do okay any questions for attorney Hansen like any so I look for a motion
to approve Mr chair yeah go ahead commissioner Carlson I would make a motion to approve the hire of um the assistant County Attorney at uh grade 17 step 7 commissioner Carlson and commissioner
gold second some motion any further discussion hearing none I'll call for the vote commissioner G yes Mr ringer Mr sner yes Mr Carlson yes and I vote Yes so we have a approval five to zero thank
you thank you are you you up for the next one or is it it is the Dave Hansen show today all right go ahead and talk about the Juvenile Diversion program funding yeah so uh and I think I was here about 18 months ago um to present
um give a presentation on the Juvenile Diversion program that we run through my office it is one of the most robust in the state and I'm very proud of the work that we do we collaborate with the bigi uh Services area collaborative Basque to
um facilitate most of the work of the diversion program part of it done inhouse with my assistant County attorney who does the juvenile work and then my Legal Assistant who does that and they work with bass to to actually do the classes and and and everything like that
that is harshly funded via Levy of the amount of $10,000 and the remainder of it is funded via a grant from the state of Minnesota uh for the last 10 plus years that Grant has come from the
Minnesota Department of Public Safety however uh with the state of Minnesota reshuffling its agencies that agency is now being folded into this new or that Grant is now being folded into this new uh Department of Youth and
Family Services um we normally write for the grant in the fall um or sometimes in the early um weeks of the New Year the uh Kim uh Kim Graham who runs Basque has
been contacting the grant administrator on that all fall and as we told don't worry it's coming it's coming it's coming uh we were told about two and a half weeks ago that guess what for 20 25 we're not going to issue that Grant this year we're going to just uh we're too
busy um putting together this new agency that you know we'll probably issue it in 2026 but you know for now we're not going to do it which puts us in a pickle because without that uh it basically funds the Staffing position at Basque that administers the the work uh so I'm
coming to you a to let you know about that situation um I've talked to Mr Barry about it from his lobbying perspective that uh is yet another unfunded mandate that the state puts on us that doesn't that uh then puts a mandate doesn't fund it then
offers us grant money to um properly fund it and then pulls the grant money back it's frustrating uh you guys know that already because I have had so much
um salary savings I'm coming to you asking to utilize some of that to put towards um a stop Gap if you will for this diversion program again I have been without an assistant County attorney
since August um that I'm not I don't want to touch 2024 budget of money I want to touch 2025 budgeted money I'm going to be the entire month of January the entire month of February and probably halfway into
march with um budgeted funds for salary that are going to go unutilized because I'm down an attorney I'm asking for the permission to take $220,000 of that um unspent salary money money inut towards my diversion program as a stop Gap I
will tell you uh myself personally I've also reached out to several foundations in the community including neelsen who is going to hear this on the 20th uh we've reached out to North Northwest Minnesota Foundation I am trying to scramble to get funds from other sources
we're our deficit for the program is about $80,000 for calendar year 2025 we are hopeful that we may be able to get the grant administrator to allow us to write that earlier than waiting till 2026 you'll maybe do the second half of
the year we are we're we're kind of clowing all the stops and and trying everything we can do um my ask for you tonight is to give me 20 grand that's already budgeted is just allowing me to shift it again that'll hopefully buy us some time to find those fundings to keep
it permanent so that's the ask if you have any questions I'm right here commissioner Carlson do you have any questions H yes David thank you Mr chair uh my only question is what do we do going after what do we do going forward in
[Music] 2026 again the the communication we've gotten so far is 2026 we'll probably the grant will probably be uh I haven't got guarantee of that as much as a a verbal you know game of
telephone that yeah it's probably going to be there um so I don't know commissioner Carlson that is a good question for right now uh if permanent funding is in Jeopardy I'm essentially going to have to reduce the service um
or or it's going to go on to Levy the we we are um exploring other options you know for permanent funding fing right now we need a little bit of Gap funding to allow us to even Explore those permanent fundings because right now
we're um be the way Basque runs uh and the way the Grant had been written for the year 2024 and then into 2025 we usually don't get funding on that Grant until March April and so Basque usually carries that
Grant or carries that position and goes in the deficit for January February and then gets back filled with the grant so right now it is in the red um and I um I assume if I don't get stop Gap funding that it'll just mothball almost
immediately so um I don't have an answer for 2026 I'm working on it and then a followup Mr chair I just wondering who are who's the commissioner that's assigned to the bass committee commissioner Winger um has he had a chance to look at
this yeah we've talked about it at the last meeting okay uh well with that uh Mr chair for the sake of further discussion I would move that we allow the County Attorney office salary saving to be diverted to the Juvenile Diversion program run through
bass that's in the motion I'll take that as a motion for approval do I hear a second to that I'll second it commissioner Winger second it any further discussion uh Mr
chair go ahead commissioner summer so um commissioner Carlson asked you know what happens you know going forward I'm I'm hopeful that you know with pass that bask and the um
attorney's office would come you know give a presentation board sometime in the future about you know what what could be the potential impacts you know if if uh the DYFS uh decides that they don't want to
reallocate you know future funding uh something to because I mean I 20 20,000 doesn't seem like a lot to to the levy but you know it is a lot to the levy you know in Bel try County so yeah I'm hopefully we can have a conversation AB absolutely
I'd be more than willing to do that I I would hate to volunteer um Miss Graham at this point because is kind of scrambling right now but um you know once we get things settled down I would be absolutely willing to come and uh present ideas attorney Hansen I think
we're all scrambling so thank you commissioner Su and and uh attorney Hansen I think that ideally you know once you have found out whether you can get any funding from the Northwest Minnesota Foundation nilson Foundation whatever um and have kind of a a
solution or a potential solu solution bring that back to us so we can make sure that that this you know hopefully continues through this year anyways and then um as soon as you know something more we can address that uh ideally before the budget time frame or or by the budget time frame this later this
summer of course I'll be glad to keep you updated thank you so we have a motion in a second any further discussion hearing none I'll call for the question commissioner suar yes commissioner Winger yes commissioner Carlson yes Mr G yes and I vote Yes so
it passes 5- Z thank you gentlemen thank you very much I really appreciate it all right that moves us on to the easement um item that was moved from the natural resource um approval of the easement with the city of bidi for the
roundabout um I think commissioner Carlson you requested moving now uh yesk thank you Mr chair uh just a couple of uh comments I I really appreciate Sam coming and and giving us his perspective on the project Sam's uh been a great
engineer for the city of B miji and I appreciate his his work uh I I did think though that maybe the one and I was wanted to take into uh account commissioner sar's comments that maybe we should have um Bruce come before if
Bruce could come at the next meeting um and just sort of back up the things I there's there is roundabout fatigue let's face it um but I I'd be more comfortable voting in favor of this if Bruce came uh and kind of gave his Blessing um that would help me
[Music] out so are you so at that Mr chair I would table this until next meeting uh and have Bruce our engineer come to the work session to explain um and U give us
his input uh and let's take up a final vote at the next meeting so I table I moved to table the motion Ted by commissioner Carlson is there a second to that I'll second that commissioner Winger seconds the motion to
table so we'll call for the the vote on the commission or the the tabling commissioner Carlson yes commission suar yes commissioner Winger Comm Gould no and I vote Yes so it passes 4 to
one thank you commissioner Carlson and I think it'd be good for us to have a little bit more time and and knowledge of before making an important decision on that the jail project um back to the uh the wording I think is what we were
down to is if we were going to make an adjustment to the adding myself uh to the um approval process should there be need of of a emergency approval um so Mr
chair yeah go ahead commissioner gold um move to approve the jail project payment Authority and approval policy as presented uh with the following edit in item number three um where it
says it's the uh third line down in number three after County Administrator and do CH do dno committee
chair add and commissioner gosig and then in parenthesis or alternate if commissioner gosig is unavailable jointly shall dot dot dot the same text is
presented do you have that Tom okay so we have a motion do we have a second to that motion I would second that Mr chair have a second by commissioner Carlson any further discussion Mr chair
yes I would advise uh that you pick the alternate now suggest yes okay and and is the alternate for just me or is it for me or commissioner Carlson if we if neither of us one or the other of us wasn't available that we would want two
Commissioners to F be voting on it is that what you're getting at good point because uh the whole point is to have two Commissioners uh sign off on it in addition to the County Administrator um so I wonder if we shouldn't approve
this motion and then decide on who the the alternates will be in a separate motion I don't know that or I'm I'm fine with uh we should name an alternate for sure for for uh if Craig isn't available so
you just make that as part of this whole motion just change the wording to include um you know the original Three and if one of those is not available you know then alternate would be whichever one of you wants to be an
alternate whatever well I was going to well there you go because they're an officer of the board all right so we add as an alternate commissioner Winger if commissioner Winger is okay with that okay so add commissioner Winger as an
alternate if commissioner Carlson or or gig is not available for that emergency decision and then if uh commissioner Carlson isn't available as the chair of the DN committee Winger would sit in for him or whatever that's way
right that he'd be the alternate to either one yeah okay so that's your motion do I hear a second to that motion I'll second that Mr chair okay we have motion by commissioner G second by commissioner
Carlson for the amended jail project emergency funding and we'll call for the roll call vote commissioner Mr chair little more for discussion oh okay um do we need to name another alternate would that take care of every scenario
if based on who might be absent for whatever reason I gets to be pretty close to the uh the um the same I guess we I mean how far do we go with it do we have an alternate for administrator
Barry I don't U because we might still be short of commissioner if if both you and John are gone then it would just be Scott we'd still need another commission pretty unlikely well we wouldn't have to
physically be in leiji Mr chair um all you have to do is be available by phone and by email to be able to look at a document look at the reasoning why uh and then to be able to chime in uh support or or not support for a PCO or a
CO I would you don't have to be in leiji you just have to be accessible by phone pretty much which most of us are are basically 247 available before phone I think it's going to be um highly unlikely that we'll have to even do this
and and even more unlikely that we wouldn't have two of the three of us available so if you're okay with that yeah sure okay Mr chair yep Mr commissioner Su uh so I guess seeing that there's a lot of
savings and um maybe update sometime or you have a minute uh Mr Barry how are these savings happening are are we cutting programming or are we cutting Corners uh it's kind of curious to to be saving so much money and and
not having an explanation uh Mr chair and uh commissioner suar I I don't have all the details for you but I have some so if you want more details after I'm done then let me know we'll get more to you but essentially the types of savings
we're talking about so far the first and largest one is the bidding savings so obviously when the bidding came back we were about 5 million collectively under all trades um if you average them all together so that money as you know got earmark and set over for the old jail so
we put that money essentially to doing something with the old jail which is a project as you know last time we met we've just started to kick off with the building condition assessment additional adjustments one of them we talked about at some length a few meetings ago was the cat 6 versus the Cat s cabling
that's going to save us considerable funding um it was additional savings based upon the type of um uh cell infrastructure we were choosing also the type of pre-cast those types of things so we're not sacrificing I would say and
commissioner Carlson could probably second this but we're not sacrificing the it might be an appearance issue for example to avoid a cost so do we need that color gray or that color brown probably not but it doesn't change functionally the the facility itself um
other improvements are things like getting rid of doors or or changing out Ingress egress or uh some of those types of things which are also deductive change orders materials like tiles for example do we really need that tile or can we spec a different type of flooring
that actually reduces the cost as well so those are the types of things we're not changing programming programming areas functional design layout none of that stuff's changing it's really just sort of the specifications of the materials uh for the most part at this point in time that we're that we're
utilizing to achieve the saving thank you Mr chair I I would just I would just add that car Anderson's been doing a great job and and so is kin McCarthy doing a great job of what they call Value engineering and what they do is
take a critical eye at at at the way things have been done in the past on structures like this and then looked at new methods that are that are common place now and acceptable uh so the value engineering is what's really saving a bunch of
money thank youer Carlson and I'm glad to hear administrator Barry say that the the bid savings was not getting just dumped into a contingency bucket I don't want to hear that from a finance point of view all right so we have a motion in a second for the
approval of the um changed jail project fund or funding um resolution or whatever um for the vote on that commissioner Carlson yes commissioner suar yes commissioner Winger
commissioner Gould yes and I vote Yes so it's passes 5 zero thank you on to the federal and state funding update administrator [Music] Barry all right I think dian's going to te us up with the presentation here quickly
know we're running way past your bedtime as it relates to the length of these meetings historically so I'll try to speed through this but U um okay perfect so at the last meeting the question came up as part of my administrator's report we were talking
about the Doom and Gloom of the federal and state government particularly on funding front there were three questions that were asked of me to come back and and provide to the to the board I I did this in a separate email to you already so you have the documents U but it was also asked to share it with the public so that's kind of why we're here today
so the first question was how much federal and state funding does Wy County reive the second one is what are the uses of those federal and state funds and then finally what's the likely impact to belamy County on the reductions uh or potential reductions for federal and state funding that come
our way so the first thing I want to do is throw up the uh slide that talks about our revenues uh yeah I did want to throw up too thanks for that but um here's the slide that came out of our 2023 Revenue sources this is straight out of our
budget uh and the reason I'm going to 2023 is because those financial statements have been audited so you know we've you know otherwise we don't have the 202 24s that have been audited yet so uh you know we felt more comfortable with these particular numbers we're just a little bit out of date but things are pretty similar if you look at uh the
2025 fiscal year um Revenue sources pie chart that looks really similar to this maybe a percentage or two off what's important about this is that essentially an intergovernmental uh section of this makes up the dominant funding source so
around 43% or so of the funding that comes to the county comes from federal and state funds now this is a this is a big deal um one on the one hand it says wow we're really good at spending other people's money right on the other hand
when that money picket sort of starts to wne back a little bit then we feel the impact a lot more than we would uh otherwise so as you know here property tax is only make up about a third of our budget and just as I said um this will
amplify um the impacts to our budget when or if federal and state revenue sources um get dialed back so uh let's talk a little bit uh based on the financial statements that were audited uh we've received about $8 million directly from the federal sources and
the primary uses for those several sources or federal sources are up here it's not every single dollar so I'm not accounting for every single dollar I'm getting kind of close to the the nearest half a million or so but essentially about 1.13 was used for Wick women in
infants and children uh and snap Supple supplemental nutrition Assistance programs uh 564 for Public Safety grants and programs about 333,000 for Emergency Management per performance and also disaster grants and we did received
several um of those uh and then the dominant source of Revenue U that gets used in our County from federal funds goes towards Health and Human Services programs about 73% of that 8 million and that's for medical assistance Foster
Care Child Support Enforcement and TANF or temporary assistance for needy families um some of these dollars just to mention it gets gets complicated you saw the tiny tiny print in the in the documents that I sent to you it gets really complicated really fast so suffice it to say that some of these
funds actually just pass through dollars as well so we don't actually hang on to them fly um when we look at State sources we actually receive about 41.2 million at least in 2020 uh three and uh 21.8
million of those were in shared revenues um and the prevalent sources that those funds were used for include um Highway user tax a disparity reduction Aid police and Public Safety Aid County program Aid outof home placements uh
local homeless prevention state for or Statewide affordable housing agricultural market value credits uh E1 e911 system and also the AIS and repair and protection Aid and then finally Red Lake reimbursements about 478,000 as well so this is um the prevalent sources
of those funds about 4 million was also state reimbursements for Administration health and human services so this reimbursement dollars that come back to us as we expend for administering programs for the State uh we did also receive 2.7 million in pilt payments or payment in
lie of taxes and then about 12.7 in the form of various state grants uh those predominant sources came about 10.8 million for Health and Human Services Department uh about 623,000 for the public health department and just a plug
to those folks um they're completely Grant funded we've talked about that many times in our community health board meeting meetings um that's also where those dollars come from pollution and Soil and Water Conservation uh resources Veterans Affair programming and Public Safety also make up the form of uh the
majority of the D the grant Revenue that we receive also from the state uh so all total when you look at the whole package here you know 8 million coming from the federal government about 41.2 from state revenue sources we have about
49.2 million of our budget uh that came in fiscal year 23 from federal and state revenue sources when if you remember back to 203 our budget at that time was really darn close to a100 million which means that essentially Federal funding
made up almost 50% of our entire budget uh again back statement that's really great as long as that money keeps coming it's really not great if that money starts getting dialed back um and so that is the problem how do we predict
and how do we respond to adjust Ms and essentially it really is impossible we we just don't know enough about these adjustments but we have some insights so I thought i' spend just a few minutes talking about some of those insights at the federal level we know that um the political and the financial Outlook is
very Dynamic right now almost daily things are changing at the federal level very top of the administration so there's a lot of government uncertainty and in fact if you look at just the the first 20 or 25 Days of the New Administration what you'll see is that there have been a lot there's been a lot
of activity and this activity is creating enormous questions right now I mean nobody really knows what's going to happen or how things are going to shake out uh we've been hearing a lot of things we've got funding freezes we've got injunctions we've got refreezes staff layoffs program reductions program
eliminations uh reorganizations I mean buyouts I mean the list just goes on and on we just we can't know what's gonna happen if you look here almost 90 actions in the first 22 days or Administration in the form of executive
orders or memos or proclamations and a lot of that stuff still being shaken out being challenged by the courts challenged by the others blocked by different folks I mean you name so we just really don't know how when how much what's gonna happen at l i
mean and and we're not the only ones I mean we just we just won't know and we until and then we have to probably scramble but as you know talking initially about eight million of this funding that we receive is sort of hung up in in some of this not all eight
million of course and and what percentage and what amount we don't really now if you move to state government uh unfortunately the Outlook there is not a whole lot better uh the state legislature is divided as you know uh it's been the first for a little
while and it's also as many people would say their words not mine highly dysfunctional uh we also see that after spending a billion Surplus uh that now budget forecast project A5 billion deficit in the next few years so we've got this wild swing both in the
political and also the financial uh makeup if you will of the state government so we're seeing kind of similar Trends just carried out a little bit differently the governor's recent budget proposal sh many many counties uh
this isn't making very many people happy whether it's counties or cities who also experience some of the same shifts or other organizations who are seeing reduction in their revenue a lot of people are sort of up I'm sorry but
the the music is kind of getting oh that might be commiss that might commissioner Carlson elevator music at his Lobby uh there he muted thank you go ahead Tom you bet uh okay so uh essentially I think you just
I think you just disabled me all right yeah so now now I I've lost control we'll turn it off and we'll turn it on again I've learned that trick from it they're like super awesome about that like taking aspirin for okay here we go
uh so here's what the governor's proposed budget simply on Health and Human Services side of things because obviously that's a huge uh operation it's our most one of our most expensive operations there a lot going on it's very complicated um just at a highle View
kind of looking at what's recently come out in the governor's budget we're looking and anticipating around $2 million in cost shifts that means the state's shrinking its budget right which is good news but doing it by transferring those costs back on to local governments that's not good news
um because local governments are less prepared and less resourced to address these issues and so if they don't remove the mandates that are driving these costs and instead shift the cost to the local governments um we're going to find ourselves in a very difficult
predicament and of course this is a scene that has played out year after year after year at the state legislature it's just highly Amplified this this upcoming year or two so we're very concerned about that um just these couple of things that I've got up on the
screen here you know just a 5% shift which doesn't sound like a whole lot of State funding that we used to get for uh disability waivers we're going to cut that that share by 5% that'll cost us a million and a half dollars just by the state saying well we don't want to fund
the full amount that we've traditionally been doing uh we're just going to slash that by 5% see it's not a big deal you guys at the local level but it's a big deal and I don't think that's realized um at the state level the shift in the Minnesota sex offender program that's
$145,000 so we going to push those costs to the county uh confidency restoration the shifts in those um costs are going to come to the county and that's going to cost us another 100,000 reductions or shifts in the behavioral health fund that's going to cost us 80 to $100,000 also uh
reductions in the juvenile delinquency funding that's 990,000 you're starting to hear some of that was presented a little bit earlier as well um so essentially these unfunded or underfunded mandates uh funding formula changes uh and Rule changes
uh all of them together impact the county and they're having huge impacts because what we're seeing is at the administrative level you can just change a funding formula and magically wipe out a certain amount of funding that a county or city has been relying on for years and years and years to run the
programs in our case as a county that the state requires us to run keep in mind that we're only one of 10 states in the entire Union that has State supervised but County administered programs um that's a great spot for the state to be in it's not such a great
spot for counties to be in uh and that's why that model probably isn't used as widely um but that allows the state to do these types of things and that puts the burden back on the local governments so there are I'll keep in mind here
there are thousands of new laws that are developed each and every year uh just in the 24 or 23 24 legislative bium over 5,200 bills were introduced so if you don't think that County administrators and City
administrators and organizations uh executive directors and stuff aren't busy during the legislative session this is what we're largely doing we're tracking this stuff we're writing papers we're write we're just mobilizing constantly for that four or five months trying to figure out what's this going to do how's it going to happen uh is it
going to happen what degree is it can we can we mitigate for it can we prevent it all of these things are going on and they take a lot of effort a lot of time um many of these B BS come in the form of unfunded mandates and depending upon which Senator or representative from the state government that you talk to
they'll tell you that over 50 or 60 different mandates have come just in the last couple of years um I'll just highlight one just just one that uh came last year and tell you what its impact is on the county and this is the African-American family preservation and
child welfare disproportionality act uh we were one of the first count counties that uh evaluated this leg legislation and determined what the cost impact would be to implement this unfunded mandate and that estimate has been uh
developed at $1.3 million just for us to change the administrative process around how we're going to comply with this mandate now we're not judging the Mandate right if this is important to the state and we administer on behalf of the state that that's fine we make no judgments on the mandates that get
passed but if it's important to the state the state should back that's where like I think a lot of your counties and cities are coming from um I'll give you another example of just a funding formula change by The Stroke of a pen somebody in the administration decides
they want to change the formula for the child protection opioid response allocation and we lost1 148,000 right there gone uh this is preventative funding this funding is what we use for neonatal services for people who are addicted to drugs and such this is this
is money that we invest to prevent problems that are actually way more expensive to resolve and that money's gone now so we have to figure out you know can can we can we live with that what needs to happen rule making here's another area that a lot of people don't
think about because we hear so much about unfunded mandates in rulemaking um we also have Administration uh deciding well we don't like the way this standard is anymore so we're going to change that standard and then we're going to change another standard or another requirement or
another specification and this is what happened to us with the jail right we need more programming space we need more Staffing uh we have too little of this we need too we need a lot more of that and essentially rendered our facility uh obsolete if you will and that's required
us as a county to then prematurely have to go and build a new facility in part now there was a lot of Dynamics to that particular story but that's a big motive there is a lot of what happened at the state level in regard to Ru making forced our hand hands in making
adjustments at the jail so now we're building a new $80 million jail had to come up with a whole new funding source to do that the same thing is actually happening as we speak as it relates to the demolition landfill so we have a demolition landfill it's not supposed to
be uh I mean we we have life until 2039 uh but now we're going to be told we have to close it in around 2028 2029 so we're going to lose 10 years on that infrastructure because the state's making a specification change for how
demolition landfills should function so that's going to cost us about $9.1 million um the so so it's it's not just unfunded mandates it's rule changes it's funding formula shifts changes those kinds of things they all have impacts to our budget so just as a reminder we get
to the sort of total impact here as I mentioned you know a large majority of our budget comes or revenues come from state and federal revenue sources and a much smaller amount comes from revenues from property taxes we don't really have a lot of places to go to get money if we
are going to have to keep the same programs going that the state mandates us to keep going um you know I've heard people say in the community and I've heard people say at legislative meetings and other stuff I've heard this well why don't we just tell the state we're not going to do that anymore if they take
the funding away from us um and they don't take the Mandate away then let's just not do it well that's a tough spot to be in because they might cut four million out of our budget but look how much more we still get from them I just talked about 41 million so if they cut 4
million they're still giving us 37 they could come right back to us and you could get in this cycle where okay we're going to cut another seven million we're going to cut another 10 million we're going to cut you know see what I'm saying it just where does it stop and and so it's a it's a difficult it's a difficult sort of game to be
playing uh I'll just give you this figure this changes Year bye uh rough and this is a rough number but essentially every increase in the levy 1% in inre in the levy only Nets us about $300,000 it's pretty low number it's lower for other counties it's much
larger in other counties and this is largely because we have a small tax base we keep talking about this only a third of our C's got taxable land in it 3,000 square miles less than a third or around a third is is actually taxable property tax wise um and so the impacts if you
use that figure the impacts from recent proposed state activities alone we'll just add it up here just really quickly and this are only the things I brought to your attention men today I mean the list is I mean we've got another probably three hours to go if you want to get to everything and I'm not even sure we can cover everything I'm not
even sure I know everything for that matter but $2 million we know is right now on the table as potentially impacting our budget that would be a 6.7% Levy increase if we had to transfer that
Revenue Source from state to the levy uh 148,000 we talked about for the reduction in the um the opioid funding uh that would require us to raise another 148,000 or 0.5 on the levy a 1.3 million uh to deal with um the
implementation of the African-American child welfare disproportionality act with another 4.3 those are just those those couple I'm not even you know we're not really talking about all of them um so just with those that's 3.45 million or
11.5% Levy increase right just to take care of those small ones that does not include any of our own operational needs as you know insurance goes up we get stuck with insurance it's not like we can't pay our insurance right then insurance goes up three four five sometimes 10% in a year staff wages go
up um we get inflationary costs for buying vehicles or buying HVAC equipment or other things pens and pencils you know paper whatever it is so that doesn't even account for our ability to buy any of that stuff um and of course this is not a full accounting these these dollars I'm just throwing up here
are simply as an example they don't include all of the current mandates that we're under we're actually trying to get a little better idea the staff and I are working on a study right now to figure out to the greatest degree we can at least within the last couple of years
how have mandates impacted our budget so that's an exercise we're trying to get an answer to um but essentially it doesn't include all of that stuff it doesn't include uh impacts from the jail that we talked about this number here doesn't include impacts from the demo landfill closures uh fed federal or
state mandates reduction in cough shifts or things to come because we know we're in a legislative session so we know there's going to be more changes and there's likely to be more oned mandates so we we don't know those things um but you can see we're already heavily impacted going forward so in summary uh
what does this mean I don't know what it means you know I mean our crystal balls broken we just we just have no clue what to expect where to go how we should fund whatever what are we going to be forced to fund what news coming like there's just no way to know right so I told you
you probably wouldn't be happy with this presentation because I don't have the answers that maybe some of you are looking for we just there's no way to know so hopefully that provides a little context um we'll try to keep it positive right because there's a lot of bad news in this presentation but we should we
should know L know like and and we should communicate with our legislators and with the public and others uh and let them know what the impact is that the state has in regard to our budget and certainly the federal government as well commissioner SAR thank you Mr chair um Tom thank you
for the uh presentation I think um oftentimes it's it's hard to prepare for for the unknown but I think uh with with this presentation you know I think you know we can prepare a little bit so I I do appreciate you and the staff uh and
the work that you're doing to you know to try to prepare so thank you thank you anybody else coming yeah go ahead commissioner gold thank you thank you administrator Barry uh I thought you did a excellent fine job with the presentation and it and it was what I
was looking for uh for one uh and I was happy to see uh the Pioneer was here um I wish Lakeland was here um because the whole point for me for this was to you know educate the general public on on how uh dire things are right now and uh
you know I would I would uh point out that there is a there is a response that we can take and that is to contact our legislators uh every week and just um remind them that you know uh we're here we're your constituents we don't like
what's going on um what's the number one motivator for every elected official excluding myself of course is reelection um and so if they don't have the support from a majority of their constituents um you know they're going to be out of job
and so um I do appreciate your um and you might touch on this in your administrator's report so I won't talk about it too much but I know you did some testimony and and a committee down in St Paul a few days ago and uh crafted a very excellent letter pointing out uh
the numbers and how we uh would certainly struggle here in Bel tramy County um that's the kind of thing that uh we can do more of I think uh as as uh local leaders and uh and just as constituents
uh I've been contacting uh um our congressmen and women of the area um because they seem to be uh supporting uh the current Administration more than senators clovar and and Smith lately uh so I do want to
thank um our Senators for trying to combat some of the stuff that's being handed down um but I've been talking to the governor 's office too um I've been um calling and and texting and and emailing uh um his office and uh and are
uh um worry about um his cost shifts proposal and his budget um we we can't live with that so um we need to be contacting the governor's office too uh so yeah appreciate the information and
uh and the uh public awareness and I think uh I think we all need to be stepping it up a notch here so um thanks again appreciate it thank you commissioner gold anybody else uh commissioner Carlson you have anything that you want to
add no mind the mute button sorry about the elevator music all right so Barry you want to just move on on into your administrator report sure that'd be great thank you uh as we sort of touched on in the last
presentation that we've been actively monitoring or responding to a variety of legislative developments and uh as I mentioned also things are difficult to predict they're Dynamic um we did have uh some movement last week uh which I appreciate the um
house um human services policy and finance committee had actually uh donated uh almost an hour to local governments to come and to testify and give this type of information to them as
it relates to how the governor's proposed budget will impact them so uh I was asked to to uh provide testimony uh to that and did and uh uh two other County administrators and also some Health and Human Services um staff
members um and organizational leaders also provided testimony a number of other people did as well and uh you know I can tell you that at least in listening to that being a part of that committee nobody's happy um that's if you're going to be in a group I'd rather
be in that group than just everybody's happy except for Bel tramy County right because then that's a harder fight to win so we have friends um and they in some of them are in places you wouldn't think they you know that people that maybe wouldn't necessarily be your friends on issues like this are now your
allies um so that's good news um and uh there is some movement uh that that's taking place I know Senator green has has proposed legislation that might help our landfill issue uh in regard to uh slowing down or stopping Ru making uh
for the npca as it relates to demolition landfills and um you know one of the things that he and I have talked about is you know if the state could just recognize that when communities invest a lot of money in infrastructure that has a lifespan we should at least at least get the return on investment for the
lifestand we've invested in and not cut that short and ask taxpayers to pay twice for something that's not going to last near as long so um I I appreciate Senator Green's efforts on that and there are a lot of others uh I know uh representative um Duran is also behind
uh some legislation as well that is going to help out the county um and he's working on uh and so we're just we're appreciative of the efforts that our local uh area legisl are are putting to this and I think it did help that we had a lot of time with them and that all of
them participated in our legislative uh agenda uh discussion early in this in the session and and earlier this year so I think that's very helpful as well um also as a side note I'm working on the airport strategic planning team and uh we're working with the airport Authority
and also the airport Affairs committee um we're developing focal areas that's already been done now we're developing focal area teams which are then going to come back and uh and sort of put build up um objectives and tactics and strategies uh performance metrics
timelines and things like that uh to help the airport uh develop a path to its future uh so that's kind of exciting um and so I'll be assisting in kind of structural development and then also uh believe I'll be uh providing some some
um training and maybe some implementation recommendations for how to Implement that as well uh this work is going to take several months because we have a lot of community members involved um it's not although it's going to be the airport strategic plan uh they're doing a great job of collecting
information from all of those other agencies and organizations that impact or influence or or have some relation uh to the airport and so that type of community planning is is can be long it can be um it can take a while because you got so many people involved I think
we'll probably have more than 25 or 30 different agencies or organizations involved in this uh and that just that just creates a slow process but usually if we can keep the task keep on task it it usually creates a much better outcome so um so anyway that's that um the
design and operations team did finish uh its work as it relates to the uh review of the development agreement that the city had provided to us and also the storm water management or maintenance uh plan agreement uh we counter offered um
our thoughts and concerns and and uh and that sort of stuff uh I've been told as late as this afternoon that that's in process it looks promising at this point in time uh so I'm optimistic that maybe in the next couple of days I might be able to uh let you know that that's all
kind of behind us um as you know although it has been a long process with the city uh it is the last process we have remaining in order to officially uh kick the jail off minus one clarifying comment that we have on a fire related issue with the state um so we're getting
very close to having all of that wrapped up and and remaining on schedule which is which feels really good uh that's all I have for you at this point in time I'll stand for any questions you might have anybody have any questions for administrator
Barry seeing none we'll move on to legislative lobbying and we'll bundle that with the commissioner reports commissioner Carlson do you have anything you would like to report on uh yeah uh I was happy that I was able to go to the Min the menot Aeronautics at a
stakeholder meeting on mean mean it's the Minnesota electric Aviation Network um and then also the Minas which is the Minnesota state Aviation system plan basically what's you think electric Aviation uh you kind of chuckle when you
think about that but the reality is it's coming and do we want to be in the network or do we not want to be in the network and it can be some things that are just as simple as as we build out uh infrastructure at the airport that we make sure that we have in that
infrastructure things that could be utilized by Electric Aviation such as 3phase electric um and so we're in the process of of building out U planning area three with some uh business opportunities um and so that's just for
us as an airport to keep that in mind it's a long process a long ways down the road but if we don't do some things now we're get we'll be behind eightball and won't be able to be included in in that Network um as Tom said we had the jail uh design and operations committee
meeting um happy to see the progress that's being made I'm really happy about the value engineering that we're getting from gr Anderson and from K McCarthy Architects uh they're doing a great job and just trying to find any way that we can have the same quality outcome with
less input cost so that's been great uh I had management team meeting last week uh and then uh commer goig and I were both at the airport Affairs committee meeting uh and Tom already alluded to that so that's it for me oh and by the way thank you all for your Indulgence
and patience well I we had an un unexpected uh medical appointment that we had to go to but so I appreciate your allowing me to do this by Zoom thank you commissioner Carlson and commissioner gold thank you Mr chair
committee meetings lately um pretty uh typical agenda items nothing really uh significant to report out but I've been attending sha Bel trammy HRA and bcap lately um I was not able to attend the
mmiw walk the other day the annual event for missing and murdered indigenous women but I did notice uh uh Sheriff Rigs and deputy rert and uh um chief of police uh for the city of
binji we all in attendance and suppor of so I just wanted to mention that and and uh appreciate them in attendance U that's it thank you commissioner G commissioner Winger there we go thank you commiss
chair um I um I did do chat about um didn't get any hate mail or nasty phone calls so must have gone what okay um anybody ask you for autographs or anything after it and I haven't seen
it so or heard it so but I was told I have a face for radio so that's okay um I did attend the Bel tramy area Services collabortive meeting um talked a lot about the diversion program um
like uh Dave talked about um and they they brought up things about that that you know you don't think about and what it would cost us if that went away you know and the programs that you know the things that get cut and then they have to actually go to court and what that
can cost us if they have to go through other steps so you know it's really imperative that some of these programs stay intact even though they may cost some money which is hard to hard to look at sometimes um they also talked about
the they had uh people there from the schools and uh one of the social workers that goes from three different schools now and the benefit to having that person at the schools and how much
they've seen the increase in attendance and and number of problems with children going down because that person's there to address them and talk to them and so it's really really nice to hear that a lot of things are being taken care of without having to go
through uh some of the channels so uh and it really deescalate from what they were talking about the use of you know some of the teams that deal with the kids when they get out of line and and uh she just comes in and she's they're
used to dealing with her so it it makes it really simple so that was really nice to hear um also attended the behavioral health uh meeting um again like all of them everybody's wondering where the
money's going to come from what's going to get cut and they're scared and they're you know trying to figure out what to do when you don't know and so everybody's kind of in that same boat uh tended to Solid Waste this
morning uh again the same kind of stuff you know they wondering where the money's going to come from for these mandates and but um they have some good plans coming and you you'll probably be able to tell them better
um I did get a phone call today um that I did say I would bring this up tonight and uh one of the employees from the license center uh he called and said how impressed he was and
how how nice he was treated uh at the license center and and just wanted uh people to know that that Corey had done such a good job and was so helpful and uh and he said people don't hear that enough and so he wanted to make sure
that we were aware and made people aware of the good job they were doing um and I got a call excuse me from some of the Town boards um concerned about animal control stuff um evidently there was a glitch in the computer system that the
Sheriff's Office got the new system and they didn't get in for part of the stuff that was in the programming didn't program for anim Animal Control citations and animal you can't just write citations on paper anymore and
send them to the court it all has to be done through a computer system and since it's not in the computer system they're not able to site for some of these things and I did talk to Jason they're working on that one uh he wasn't really aware of it too much until that meeting
and and so um I have been invited to their meeting coming up for animal control stuff um just to show up there so I will go to that um when when they actually lock in the time and and place but um that's all I have thank you
commissioner Winger commissioner suner thank you um well commissioner Winger I I hope you're still enjoying you know being commissioner and learning a lot and uh it sounds uh like you're receiving a lot of same phone calls I'm
sure that we all experienced when we first came on board so uh thank you uh for myself I have the black duck ambulance on Thursday uh the upper and lower Red Lake one Watershed one
plan uh next Tuesday I also want to mention that the AMC legislative conference is going on um next Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday I believe those are the dates yeah um and then following that um I
will be attending the n legislative conference out in DC uh flying out Friday and returning Tuesday so I will be absent for uh the next uh board meeting I just want to let you guys know
um I that is it for my commissioner's report thank you thank you commissioner suer and uh as commissioner Winger mentioned we had our Solid Waste committee meeting this morning and um we had tasked Brian our U director in in
that department to get us the the longevity of our current landfill and and I was you know pleasantly surprised that uh it was longer than what we thought basically 10 years beyond what our current permit is so and the permits are typically for 10 years so if the ru
making could get halted and we could get a renewal of our permit at the end of 2029 um we'd actually be able to just continue on using our current demolition landfill as it sits and and uh avoid that $9.1 million that we just saw a
little bit ago from administrator Barry so hopefully we can get some success on on just you know just put the pause button on at the legislature and and the governor to uh not let those agencies push those mandates uh down and cost us
so much more money um uh the only other thing I want to report on T we had our fairboard uh meeting last night and I was brought into the area of the building up in the front where they the office and where the County Extension is and it was rather chilly in there they have space heaters going because they
unfortunately the the old electric slab heat that's in there a lot of the the coils are are failing and uh so that's something at a future meeting i' like to um probably bring up U what you know
since that extension is a county function and that you know the building and the property and stuff um is our County property what we can do to look at helping him I know it's not something that we'll do immediately this year that I don't you know have to probably live with the space heaters and and it's hopefully going to be warming up next
week but that yeah and I actually did tell him to get beltram electric to come over and and you know see but I think there's enough of them that they're not going to Jackhammer up 13 spots into Florida to try to fix it it's it's
just yeah it's a it's it's more than you know that fixing it wouldn't be one thing but camera and the cement up when they especially when they just did in that 4 each building they just redid the floor like a year ago and uh yeah that wouldn't be that wouldn't be pretty so um looking at other options there and
seeing what we can do to help help them out in the future and that's it I've got a Airport Authority meeting John and I do uh tomorrow night uh he's hopefully going to be back in time for that and an NH hrdc meeting on Thursday night and and so on so got a busy schedule too
that's it for me and uh everybody check their meeting schedule I think I might have the next couple of uh of meetings for the management team and and that I don't have it in front of me here but um think we did some swapping around there so anyhow make sure you're checking that
and I'll look for a motion to adjourn second motion by Winger second by G all in favor I guess we'll do the roll calls commissioner Carlson yes commissioner suner no commissioner Winger yes commissioner G
yes and commissioner G yes four to one and commissioner suar has to stay after school