e e e e e e e e we'll call to order the June 4th Bon County board meeting we'll start with pledge
allegiance allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all roll call sure commissioner schlong
here commissioner heinan here commissioner kinsky here commissioner Johnson here commissioner P here thank you all right approve the agenda Monty we have no changes move for approval Mr chair second okay we got a motion for
approval of the the agenda all in favor I I okay announcement County board meetings are broadcast live and video recorded on YouTube please refrain from speaking from the audience area and come to the podium so that view viewers can hear you the County Board observes Robert's Rules of Order for its meetings
so please obtain the board's share consent before addressing the County Board public comments are generally reserved for the open Forum segment or public hearing however public comment or other on other agenda items may be allowed at the discression of the board chair as we be begin today please turn
off your cell phones or turn them vibrate thank you open Forum nothing all right consent agenda like what would the board like to do move for approval of the consent agenda Mr chair second okay we got a motion and a
second all in favor I I oppos same sign motion carries Monty retire reement recognition who's here to speak on behalf of Cathy Adam all right Kathy
Warren hi she started on December 26 2006 the day after Christmas um that's a testament to dedication right there everyone else is celebrating the holiday Kathy was here doing her
thing um so the last four months have been interesting between Kathy and another retirement for Joan Tyson this will be 52 years of experience that's lost um for Adult Services and Human Services um so it's a it's a big loss
for the county it's a big loss for the team um as much of it's our loss it's their gain which is amazing uh but that's a lot of time a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge so um it's going to be missed and it's going to be hard we won't replicate something like that
for a long time so um when you talk about 52 years um it's just a lot um so I the what's the challenge for me is to try to say something about Kathy um because I've been only supervising Cathy for a
little over a year and to try to encapsulate all of the last 18 years of her employment here is is impossible um so I Tred to to think of what others would say um and I think the very first thing that people would say about Kathy is that um they'd recognize her sense of
humor um the way that she interacts with the staff the time that she takes to get to know people um I think it's there's a lot of things that as a supervisor or as an employee for Benton County you can talk about someone's work ethic you can
talk about someone's ability to manage programs and all of those things but it's those kind of intangibles those things that bring the team together the things that help people celebrate um and find that time to spend time just interacting and being positive with each other so Kathy um she's you know her
sense of humor is exuded in numerous staff celebrations after work Gatherings um recently there was uh one of our new staff started and Kathy realized she was working with her on her birthday and her first response was I wish I would have been known I would been working on with
you on your birthday we could have gone out after after work and had a little something something so um just acknowledging that that's important um Beyond just the normal daily work stuff that's going on um and then just celebrating special dates recognizing
those things um that sense of humor helps her create a personal connection with the people that she works with um it's not something that is is disingenuous with Kathy I started as a child protection uh worker here a few years back back in
2016 and when I first met Kathy I didn't have a lot of interactions with her but it was the first thing she asked about um my life she asked about who I was and that was always her interaction with anybody when they started and that brings people onto the team um when you're talking about all of the changes
that have happened over time Co hit we had all of these less in-person meetings more virtual meetings um all of those things were difficult to manage and having Cathy on the team to go through that was huge because uh the way that she brought the team together and the
way that she tied things together was always just so beneficial for our team um when the other I think the other thing that people would talk about with Kathy would be her patience um training new staff um well she's been a fan of the twins for a long time so Tak a lot
of patience too um and then she also has to golf with Joan a lot so that probably takes a lot of patience I would guess um um but those things uh when you when you talk about the sense of humor uh the patience and then I think the last thing that people would say would be her
leadership abilities um Kathy is not somebody that's going to be um inyour face with her leadership style she's not somebody that's going to be telling you what to do she's going to ask you questions and she's going to get you to a point where you realize what you need
to do um I've experienced that with Kathy as I've learned these programs she's been a huge asset set to me someone that's helped me kind of like understand exactly how this stuff works um and she's always just been really positive and and helped me through that
stuff um we've seen her leadership as as a union representative for a long period of time um and then just being someone that she can that all of the staff that can look up to and and uh build some of their own skills based on the way that
she interacts with others so um to sum everything up I mean there's like I said I could bring up 30 or 40 people from this agency that could all talk for Kathy for minutes on end we could be here for the next two hours but um Kathy thank you thank you for everything
you've done for the agency thank you for everything you um have done for me I've learned a lot so appreciate everything you've done for us um you'll be missed and uh we got a couple more weeks with you so we're going to take it advantage of every minute we can and um get as
much information before you walk out the door but um It's been a amazing to have you in this agency and it's been amazing to work with you so thank you not out the up there there's no door there thank you thank you maybe we got to be taking you all
later thank yeah sure that yeah have them hold you up there we go thank [Music] thanks everybody thank you again that's a lot of years a lot of
years all right Monty we late for nor relability I believe yes conat how do you replace all those years I don't it's
crazy yeah in today's world that won't happen no okay hey well thank you my name is Brian Hunker I work for Great River Energy um here to present on the Northland reliability project last time I was here
was roughly a year ago and um at that time we were in um right before we were going to submit our application to the Public Utilities Commission so I'll provide a recap of the project and then inform you of where we're at right now on the on the project so um this project
is jointly proposed by Minnesota Power and Great River Energy so you'll often see both of our logos here on on the uh on the slides so this is an overhead transmission line it's uh a double circuit 345 KV transmission line
kilovolt transmission line that extends from the existing range substation to a new um uh it's actually a series compensation station that's going to be built near kayuna down to the Benton County substation and then a new
substation that's being built by Excel Energy called the Big Oak sub so this transmission line from end to end is roughly 180 miles long um I I'll expand on that in a little bit the Iron Range substation
will be expanded the Benton County substation will be expanded as a part of this project and then a new series compensation station will be built near the riveron kayuna area and then again that Big Oak substation is going to be built by
Excel so this project was uh developed through the Midcontinent independent system operator or myo they're a grid operator for um they actually have two regions the upper region and then the southern region we're here in the upper region so they proposed a series of uh
projects that ex EXC do you think we Monty can we share a screen oh we can yeah thanks Amanda oh somebody online you're saying I got you yeah let's see how bad I can mess this
up okay here well we have roxan here she can take care of it if you mess it up hey that's right is roxan sitting behind she is yeah she's smiling waiting Rox you might just get your chance let's
see I think this has got to be all right you're hang on just a second start no almost there okay you're good great thank
you so the project was approved in Mel's tranch one projects so there's roughly uh 19 projects that are um proposed from North Dakota all the way over to Michigan you can see ours highlighted here in blue and it's part of the uh
Regional transmission plan for the area as well as um throughout which we put into an application to the Public Utilities Commission back in August of uh 2023 so from that point which we submitted that application we're within
the public utility commission's um permitting process and that was roughly um the last time I was able to present to you guys and and now we're here to step forward from that submitt of the application so this is the graphics that shows our study area to the route
Corridor to the preliminary route and then the proposed route here in Benton County um you could see the proposed route shown in yellow and that was the one that was put into the application within the um State's
permitting process there are actually three route Alternatives that are proposed and those are shown in purple Monty the slides are not advancing oh on there any thoughts I'm not sure that's a
problem it's a goto issue okay right it's a goto issue sorry about sure no problem um stop sharing and I'm gonna go back and share again all right that's about all I know that I can
do start stop we might have to just send this to Amanda to electronically yeah absolutely we definitely can So currently um there are three route Alternatives that are
proposed and um these route Alternatives were either proposed by members of the public or by uh another state agency you can see they're primarily to the west of our proposed route and they're more towards the southern portion of Benton
County So within that states regulatory process um also all of this information is available online through the dockets and um there's two there's two dockets they're actually U one is for the certificate of need and the second one is for the route permit so we submitted
a joint application to the state one for the certificate need and one for the R permit but all this information is going to be posted in both of those dockets so again we submitted that joint application in October of 2023 the Department of Commerce hosted scoping meetings in the area so they collected
feedback on the project and then at that point in time people identified route Alternatives that they wanted analyzed within the environmental assessment so again the route alternatives are the um I in Benton County at least the areas
shown here in purple so that environmental assessment is going to be published at the end of June again it's going to be it should be posted on the dockets and they'll have hard copies typically in libraries the administrative law judge
is going to hold public hearings within the project area in late July roughly a month after the app the EA is published and then the administrative law judge will provide a report to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and then towards the end of this year
the Public Utilities Commission will issue a decision on our route permit so that's we're still within the state's regulatory permitting process um and there still is an opportunity for folks to attend that public hearing with the
alj provide comments on the project so we did start field surveys So within segment two we conducted field surveys so Wetland delineations archaeological surveys on noxious weed surveys within segment two so the two areas that are going to be rebuilt
we are starting field surveys in segment one basically this week so those again are going to be Wetland delineations cultural resource surveys um biological surveys so folks may see some members of our team out on the out on the landscape
um we do of of course obtain right of entry on any property that we are either going to survey on or travel across that piece of property uh we anticipate the surveys extending through the spring summer and
fall of this year and then continuing into uh 2023 as well um one kind 2025 or 2025 I'm sorry yeah into spring of 2025 uh one kind of interesting analysis
that we need to do is conduct uh um studies for rare and IND dangered bats and we do that through acoustic detectors so often times folks may see um what kind of looks like a trail camera with a microphone um attached to
it and and that's all attached to a PVC pole out within the existing transmission line are these a long eared Norther longe back correct y we're very familiar with them oh okay through other projects yeah yeah okay County Road
projects County Road projects sure um of course what goes along with that permit we'll begin ancillary permitting with like core of engineers Department of Natural Resources uh we discuss the field surveys that are going to be uh starting
this week and next week and then uh construction again will be starting in 2025 we anticipate um all of this information is available online we do have the public facing website as well as an email address that folks can email any
questions to call our hotline um and then they can also log in to the state's docket and provide any kind of comments that they wish to the Department of Commerce on this project um I did hand out two sets of
maps here they basically show a more detailed view of the route Alternatives that were proposed so um one one map shows the full route within Benton County with the route
alternatives on the southern end and then the second map shows a more detailed view of those route Alternatives and you can see that they're labeled uh J1 through j3 and that's the state's labeling process on
those are there any questions Mr chair just one um was there any specific things that came up from residents or land owners about these alternative routes I mean is that what kicked off the alternative routes or was
it from other agencies mostly that's the right question yeah so it depend So within Benton County the routes that were the route Alternatives that were proposed were from State agencies okay yeah in in other portions of our line we
did get comments from the public on the route Alternatives okay thank you sure commissioner Pop I was basically on the same r as the r Alternatives I was wondering when when you got an existing line why would we need a r
alternative yeah certain um folks feel that there are better placements for the transmission line um or they feel that there might be a negative impact of placing the transmission line where we have proposed
it so they are able to propose other Alternatives that may mitigate their concerns okay okay any other questions thank you for your presentation mon you do got this electronically we could send
aanda perfect thank you I can I don't did you didn't get the maps right I can send those to you as well the PDF of the maps Okay and then you can send those on okay great okay thank you have a good day have a good
day okay next up we are going to have a public hearing for or the proposed changes to the Baton County Park commission ordinance and to consider changes to the park commission bylaws Monty I think we're back oh I see Tim's
with us on online okay hi take it you're the county staff we're going to hear from you that okay so Mr chair uh the park commission discussed back at the September meeting adding a representative from the public health department and I think the the concept
there was uh Public Health its mission is broadened over the years and uh one of the areas that they tend to focus on is what they call Active active living to create opportunities places for for
you know our residents to be more active more physically fit I think also they they they can tap into potentially grants that that they could bring to bear for our our County parks and trails so back in September the park commission made the recommendation that you would
amend the park ordinance to include a representative from the public health department so you'll see that in the uh ordinance 355 which created the park commission the changes are in underlined and I'll highlight a few things again
adding a representative from the park from the public health department the board previously discussed this and as I recall it was the consensus of the County Board that the representative should be a County resident so that's reflected in the changes that it says at the top of the second page uh the public
health department shall be resident of Benton County whose appointment uh shall be made by the County Board upon the recommendation of the public health director um so I thought you thought was important they'd be a County resident terms of office for that representative would be determined by the County
Board and so on and the essentially the bylaws of the park commission are the changes are essentially identical as what you see in the ordinance revisions that is your staff report Mr chair okay with that I will open the public hearing is there anybody in the
audience or online that would like to speak to this these changes I'll ask again is there anybody online or in the audience that would like to speak to these changes Final Call okay we will close the public
hearing um is there any testimony that needs to be read in yes sir emails letters nothing yes sir sir departments nothing okay any official action would be coming later County Board what would you guys
uh you guys got any comments or questions on this I think I think it's good I think we we discussed it was brought to our attention over a year ago that there's money that they may be able to tap in that the park commission probably can so I think that's the
biggest reason for this yep Mr chair I I agree they have a lot of funding out there for trails and that seems like a no-brainer to me yeah okay what would uh what would the County
Board like to do we got two items here yes the ordinance and then the bylaws yep motion to adopt the amended ordinance 355 as presented second okay we got a motion in a second to adopt the ordinance 355 as
presented any other Dialogue on this if not I'll call the question all in favor I oppose same sign motion carries Mr chair I'll move to adopt the revised Park commission bylaws as presented second okay we got a motion to adopt the revised Park laws uh Park commission
bylaws as presented and a second any other Dialogue on this if not I'll call the question all in favor I oppose same sign motion carries thank you Monty I think you're still up too Mr sh I am here I am back
here for a fourth and final Amendment to the srf agreement uh as we noted earlier we got very favorable bids on the project at B the river and that left off Le left us with
$181,000 of our budget remaining so at the last partk Commission the park commission discussed u a number of ideas to utilize these resources and I listed a few of those in your agenda item for example putting
down a product called class two on the new trails we're told by the greater Mino parks and trails commission that class 2 is now required uh to increase the accessibility of your Trails um we also the park commission talked about
putting class to of an inch half or so so on top of all the existing Trails another idea was we need a new well um the existing well Jeff tells me gives you a a incredible volume of three
gallons per minute three gallons uh so we're quite concerned if you had a large event at the new shelter uh the the well would run dry really fast so uh a new well another idea that was discussed was
possibly a small shelter on the south end if you can picture the park there's an area of the park which is kind of an island and the boundaries are Ferry Point Road and cter Road 55 and the park master plan envisioned a
small deuse area down there so theart commission like the idea of possibly putting a small shelter down there additionally uh possibly additional signage and more benches so uh what do we need srf for well if you can think of the trails as
kind of like a road you need them to develop the bid specs for okay what's the quantities you know what's the how much and what needs to be done so they're going to do that for us and also they're going to do some preliminary
design on what a shelter could like like so that way then the vendor that our contractor is using can price it out so okay we want to build a shelter of this dimensions and look like this they can then price it out so it's it's essentially limited
to those two things so what we're going to do next and is we take take these estimates back to park commission and say okay folks of this menu of things what would you like to do within this 181,000 what would you like to do um so
uh we'll see what you know the park commission wants to prioritize and what what works within this 181,000 we already heard that the class two's going to be pretty expensive that's going to chew up a bunch of of the 181 if the park commission wants to
do that first I'm I would definitely recommend that they do and frankly like I said Park the greater Minal Parks Control Commission says we really must do class two on these new trails so uh srf tells us that the the cost of this additional work is
$3,200 um that still keeps us within an overall original budget that was ident identified for this purpose and that gets us across the Finish Line um we can use CIP fund balance uh to cover this cost and some
nice good news from watb Township is they've got I don't remember exactly the number they've got some resources in their park dedication fund and they wanted some of those used as part of this project so they agreed to release $4,000 of their park dedication resources
for these extra EXT ra things and give us a total a total budget to work with 185,000 that's where we stand Mr chair so watab had no specific project that they wanted no uh
Julie didn't give me anything specific okay what I what I told her we would do is is once the park commission decided what it wanted to do I could let her know okay Julie these are the things your 4,000 is going to help us help us cover yeah yeah specifically but no she didn't have anything specific and I see
Chris is in the in out um and I understand that class two makes it more wheelchair accessible that's the issue yeah comps it backs better right yeah it's smaller overhaul size Rock so yeah like tighter yeah you don't have
problems with wheels on it so I think one thing that made the cost go up is our contractor said he'd have to get it from The Martin Marietta pit in White Park and so you'd have that cost plus the hauling apparently originally class five that he was going to detain was a
closer source and not as expensive so that does Drive the cost up yeah that's any questions Mr chair uh the question I have is either for commissioner pop or for Monty so then do we have to widen the trails further than too do they have to be six or eight feet
I don't believe that we do no there's no widening necessary no no but I I think we thought us hey you know if we're going to be putting class two on the new ones it'd be nice to have all the trails brought to the same level MH with class two and there's quite a bit of existing
trail out there and what about the maintenance that on that um I don't know what there's been for maintenance out there I couldn't tell you on the current Trail the maintenance amounts to really a couple things uh smoothing out gopher goer mounds and weed spraying that's
generally what they do yeah so Monty is uh srf are they going to um do the estimated cost for a well too or we've already done that we already done well I know I know I believe je said that you had a suggestion that we
would also so we really should get two quotes we have one already from trout I think it's about 20,000 right but I think you'd give him another possible source so any project we should we should try and get two quotes right now
so yeah how much was a well again well the one quote that that Jeff got from um trout is 20 20,000 yeah yeah you give GM or yeah either GM or Jennings so I know they will pretty much blow that cat out of
the water yeah be nice to be do as many projects as possible and not have to spend so much on a right yeah Mr chair Monty so could we use some of our arpa funds for that well um if if my initial reactions I
don't see how we yeah right yeah well let's check into it yeah kind of glad when the arpa money's gone yeah sure we can figure out 20,000 somewhere through the ARA money well I
mean they got a fair amount of money and I think right you know I think you know we're doing projects way more than what we anticipated M so I don't I don't really see a problem with it I I just was they were set on trout at the beginning and I you know I think did the
first well that what you said I guess we heard through Jeff that when they did the first well they hit Granite right that sits on top of granite sure you know and maybe at that time three gallons a minute was enough I don't know sure you know you can somebody said that night that you flush the toilet and it's
on of we just really worried you have a big family reunion out there it's going to be trouble and a well sitting on top of granite takes a lot longer to recharge it does and as we make all these changes out there to to bring more people and promote the the region right
that would be a disaster we need to figure that out and you know the other part that you don't realize that I never realize is that when be is looking at somebody coming well that's one of the things they look at is what's your county got for Parks you I always thought it was kind of irrelevant you
know y um 15 years ago IA says let's just doze out those trees and get that to agriculture speaking from a TR would you irrigate it too yeah right oh yeah definitely all right what would the
board like to do I'll make a motion to approve the contract with srf to move forward with the additional planning second it okay we got a motion in a second uh to move this forward any other communication on this if not I'll
call the question all in favor I oppose same sign motion carries thank you okay Sandy you're up good morning good morning good morning U so two things today the first thing was to consider
the 2023 2024 Benton County and a Vivo snap contract that's for employment services with a Vivo it's a repeating contract motion to approve second okay we got a motion to approve the Avo avivo snap contract any questions if not I'll
call the question all in favor I post same sign motion carries and then the second thing that I'm bringing today is last the last board meeting you asked for some details about our Guardianship and how that's changed so um Deb reand and um Adam Martins are here to give you
a little short presentation on that great Perfect all right thank you for your time we so we're going to break this down a little bit um piece by piece here go backwards and then give some history and then kind of help the board
understand exactly why we've been coming with recent um contract requests so the last I think in the last year since um we've been looking at building our Contra contract pool for guardianships this has been our third
contract that we' brought to the board um this specific contract for this guardianship provider was more specialized to basically meet the meet meet the need of one certain client um so we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail later but uh to just start it off we we go back a little bit there
I think it was a year a year and a half ago there was a presentation to the board at the cow and it was from the State Minnesota state demographics office and the central Minnesota Council on Aging where they presented kind of the change that's coming down the pike with the Aging population more and more
people are retiring less people are coming into the job pool and as that as more people retire and and get older and need services that causes a need um on this end from Human Services to help those individuals and provide services to all those folks um to give you kind
of an idea of uh where some of this is coming from some of this Contracting is uh in response to some guardianship changes some of it is in is also kind of planning for the future so to speak um when you look at the service needs in
Benton County um currently we have roughly 400 Nur home beds in Benton County um we have about 600 plus assisted living and Foster Care beds and then we also have 65 Plus board and Lodge beds so um people being in those facilities and being served uh that
creates kind of that need um sometimes for more Guardianship Services um Benton County is also located closely to the St Cloud area so you have the St Cloud Hospital the cental Care Health System veteran services hospital so you have a lot of people that are seeking services
in those areas um and if they don't want to move into the metro area then that causes a move kind of into this area to ensure that they have some of those Services where they're maybe not getting some of those services in the outstate areas um so we have some of that that historical change going on but then we
also have the other historical change part um is that uh some of the other factors that have increased some of this funding um this has been a while ago but we're seeing the ripple effect of this to continue uh we had the downsizing enclosure of State Hospital facilities
um those facilities that were serving people with developmental disabilities mental illness and mental health issues um that has resulted in more community- based settings um as a result of that where you could uh have a lot of people housed in one area and meet those needs
some of those guardianship needs weren't as heavy when you have people moving into the community moving into customized living foster care settings things like that you have to have those Guardianship Services available to those individuals um the other aspect is that now we're
seeing as as everybody ages people that have guardianship typically if it's not a private Guardian that we're Contracting with or if it's not a state guardianship which we do a few of those um it's family members as those family members age or pass and
typically it's going to be a parent for an adult or a sibling those are kind of the main ones that we have there's aunts and uncles and things like that but as those adults age and as their children age or as they pass and if there's not another suitable family member that
wants to take on that responsibility then we have to look at private guardianship which is you know through a contracted provider and pay for those costs um and then we also have the other piece that we have too
is I know you we've talked about this over time you're very familiar with kind of the ripple effect of DHS DHS drops a pond a rock into the pond that ripples out that impacts the counties that imp impacts the funds that the counties have to pay all of those things we've seen it
in several different areas um but one of those areas is as we've had this increase for the men Choice assessments and as the state has said everybody who qualifies or everybody wants these assessments they can get them that then increases our number of dis disabled
individuals previously without those assessments there the disabled individuals are found in different ways and they were kind of cared for more and by their families and things like that as that has spread and as that's opened up and that door is opened now we have more people certified uh with
disabilities and as a result typically uh there's a higher guardianship need as well um that also obviously has an impact impact on um Adult Services and all of those other programs I mean other things that you're seeing is uh a huge
increase in mental health disorders uh huge increase in alcohol and drug usage and then those types of things require Guardianship Services as well so and typically when you're looking at the mental health disorders and the and the drugs and alcohol situations you're you
struggle to find a viable family member that can be a guardian for those individuals so you don't have another option and there there are times where we've had a family member take on Guardianship and it's just not working because now the family member has some
of those same issues as well and so you have to kind of weed through all of that stuff um so that that kind of talks about the history a bit about it so why are we asking for these additional contracts um as this has changed we over the last
couple of years we didn't have any contracts with anybody we saw this influx of guardianship need but we were kind of behind the fact that we had didn't have these contracts set up so we were kind of playing catchup so to speak we did have we were working with a couple of providers outside of having a
contract we were experiencing High rates for these Guardianship Services we didn't have a set rate that we could that these guardianship providers would provide with the contracts it give us us it gives us a set rate so for ongoing Guardianship Services we're looking
anywhere from $200 to $230 per individual per month for those Guardianship Services prior to that some of our rates we would get bills sometimes $1,500 $3,500 for 3 four months of of service
now was that guardianship provider not providing good service no they were doing a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of work but we didn't have a specific contract so there was no way to kind of mitigate those costs with the contracts we're able to say this is how much we're
going to pay you they agree to it the contract is signed and then moving forward those costs are much easier to manage so that's where we that was part of our goal is to be fiscally responsible with the county and make sure that that those funds were used appropriately so establishing
contracts it help it helps us do that um it also the the recent contract that we requested um from the metro area with that individual it's an individual who's been in a um hospital setting for two years I I I think you've all heard
presentations on this client that client is planning to move into a community set setting in um north northern metro area in the next month or so and so we want wanted to get a guardianship provider that was in that area we also our current contracted Guardians none of
them were willing to take it on because it was such a complex case the the end the uh guardianship group that said that they would take it on we had no I shouldn't say we don't have a choice but we needed to contract with them to get a guardian set in place um because of the
complexities of this individual we could we we initially uh pursued a public guardianship so that the county would have guardianship of this individual cuz the client just turned 18 uh in or just turned 18 so as an adult in December um there's there's some conflict of
interest that stuff happens there um and so we wanted to kind of separate oursel from that and help liabilities with the counties and things so that also helped us as well so as of right now that contracted provider is just providing Guardianship Services for that one
client and then that's the same fee that we've established with our other contracts and then we mirrored our cont contracts based on um Sterns County contracts and then closely to I believe Sherburn County as well but we're right in line with all of those um those
payments for contracted Services um the other part is there's so there's there's guardianship costs um that are related to the ongoing services but there's also guardianship costs that are related to
the court services as well so there are times when we need to uh pursue guardianship we have a responsibility to um pay those costs it was I don't know how it was determined but several years ago it was determined that Human
Services would pay for those costs because it was it was within the realm of the Human Services area um one of the biggest things to help the board understand is that even though we have all of these nursing home beds and assisted livings and board and
lodges we do not not assume the financial liabilities for all of those individuals for ongoing guardianship costs that's another way that we always try to be very fiscally responsible is we work closely with neighboring counties that if they have a somebody that's County of financial
responsibility for example from Sterns County living in Benton County we might have the initial costs if guardianship needs to set up but we work closely with with them that they're going to pay the ongoing costs because they we should not be responsible for those costs um
considering that they're financially responsible we also have people outside of Benton County that we have financial responsibility to that all ties into their their um Financial program so that's all determined at a level that DHS says that this person will be your
financial responsibility in this person won't depending on the uh place that they live in so all of those different factors come into play as well um So currently uh where we're at right now is we have um four providers that were
contracted with um all of those rates are about the 200 to 235 of are ongoing guardianship filing um fees um the the primary funding of guardianship costs um our County Levy dollars uh there isn't not a specific
budget or Grant area that we can take out of for those we have found ways any way that we can any grants that we can access any way that we can we try to take money out of there as well so an example of that is um and I think Deb can speak to this a little
bit more uh she'll be talking about some of the adult protection grants and some of the funding that's there so some of that money gets pulled in um we also have Supple Minnesota supplemental Aid so anybody we work closely with the financial department to ensure that anybody's eligible for Minnesota
supplemental Aid what happens then is if they have guardianship costs and they're eligible for that a percentage of their money coming in typically it's Social Security funds um or some sort of disability funds and you can you can use
up to $100 of that or 10% roughly um of their fees which is usually close to $100 to pay for those guardianship funds um so what happens with those cases is if we deem that um Minnesota supplemental Aid will cover
that then the $100 goes directly to the provider and then we get build the additional 120 or whatever it is so we as much as we can we're seeking those funds out to ensure that we're protecting those Levy dollars as well so we're trying to do everything in our
capability work closely with the financial department early on to determine all of those things um we currently have So currently prior to having public guardianships or private guardianships all of our public Guardians were managed by human services
that number has reduced um we currently have S seven uh public guardianships that we manage so this the supervisor of the uh Home and Community Based Services HCBS program works as the representative Guardian with the state having
guardianship for those individuals so it's signing all the documentations that are needing attending yearly meetings um anything else like that making decision making for those individuals under the um umbrella of Minnesota DHS we have uh
another provider um Presbyterian Family Foundation PFF that has three of ours that was a new contract that we came and requested a few months back uh resource training solution we've been contracting for a while they have 11 um pgs is another provider that has
six of ours and then we also have one provider who has 12 who are strictly funded by um the Minnesota supplemental Aid so that provider there's no cost for um addition fees for Levy dollars or
anything like that and that's an individual provider so that's that individual is not associated with a larger agency with the larger agencies you have leadership you have um you know all of the different aspects of it so if something were to happen to that one
individual we'd have to figure out what to do with those 12 guardianship files so it's nice that we don't have to pay the same amount but we also get some benefits of having an agency to work with and in case something falls through so really good Guardian just a different
kind of dynamic of where we're at and that individual Guardian is Guardianship provider is um pretty much tapped out as far as being able to take on any more cases so prior to that was the other thing prior to seeking additional contracts it was always our go-to for
that provider to utilize that one individual and now since we've kind of capped that out we need we need these other providers as well um so uh the other part is um we have some of these funding
pieces I think Deb's going to speak to here um and then we'll just kind of review some additional standards that have come up recently thank you for that confing us good morning for
confusing us um so basically the service is that uh underg guardianship that Adam and I our units work together on were funded through the vulnerable child and adults act which is the general service fund um and then we also have access to
an adult protection Grant adult protection grant funding which started in about 2020 um with with the establishment of that Grant and the changes with DHS were now held adult protection is now held to Performance stand standards and me
measures such as child protection um in 2024 we received approximately $23,000 those are 100% uh State funds so we try to utilize the money set through
the budgeting process from the vulnerable child and adult allocations the adult protection Grant we try to use those dollars uh to provide or pay for those Services across you know for the guardianship or adult protection services there still are County funds
that must be applied um as you know these costs have been continuing to rise over the course of the years um a couple of things that I wanted to point out that um has changed as far as some of the standards that Adam can pipe in on
this is that um we're anticipating also that with guardianship conservatorships if some of the proposed statutory changes um that were being uh talked about earlier this year go through um that we're going to see the guardianship
agencies that we're Contracting with now kind of drop drop off the face of the Earth um what they're really concerned about is that legislatively um there was some movement to uh say that Guardians could not be um
uh they could not request discharge so if you were appointed a guardianship you were that person's Guardian forever and you know they weren't going to let you ask to be relieved of that Duty um the other thing was that these guardianship
agencies or the people working for them would be held personally liable and could be personally sued so I know that legislatively um many of these guardianship agencies um in the last few months have been down at the capital
talking to uh talking to the to the legislators regarding the concerns this would be devastating um what would happen here if that were to occur would be that public guardianship where the county would be appointed those would all be rolling
back to the counties across the state when I started uh in 87 um back and this was well before you know the downsizing of the state hospitals and all of that Benton County had in excess of 60 people
at that point that we were Guardian for um and most of those people were living in individ in in settings such as the state hospital um you know through through the work of the case managers and Adam's unit or my former unit you know people
died people were restored to capacity we looked and sought out family members thus we were able to to bring those public guardianship numbers down to seven you know um we look for family we try really hard to you know have people
who know those individuals represent those individuals so um I think most of the guardianships um unless it's coming from a case manager's recommendation because they know the family has died they're having to come through adult
protection and our agency goes through process where look and scrutinize those those those guardianship needs and look for anything that's least restrictive I mean that is ultimately health and safety and a last resort for us um the
other thing that's happened since November of last year um is that Benton County uh there's been some changes within the seventh Judicial District and so I think Benton and maax were the last couple of counties to be embraced in the
changes of the judicial system but what that meant for us was that court-ordered guardianship investigations started rolling the Count's Direction um and prior to um our agency kind of interceding we had um our courts
actually taking and appointing one of those individual Guardian types of organizations that were on the spendier end but they had been individuals or an organization that um had um worked closely with the courts and we're well known to the courts
provided a good service um with that being said uh since I believe about November um and this impacts both child unit and the Adult Services Unit um the children's unit has had two of these
court-ordered um guardianship investigations and then Adult Services has had seven to date basically what happens is we have family members or individuals who are struggling either to complete the complex uh processes laid
out in the courts they can't navigate the um system as far as just the computers um or maybe they've got a elderly family member who's died or incapacitated um for whatever reason we're we get a court order we go we meet
the client we look at uh the situation and we make recommendations to the Court to either discharge the guardianship or we find another family member or um in some instances we have to find one of these agencies that we work with in
order to um take on or to continue the ongoing needs because of the protective uh status of the individual so a lot has been changing it's a moving Target but we just want to assure you that again um
we try to do all that we Poss possibly can to avert the use of our public funds um you know and still provide a a safety net for the residents of our County Mr chair Deb um I don't know if this question is for you or not but if
not we'll find um what do you have a general idea of the total impact on Levy dollars for this oh let's see um I think specifically we could probably we could probably go as far as
Levy dollars I think I think roughly my vulnerable child and adult or the VCA dollars coming in to in this to the agency um I think is roughly about 802 or
85,000 then we have the roughly the 24 to 25,000 average that we get Grant um some of those I I think I'd have to come back specifically to you to say what we're spending in addition because in addition
to um just the grant dollars because we have Staffing included so I think that right now for the roughly the uh 27 clients over the course I want to say
it's somewhere between that 12 and $15,000 additional or you know just what we know that's going out in ssis I would have to break that down for you for each of those years that's fine I'm just looking for a general yeah but but it's we're we're
seeing more people we're seeing an increase and we're seeing people you know come and go but once generally once you have established a guardianship unless there's something significant you know death or a family member steps up
we have those individuals for a considerable amount of time you know and and and provide those services so I maybe this was answered before but I can't what consummates you know Bon County how long do they got to live here
versus Sterns County or like if somebody if if I have a relative that needs to come closer to us any from County if you're a resident of Benton County and need guardianship the
responsibility the responsibility or those Court proceedings if you live here here they take place in our County how about if you leave our County you're a resident of our County and you go to a family member you're still our respons if you're still our responsibility if
we've established guardianship for you and your in your financial responsibility remains with us then we would follow your family member if if um I think in some
situations and we haven't done it because we haven't had it occur but in a situation if that were to happen and there we could ask for like a change of venue um and that would be uh Bill Farber from the county attorney's office who we've had some conversations about
what would we do in this type of situation he would be willing to assist us with that change of venue so then if that person maybe they were private maybe they were private pay or whatever but they're living with a family member in yellow medicine
like and the for review comes up they're not going to that back here to see them once a year then we could look at the change of venue process and that guardianship proceeding going to the county where that person was living just
just a follow up on commissioner Pop's uh question or more of a clarification just so I got this right but let's just say you got an individual that lives in Baton County that moves to cerns County because he want wants to be or this individual wants to be closer to a potential Guardian right then it would
still be under our liability because they're moving close over there because they were they initiated then on the other side if they move from Sterns County tobon County you guys would track that back to to Sterns
County most most often what we see is the individuals that we have guardianship for we also have in wavered homes or assisted livings where that they're in time excluded facilities so no matter where they live we retain the
financial responsibility for them so you don't see that back and forth an awful lot because of the other types of support services that we have had to put in place so they they generally are staying they are staying with you know
the county um the county of financial responsibility because they're generally needing more help and support and are living in those protected settings so if you go if we had somebody here that went into a nursing home in Sterns County we would be responsible that for that
person till the day they died basically living in that facility in Sterns County Mr chairman but vice versa it would be the same thing you know Stern count if they came to our County the other C's responsible absolutely my other my other question and I don't you know don't
really want to do this but if we could if it's easy to do could we have like a quarterly tracking how many LE doll sure have have went out we will be able to figure that out and give you I mean but we can't we can't expect staff to spend all this time providing us with
information because they got other things to do but if it would be relatively easy I think it would be easy enough to do absolutely absolutely because your talents would be suited somewhere else besides yeah more
data yeah quite honestly what we found when we're looking at the dollar amounts we'll get you more specific numbers but what we found out is because it was originally a very small amount of money that was spent the accounting department was kind of lumping all of the guardianship costs together as one like court costs what and it wasn't being
tracked as well as we would like to separate it out and with those grants in there so we will get you more solid numbers but it was actually you open an eyes to a area that we didn't know was maybe an issue qu I mean it's trapped we
know how much you spend but not but it can fluctuate yes it fluctuates a lot there's a lot of different costs mixed in with the guardianship costs in there court costs versus individual fees that are spent every month so um but we have
definitely in the last couple years brought our cost down per individual though our individuals are rising commissioner pops point is that Trend you know if we can see what's yes so we will get you more specific numbers for that thank you thanks thank you thank
you thank you appreciate thank you great presentation thank you maybe a little mindboggling it's not as easy as just uh paying a few bucks here all right we're going to move on to uh Chris now that Chris is
done good I like it uh good morning commissioner just allow me a moment here to bring up some talking materials so um on your agenda and in your packet today was a discussion about
the Excel relocation uh agreement we've talked about this in the past uh I've been having discussions with Excel on this uh just to provide some background and maybe refresh everybody's memory what you see on the screen now is our layout for the
roundabout at CA 29 which is running east and west and our Mayu Lake Road also County State Highway One Running North and South um right here is a large Excel Energy transmission pole that is
at this corner uh makes a 90° turn they also have a pole over here with guy wires that span the roadway um these poles would be in Conflict so our first discussions with Excel way back in in February
was uh could Excel Energy consider relocating or removing this pole and just simply span at a diagonal um they looked at it and said yeah that could probably work but these are wooden poles
uh due to the the angle and the forces and the tension on the lines these wooden poles would need to be replaced with steel poles on concrete foundations so to eliminate one pole they seen it as is replacing Two
Poles uh they provided what was called a scoping estimate that I believe you've seen before uh and that estimate right now is sitting at $935,000 why that matters is because uh Benton County is on the hook for those cost for
relocation why are we on the hook for that well they have uh utility easements that predate our road easements in this area so usually when an a public utility
is in public road right away by permit when they become in Conflict for of the construction and maintenance of our roadways it's their cost to relocate them the fact that they have easements that were outside of um our Highway easement even though we have additional
Highway easement on top of that uh it puts the cost back on us because they were they existed in their own easement first so to relocate within their own easement or even outside of their easement those costs uh fall to
us um yeah so we've been talking for the last couple months uh and not getting any any leeway on that estimate um the scoping estimate looks walks talks sounds like a an agreement because it
requires signatures on us in excel's uh position is they would like the county to sign this scope scoping estimate and put down a deposit that equals their estimate of engineering about $140,000 then they will kick off their
Engineering Process and come back to us with a more detailed and more accurate estimate and a relocation uh agreement at that time and then then that would require signatures on both sides to actually initiate uh
their process of ordering materials um lining up construction to have those new poles constructed um yeah so that's that's kind of the the gist of it I guess uh I'm looking for for guidance I guess at the board on how to to
proceed uh a lot of times I look at having two budgets a monetary budget and a Time budget uh so their timeline is saying that they need 15 months from a scoping estimate uh lead time for engineering ordering materials and then
actually reloc ating uh those lines so 15 months from the date the scoping estimate is is signed to when they can comfortably say that they'll be clear we're hoping to construct this
roundabout next year so um Chris I got a quick question sure go ahead 140,000 of engineering and and commissioner Pop I believe is the one who brought this up uh yesterday on a different um uh
engineering request was 1.5 million you divide that by 10 people right yeah this is basically paying one person a year to do engineering on two polls I I I'm failing to
understand I I completely agree with you I thought that was uh quite High um to put it in context we hired Stonebrook engineering uh to be our engineering consultant to design this roundabout we're looking at $3 million and we're we're a little bit more than
that we're I think we're what 1601 175,000 for them to have a whole staff of Designing a roundabout I mean when you think about comparative the engineering cost to the construction costs we have a lot more construction cost overall um another way of saying that is our engineering costs are
smaller percentage than what theirs are so that was brought up in my most recent meeting with them I I brought that up uh to them and and previously uh even asked them to explore the ideas of going out for an RFP to get different engineering firms well that
would take more time in their opinion and they didn't think that it would cost anything different because each consulting firm would would have the same information is what their response was to me in this relocation agreement they do list the engineering firm
uh uh that they plan on using it's it's listed in here as um HDR engine engineering uh somewhere I'm sure that can we cont them contact them directly HDR is a large firm I I don't know if
they had a a name of okay Timothy Rogers um oh that's who from Excel but prepared by Russ Russell Schuler of HDR engineering so I don't have his contact information but um yeah Mr chair Chris you get there's a
line item they have in there for 40,000 for easement m for what okay so yes um so this line is not in a utility easement they um they said that they would need
$40,000 to acquire additional easements um we pushed back on that and then they said no you're right County we would actually like you to um acquire those easements and then we push back and said why would we require acquire easements for you to be in there we'll allow you
to be in our road rideway EAS Min and so that's still uh uh not settled um they said well we can't acquire those easements because we wouldn't have condemning Authority a quick consultation with our uh County
Attorney's Office doesn't know where that's coming from why they wouldn't have condemning Authority obviously they acquired easements um you know before we acquired Road easements in the past that's why we're in this whole situation required I don't know if it's a an issue of they if
this land owners are unwilling to sell them an easement they don't think that they could take it to a condemnation Court whereas you know we we do that have to do that sometimes before roads for road construction part of that is establishing the public purpose and
public need uh for that project and therefore the need public need for the additional easement or a road rideway so that's what they were estimating the cost for securing um a utility easement to span that
diagonal like that so and they're also looking at an estimated time schedule to engineer to 15 weeks well what they clarified was that's that's from now to relocation 15 be so totally
done right so when I asked the question about engineering that's a lot for Designing two poles that are going to be that I said I think are going to be very similar design probably other polls you have in the region and then they said well we will have engineering oversight during construction for inspection and
stuff too so the engineering their response was will be during the whole project so the the 134,000 wasn't just for design it's for design and construction oversight it's just like we're Reinventing the wheel to move two I would yeah I would imagine
this a their office that they're using is out of St Louis Park it looks like they got one on Rochester St Louis Park but they do they got 12,000 employees so it is that's it though and we're dealing with uh Excel transmission which in my
experience they operate a little bit different than the Excel gas division and they operate differently than the Excel distribution which is what provides the power to our homes there they're like three different companies in one sometimes so
um yeah assigning this they to their process they are expecting um this deposit I said 140 I apologize it's $1 134 ,000 uh to get them them moving but the at least the understanding verbally
between them and I is that there will be another agreement forthcoming to actually lock both parties into you know greater costs or more costs and actually ordering materials and so on and so forth so I got to tell you even after a discussion yesterday I've been think
chewing on this I mean to get backed into a corner you know we're all supportive of this project we're going to get thrown a 100,000 or a million dollars at us what if it was two million I mean would we be well I think we'll find that out after the 134 I also
reached out to send an email out to all 87 County Engineers that's not true they're not all not every county has a County engineer right now to ask who who has experience with Excel Energy what are the how often do they come in with in their estimate because to I guess to
ease my concern Excel keeps repeating to me oh we're only going to charge you for actual costs right that's great and fine but how often do you come in under your your actual cost and and it was across the board reviewing it again this morning most responses said they were
pretty close to their estimate there was one outlier and that was in Scott County and they said that all said and done their relocation project actually ended up costing twice what their scoping estimate is to your point Scott County does have a lot of more urban and
Suburban um environments I don't know if that's what kind of led to that why that was uh more but even some responses that didn't deal with Excel Energy but with you know other large utility companies in Minnesota said that um generally they
come in close or slightly uh above their estimate a few did say no they were uh our most recent relocation project was was under the estimate so what frustr what frustrates me over this
this is complete if you ask me EXL is probably part owner of HDR and then they can pay whatever the heck they want because they pass all this along and the and the the taxpayers that need this
public utility pay for it y it's just as we call it in everywhere money laundering mhm well they can charge it because they can yeah they all are doing is pushing money around they can they there's no there's no it's a joke nobody watch well and obviously we all understand there's a cost to relocate
this obviously but come on Mr Sher yes so let's talk about the monkey wrench we talked about yesterday with other route now this is an access basically for the residents that are right in that
area if we no no this is the extension of 29 I know so no I'm talking about that little area that's already there at right now is serving those people right yes the one up there serves
the other property owner but it still comes out at the same spot you would be proceeding to so if you just curved it a little bit to go back over there and left them with their access and Excel with all their energy
stuff that they need for that what's our problem up going the other direction with XL the problem lays is we we have to redo the road 29 coming to the roundabout from
molers so we'd have to put our a roundabout up higher no we would have to realign that in order to move that roundabout to where we can put the the pole in the center or even move it north of that
yeah I understand understand what CHR she's yeah I'm trying to say the the rod of 29 just curve it a little bit there and avoid all the complicated Exel stuff and let them deal with their stuff Chris put your arrow where uh she's talking about
and what we would have to do with the 29 curve in it so where that water the blue line is aing Blue Water that holding Pond it would have to be further north of that yet so to miss the poles yeah I I think I understand where where everybody's going so we got this pole
here we do have this is actually kind of changed shape now as we gotten further in design so yeah in this corner though basically is our storm water treatment pond because we have quite a bit more new impervious area so we have to collect all of our storm not all of it but we have to collect some of our storm
water and send it into an infiltration Pond to to treat that so um one one location we thought well what if we move this circle enough that this pole is in inside this circle Well Road
design is kind of like a chain it's hard to move one link of the chain which without affecting the whole length of it so you're moving this roadway then then we start becoming in conflict with this Pole right here that we're um what would be the the diagonal so then then we got
to move the road to a point which is probably this whole width moving this road far enough up that this is now not in conflict with the the westbound or eastbound Lane so this whole width of the roadway here is is almost 40 feet so
we're moving the center of the roadway um at least 40 ft up here then that means that we're pushing this roadway all the way back to here well we can't we don't want to avoid another we don't want to impact another Pole right here that's what this little circle with this line is another uh transmission line
so so how do we do that how do we design a curve in here to make sure that we still have our clear Zone distance from the edge of the roadway to both of these poles and move that up here it ends up moving but then we can't move it too much because then we don't want this pole to be on the other side of the
circle and start being in the other side uh the other lanes it's really difficult to fit this in here and we have some undesirable curves then um to make this work our roadway costs then start
approaching another million dollars uh just for regrading additional rideway acquisition um then we're extending this city street up to meet where the new 29 alignment is our environmental
documentation is based on essentially staying with the current alignment um that maybe that adds a little bit more engineering cost but that that really adds to the timeline for the project to push uh and pushes that out um
we could do that we could look at designing this and doing this I really think if we go to that route uh we would not be constructing this next summer though because we'll need time to redefine our alignment redefine our
grading limits uh redraw up our parcel maps for additional rideway acquisition that we need revise our environmental so we got because we're in such a tight timeline with this Federal funding grant that we got and get it ready to R next year we've got multiple things happening
at the same time same time we're talking to excel we're still finishing up our design we're also submitting our environmental documentation for review our environmental documentation is based on essentially this layout with some minor tweaks like I said the pond is
kind of Chang and everything so if we change that we got to pull that environmental documentation review back and resubmit that and then basically that clock starts over with uh all the reviews uh down St Paul Chris would it be um Chris uh will it affect their
Federal funding yes yeah because so the federal funding becomes available State fiscal year uh of 25 which starts July 1st of 2024 um to be able to still use it we have to have project
authorization um before June 30th of 2025 meaning all the ples are approved and we've got approval to go ahead and go to letting our goal though is that we construct this roundabout outside of school hours
so we're hoping June 1st next year we're we're we're moving dirt or as soon as school gets out of soccer Rapids Rice High School to do that ideally we're having uh a bid opening end of March so we're getting contracts approved in
April we're having our preconstruction meeting in May so June 1 we're we're we're starting to move dirt um that means okay bid opening into May we're advertising into February end of
December we have final plans approval from state aid and and federal highways in St Paul in December we really are submitting those things right now to give them that's how much time it's taken to get things
reviewed and even that that's that's quickly so Mr and then we also stand to lose $440,000 from APO Chris would it be would it be obvious to say
that moving that road moving that roundabout will throw an extra $1.5 million into the equation versus the $900,000 of move in the polls I don't know exact costs um I just think that we're going to get to a point
where it's it's a it's a wash um um we'll end up spending at least that much uh probably in additional engineering and additional grading and and and RightWay cost and stuff the potential bigger problem is screwing up our federal funding that's right yeah yeah
well the timeline we need to ask for more funding consideration excuse me people'll have to ask for more funding because it's more expensive you know how hard we worked to get this funding well they're going to need to fund it because it's it's infrastructure who where is from yeah
who's going to fund it who going to who's going to find it the federal will have to do it if the state's not going to do it they said no that's why we got this as gra it should need for the county to fund Excel somebody's got to get that funding from it's our project that's why we got
to fund Excel Chris I was thinking about this last night after we were there so if you drive through Wisconsin a lot of times their roundabouts are way bigger than what ours what if we just made the whole circle in the middle bigger and put that pool inside
I mean some of them are like huge in Wisconsin um either way we're adding we're adding cost and now we have to decide what what what can we live with and what can't we live with
minus getting the project done and not losing funding going going back to commissioner San's question EXL is just fine with us without without us doing this project exactly they don't care they don't care with that said what bothers is the heck out of me right now
is I design cell towers 400 Footers and I can build two 400 Footers with design all the NEPA clearances on tribal land for 500,000 a piece these aren't four 400 foot Aerials
going up I mean this is a in my opinion it's extortion it is it really that's a perfect I mean 140,000 for engineering on this is I would love to figure out every way we could stick it to excel
moving forward after this and you've got almost 600 in construction mhm is this I was told they can that's why they're doing it because they can well we got to figure out ways that we can make it painful for them moving forward for many many many years it
doesn't start out a very good partnership no I'd say leave their pools I I would like to see where all this cost is coming in I do know that we got to move forward on this I I myself would be willing to make the motion to approve the
134 but if this comes in at $2 million no way we're done we need to relook at things yeah I agree so for that I'll make the motion to uh approve the 134 however I would like to see added to
that is a detailed um list of hours on what they're what they're charging for and what they did for that because I did the math at $250 an hour that's 14 weeks for one
person to design two polls who does that's what they do that's what they do that's living no that's their job so I see a lot of profit in there and I you know let's uh let's let let's have a detailed so in my
motion I would like to see a detailed hourly list of what they're providing for this yeah not a blanket invoice not a blanket invoice I I think that's uh good Mr chair I will second that now let's do
more discussion so I understand we'll move forward with getting this first step but before we commit or agree to anything else we'll see some we need to see some more documentation from Excel and that'll be brought back to the board for for review and consideration Mr
chair just to be clear that every abouts not just for the residents in Creekside it's for the school it's it's for everybody that travels that direction which is one of our busiest roads it's got to be busiest intersections we got in the it is if we back up even further
remember that study you know this was identified as a safety um high priority intersection there's a lot of crashes and so that's our whole goal with this project is to improve safety and that's what it pains me to to you know
have to pay Excel But ultimately I come back to we're trying to build a safe roadway for all the roadway users yeah those that come in and out and through Benton County those that are going to the school those are living in villages of
Creekside I think the design of the roadway is good as is um we start moving alignments and shifting and putting additional Curves in there and things it gets harder and harder to say that we're making you know big safety improvements
with that and so I I do feel like we're in a corner we're trying to do what's best for uh the users of our roadways in our County and and Excel knows that and is in the way so to speak so if you go to
that intersection between 3 and 6 o' I mean it's it's really bad we're just going to create another problem like we do every place else so now we're going to move it up to County 33 that all the trucks that are coming off at 33 are not going to be able to get on one to go
north you can sit there I've sat there for you know five seven 8 minutes trying to get to go north on say I'm glad commissioner po mentioned trucks and I I I I attached this or brought this today too this is part of our design process with the the roundabout circles and the
location and the alignments we're be we're having Stone book check these things and we're very cognizant of you know truck traffing through here a common thanks to our oversized permits a common carrier is grease or GCE transport uh mobile homes we see a lot
of mobile homes for some reason come through this intersection so we've made sure our roundabouts and these curves handle that um doing any more deviation and putting additional Curves in there could could make that more
difficult to get their loads through there also with the extension of you know 29 to the east we're hoping that we're we get to the point where we're diverting a lot of those tra those trucks from going south in front of the school so we want to make sure if they're coming from the north and
they're trying to get to Highway 23 that they can make that kind of left turn movement around that that roundabout so you know putting additional Curves in there and things like that does make that more challenging for for large trucks goe just to clarify Chris we got
a two-lane roundabout there or a single Lane so it's called a a 2 by one so we're building it today for the width of four lanes going south future that means on the North side it's going to be wide enough to transition from four back down
to two because foreseeable in the foreseeable future may Lake Road will still be just two lanes All the Way North and can still handle that that traffic so that was my concern I want to make sure the four lane was there at Chris have you uh talked to Sterns
County to Jody on they did that one at 134 last year west of of uh Sartell oh yeah that's a huge roundabout and I know about a year ago about this time last year they were moving power poles
there yeah um I did well I did reach out to her and I don't know if she was talking about that one or one that's going on this summer they had like a $3 million relocation uh contract they got into with Excel Energy no that was a that was uh 4 and a half miles of rural
reconstruction she said um so several more polls but they were they were multi-million dollar that one there is a huge round yeah I mean I can I can pull three self-loading boxes and get around that one
sure if if we were talking to excel distribution which was again those are the polls that go to our homes and stuff that would be a different conversation maybe it's different and that may be a distribution is it cheaper for them to go underground um I don't think they can
with that those yeah because once again transmiss this this is like the Northland reliability project their their intent is to go cross country and connect uh communities so I guess so Mr chair what's the difference between
putting stop lights and what how much problem are we going to have with that the stop lights are not is we're going to lose all of our funding from the federal government because it's not s it's not not going to safety stop lights kill and we lose 440,000 from the APO y
all of our all of our grant money's gone and I don't know that the arms for the stop what do you call the arms for the Stop we call those masted arms yeah masted arms on the stop lights would even fit in there right I think we' still have some conflict yeah that's the first thing so we got the $750,000 of safety Improvement money because we were
going to put a roundabout in and not a four-way stop or signal and then we got the additional 440 because we can we showed that roundabouts reduce greenhouse gas emissions because you don't have PE you don't have cars stopped idling at red lights and things like that they're they're moving through
the intersection um and so that that mean that would be one downside we we give away $1.1 million of that so um so what's our cost right now so okay so we're we're we're thinking about $3 million of
construction costs so we have $1.9 million of our cost for construction plus this $935,000 for the Excel relocation and the city has some of that on their plate too yes and then if we went with the stop
lights how much is that going to we're not going with the stop it's not going to happen chair we got a motion in a second call the question okay I'll call the question all in favor I opposed no same signed motion carries 4 to
one okay we we will do this we'll keep this going we'll bring back more information from Excel before we agree to do anything further and I I wouldn't be afraid to make sure that moving right yeah yeah we'll make sure we do what they can to to get this moving so I I would make
sure that you voice their our opinions on how frustrating this is do that and if I don't care if there's trees that need to be cut that are in their power lines that they have to take care of we're going to be on them like you know
what understood okay Mr chair could we pause and do Community Health Board sure let's do that one uh we will uh step away from the um Community or the County Board and turn over to commissioner Heinen for the
Community Health Board we'll call it order of the Community Health Board uh we already know that the roll call everyone's here approve or amend the agenda anything add to the agenda Jacqueline no additions Mr chair move for approval of the agenda is presented second it motion and a second any
further discussion if not I'll call the question all in favor say I I I oppos motion carries asent and consent agenda 1 through three what would we like to do with that move to approve second okay we got a motion a second any further
discussion on that if not I'll call the question all in favor say I I oppose motion carries Jacqueline do you have anything in front of us today I could give you a comment um we just have so our three Public Health americ cor we we partnered with the Amer cor for for those three Public Health Project coordinators we did get um an
announcement last week that we will have three members that are placed with our site for the 24 to 25 years so we'll have them starting two of them starting in July and then Tina who's been with us this last year will be returning as well so we're excited to have her back thank you great with that I want to thank Tim
from the heral for posting the safe roads to school project I think that was very nice very good article you know and thanks to Mariah APO everybody involved with that because it's right it's only a block
away from my house and it actually is working very well I just think that other agencies in the county that do things outside in the area should get recognized just not Public Health everybody else we should do that anything else no okay thank you with
that I'll adjourn the chb at 10:40 okay uh Monty do we want to go in the ditch right away cuz mic is not here mic is I got an email from Matthew said they're about 20 minutes 25 minutes behind so they should be arriving any
time but I if if this is you think it's going to be pretty brief is there anything such a thing as a brief ditch meeting right not these days well we could just make it brief right commissioner Johnson you handing it over I'm handing it over okay thank
you commissioner pcon we'll call the uh B County ditch Authority meeting that's order again roll call has been done already move on to approval our amendments to the agenda Chris any changes I have no changes move approval second motion a second to approve the agenda is presented all those in favor I
oppose it's carried move on to the consent agenda there is one item approve or amend the meeting minutes from May 21 so move second motion a second to approve those minutes is there any further discussion he none all those in favor I opposed it's carried Chris update on County ditch project yeah I I
just wanted to provide a public update so since the last meeting we do have a um I have an additional meeting scheduled to discuss uh those those Wetland areas uh that was much talked about at the last board meeting and see what we can do to to move forward with
uh some sort of partial repair uh or something like that so don't have those answers yet that meeting is scheduled uh next week I believe it is it's on my calendar um so we're we're moving forward with with that so and we also talked yesterday briefly about potentially setting up a subcommittee so
we probably need to have that discussion when we do some dates to set up a subcommittee of the Dig subcommittee meeting yeah yeah and and that we can talk about yeah I by the time that meeting gets scheduled I I fully expect to have some answers on or some suggestions on which direction to go so
we'll schedule that after your next week's meeting then sure so yeah um and I have that on my computer so I can make sure we have that date there um the the additional work with the spoil piles and all that rock I'd reached out to the contractor Helman construction to
provide me with some some prices we had actually laid out three different options for them to consider one of them was to haul out uh a volume that we had kind of estimated of the spoil pile just remove it from the project and dispose of it wherever they they find a you know
cost effective location another second option was to kind of spread that pile out farther amongst the trees even Beyond 16 1/2 ft or the 25 ft that we had cleared out uh and not remove any more trees and then the third option was
to go ahead and remove some more trees uh adjacent to where they already did and try to spread that that pile out there so I'd received a text back from them and I asked them to put that in writing and an email I'm still waiting for that but uh just to put that into
context the first option of hauling it out uh they said $18,000 for that that quantity that we estimated around that one one property kind of around the the corner uh to haul out that material um the second option
to spread around the trees without removing any more was $10,000 uh to remove some more trees and spread around in that area was $15,000 so Chris we had also talked about yesterday the potential of maybe placing some of that rock into the uh
Banks yeah so so we're going to I think I that would be my next step would be to reach back out to them and suggest that to maybe have them revise their sure their estimates to do that work I guess you know my personal opinion is if we put ourselves in the shoes of that land
owner yeah uh spreading dirt out already farther than we've gone an additional 25 or beyond the 25 foot removing more trees the rock is still there right I don't know that that solves a lot of thing and I don't think we're going to get a lot of Buy in that I think we got to look at a plan B and that's what
we're kind of talking about yeah I seen that there I kind of like that idea too if we can kind of use some of that large Stone and use that as Rip wrap in areas that are of concern that seems like a good use of it and we're not having to haul that miles away or we saw a lot of great water movement there yesterday and it's actually already cutting into the
ditch right a little bit so yeah no doubt um we've restored the drainage which is the goal of a repair project in in some ditches yeah in some ditches no not all of it exactly anything else Chris the only thing is what we talk about to we do have a draft repair
report for cd10 and that's something I think would be a good topic discuss at the the drainage subcommittee meeting and an update on cd12 at all that be also there oh we could talk about that we could talk about next steps for that yeah there's no early update we've received a repair petition um that's
kind of where we're at with that ditch right now so and then after a conversation last night briefly with representative Schultz could you please forward cd1 14's repair report see okay all right thank you we can do that all right anything else County ditches we're adjourned at 10:45 pass back to the
chair that was the quickest ditch we' had great that was nice all right Monty we're going to move on to Micah allow me a moment to uh open up the Micah presentation how was the drive
up good we from St Cloud and it went a little bit longer apies not a problem that's what usually happens in St it does yeah that's you're right yep y to get cuty well I know still not
fun [Applause] wow Oops There You Go excellent thank you good morning uh members uh Matt Mossman executive director of the interner County Association thank you for your
flexibility yes we were in Sterns this morning it actually is a beautiful morning and drive up sounds like we're going to get some more rain uh on the way um back I was also joking at Sterns that we had quite a bit of of uh traffic
detours and projects and uh construction going on which in our line of work we consider a successful ful uh drive up so um uh so thank you uh I will get at it I think that this legislative session I like to start just with a a little bit
of Framing and we really appreciate I start with thank yous too because that way I don't forget him at the end but I really want to thank uh commissioner pop and ginsky for service on Micah's board of directors and for all of you for uh participating it was fantastic to have so many of you down in Winona County for
our annual uh meeting we really look forward to those opportunities to both talk to legislators directly and we hope to have more of those as we go into the 2024 uh session 2025 session so 2024 really to understand it I think is it
was on the heels of 2023 there's really no other way to to say it the 2023 legislative session was in the 20 uh plus years that I've been doing this a historic session just in terms of the amount of resource um that was allocated in the Surplus and
the amount of policy and budget legislation uh that was taken up and that really um set the groundwork still for 2024 the appetite was just as large um there was a significant uh legislative agenda um that was being brought forward by the
majorities parties in particular more bills were introduced by far in this 2-year bium than have ever been introduced in the history of of the legislature with Minnesota that uh left a situation where there was a constant effort to try and
rein in the expectations if you will and I'm not sure that the session ever quite got uh got there um but a focus was intended to be on the capital investment and bonding Bill and on Fixit um which we had a stake in a number of the Fixit
conversations but when so much happened in 2023 fix it meant that there was an awful lot of pieces of legislation that needed uh implementation issues and and some adjustments and changes um that were brought forward by the state agencies and then of course there was the context that it was a non- budgeting
year and an effort to sort of keep uh expectations um small with that you'll see um the a lot of the county priorities that we had going into and we'll talk about the specifics of some of those but when you look at that list and the context that was set I think
we'd have to say that it was another really successful uh session for the legislature uh for uh counties um I say that in large part because again if you look at that uh the the limited resources that were um in that leaders
ultimately agreed to um put into to new efforts this year $424 million of onetime money was allocated uh this legislative session in the most of that onetime in the 2024 25
bium 109 million of that fully 25% of that um was uh dedicated to the legislature's uh commitment to follow through and fund um a settlement fund for the the Tyler uh V henpen uh US Supreme Court uh
decision this uh state budget ends with one of the healthiest state budget conditions that in the nearing 30 years um uh of doing this work that I have ever seen I'll focus on the green uh column uh uh two rows there at the
bottom of the third column from the left um the legislative session ends after that $424 million was allocated with 3291 billion on the bottom line on top of $3.26 3 billion of budget Reserve um
if you look at the spending the banal spending of 70.9 uh billion dollar that's in the budget that means almost 10% of uh there's almost a 10% cushion if you will in this bium so I was the legislature wanting to rein in um
expectations around new spending this session it had a lot to do with those orange columns over or those two uh rows and and numbers that are highlighted in Orange off to the right hand side second column from the right when we look out into the what's projected for the 2627
vium um there's what we call a structural imbalance so there's um estimates now are that more uh less Revenue will come in during that bium uh in that current period than than spending that's projected and and
usually you like to see that in balance that has narrowed quite a bit from a year ago this time um and with the strong economy there's a good chance that it will continue to narrow and of course um this also builds inflation in so that's sort of the context of why
there was a really limited appetite to do things that were ongoing which left a lot of opportunity for one-time things which was what we needed in the settlement money so that brings us to the $109 million something that was just really again this was a state law um that was ruled
unconstitutional a very prescriptive state law that we administer so we really uh felt strongly importantly that uh this was uh money that the legislature should step up and fund and and they most certainly did this is not money that goes to counties this is money that will go to claimants um under
uh the settlement agreement for the look back period that goes back 7 years so you may recall that there was sort of two pieces um to responding to the US Supreme Court decision one was to address past claims and that's where this money will go and the second was to change the law going forward so that it
meets uh the expectations of the US Supreme Court decision um the two that which what we refer to as the policy language those are on separate trajectories the policy Bill uh language needed to go to more committees in the legislative process we had anticipated
in the last week of session that they would uh meet back up and go into into one bill um there was some questions that were raised uh and some last uh late changes that came in um that I'll talk about a
bit on the policy language um in the last week of session and so they just ended up passing in separate bills so the money Bill um you can see how it had such uh broad uh support passed 127 to Z in the house and 66 to0 in the
Senate it does require that uh counties that have inventory of lands that have been forf footed under the property forfeiture uh law for non-payment of tax in the last seven years will have to those counties will have to make a good All Counties will have to make a good
faith effort uh to sell those lands and 75% of the proceeds will go back to the state to help offset um uh some of that $109 million 85% of the proceeds um in the two years between 2027 uh July 1 and
2027 uh 2029 July 1 uh then you can see some of the other requirements both on this chart and the next page um that I'll get to where I have the additional um items those were Provisions that were added in the last week of session as uh some additional concerns came forward
around just wanting to make doubly sure if you will that that everything is done to protect and preserve home ownership to the greatest extent possible so there is an expectation that when these lands are sold that if they are residential units or unapproved units that for a certain period of time they will be
offered with the um hope intent that the buyers are intending to use them um as a residence um and then some additional notification requirements so that is the money piece which again addresses any retroactive claims all counties are
presumed to be participating counties unless you affirmatively take steps to say you don't want to be a participating County which I would not recommend doing um and so this addresses all of those issues for counties then we had the policy change uh Provisions house file
4822 Feist uh Senate file 4895 um Westland again those two legislators legislators uh led a tremendously complicated uh conversation around um this is not everything that counties had
were recommending but this really circled back to take in a lot of the County uh recommended preferences um recommendations for how the the the law be adjusted in order to uh work better going
forward um you will hear us talk throughout the day today a lot about house file 5247 this language ended up along with lots of other language we'll talk about today in um a final nearly 1500 page bill that passed in the last hour of
legislative session a number of these Provisions were traveling separately with uh support um from the legislature and and and weren't getting and this was the vehicle to get them completed by the midnight deadline on Sunday key
Provisions um for the tax uh forfeiture policy language uh that are different is it requires a sale so going forward when a property is forfeited it will require a sale by auction within 6 months of the expiration of redemption it'll establish
a claims process um for Distributing Surplus value if any uh it defines minimum bid um that minimum bid does not include all the county costs we wanted in there but quite a few of the county costs um that we uh uh hope for it
certainly doesn't include cleanup um and other and Demolition and other costs that that counties too often occur um there got to be a growing understanding and appreciation of those costs uh throughout the legislative uh process as more and more legislators this went
through more committees that was helpful to understanding the issues that counties um face but it didn't uh didn't leave us with the resources to address those issues so we'll have to return next legislative session um uh to pick up that
issue and then I'm going to just drop down uh some of the other Provisions there relate more to many of the mineral and forested counties in northern Minnesota I'm going to drop down to the additional item these were items again that were added at the end again the concern was around making sure uh sure
and I I would say doubly sure if you will um that the that the sale process when it does happen does everything that it can to both preserve home ownership to the greatest extent possible um and also to to deliver the highest value now
those are things that counties were already doing um just as a reminder um there's a three-year Redemption period one of the longest Redemption periods in the country um uh for so there's a lot of oper and a lot of notifications during
that uh period um for home owners but and the items that came in at the end were creation of a housing support account that is funded from a new appropriation from the state general fund not from counties um there is a change to a notification that was
already in law around the Delinquent Tax List publication and notification to homeowners that it includes some information on property tax relief programs that are available then there was a requirement that for the first 30 days that that property uh is that a property is sold
on auction when it gets past the Redemption period that it be sold at its uh that it be marketed for sale at its estimated market value before um the the price can be dropped to the minimum uh bid price and then there was a a broader
notification requirement all things that I think we as associations and the Department of Revenue and and others will be working to bring um uh better set of information to all of to Benton and all other counties in the months uh
coming up here just to help facilitate um help you uh do your next steps and work um on implementation so I'm going to finish on this slide and then uh Mr Novak will come up and talk about
Transportation house file 5247 again was the tax bill um as both the House and Senate went into tax conference committee there was quite a few other Provisions that would have impacted uh counties there was not consensus between
the House and Senate on uh only a handful of uh items that were in the tax bill most uh dealing with child care tax credit um some other state programs and a minerals article so in the end of the day um this 1500 page Bill did not
include very many tax items these are the things that it did not include that would have impacted uh counties there was no change to state aid um both bills had uh some onetime increase in score Grant dollars going into the conference committee that was not in the bill um the House Bill had an
elimination of the sunset on the homeless prevention aid program and some a onetime increase in in money that was not in the bill there was an increase on the Senate side in soil Water Conservation District Aid that was not in the bill there was also last legislative session uh task force
created to look at um the conditions under which the state might put a law in place that would allow cities and counties um governing bodies um with a voter approved referendum to put a sales tax in place for certain um Capital
infrastructure rather than going having to go to the legislature for a special law authorization um both bills had a version of those recommendations from that task force included in their Omnibus Bill um but they also had some differences that were enough to they
just couldn't resolve and so that that'll be taken up um I presume again next legislative session so that was not in the bill no changes to local sales tax uh authorization does not impact any previously approved um uh special laws
for local uh uh local sales taxes and then the senate had an issue that I know you've heard me talk about that we are continuously thinking should be done on a Statewide basis and advocating for but seems to only get addressed on a caseby Case basis and I know has some uh
relev y um uh for your County as well um but there was the senate had quite a few individual uh uh refund exemptions for the construction materials that are paid uh by local governments for public projects um none of those were included
in the bill not a phys philosophical opposition I don't think in any way to uh adopting those there just wasn't very many things agreed to uh in the tax area so I will take uh questions on any of that now otherwise I'll be back up at the end for
man question for you on on the tax on the construction tax if if by some reason our project moveed forward we started in let's just say February of next next year or something like that would we be able to do retro back or would we be held to paying all those
taxes because it never made it in this bill you would be able to do uh retro back um again it's up to that would be up as it currently sits either up to the legislature if they passed a Statewide provision to do that Statewide provision with a retroactive effective date or if
it was a project for your specific project to set a retroactive effective date thank you morning morning Steve Novak I handle transportation for Micah and uh it's always nice to be in Benton County so
it's a nice Sterns right right right you had the comparon tell them we said that well let me take you through what didn't didn't happen uh in transportation this year it was quite a year really uh I think I can say that the vast majority of Micah's
Transportation issues were wrapped up inside four bills they had an Omnibus Transportation policy Bill an Omnibus Transportation finance bill and then two basically bonding bills a pure bonding Bill and a cash Bill the first two
issues the bond or the finance and policy they did pass we'll give you the details on that unfortunately the two bonding Provisions bonding bills did not pass and we'll tell you that story too uh let me start with house file 3436
which was the Omnibus Transportation policy bill it's now chapter 104 um this was a good story from the standpoint it was very bipartisan uh there's a number of policy issues in but they're overwhelmingly not
controversial there was one issue that did directly relate to our Micah Transportation platform which has to do with uh not Desiring to see exceptions to truck weights around the state because of the wear and tear on the roads and uh uh the fact that the system
itself still s still needs a lot of investment to get up the form we had a good year in that area we had very few exceptions to uh with truck weight exemptions there were two uh one had to do with sewage trucks performing Emergency Services which is a
pretty limited application around the state and the other one was very geographically specific up in East Grand Forks having to do with h special sugar beat hauling uh weight exemptions up there which has a lot to do with the the kind of the type of monster trucks that
come across the border from North Dakota uh to help with the sugar beat situation those were the only two exemptions and so you we were pretty pretty pleased with that the second bill I want to talk to you about which Matt referenced house file
5242 uh was unique in a couple of ways uh that it's the it was the transportation Omnibus finance bill but it got combined at the end of the session with the Omnibus labor bill and the Omnibus housing bill so you had three pretty distinctly different bills
that in the end passes a package but they're kind of heard and discussed separately and this particular Bill uh had quite a final week of the session uh we had had many committee meetings on it and the Wednesday before the deadline
day uh it did pass the conference report passed out onto the floor of the house it sat there till Saturday the second to the last day uh and then it was broken apart and sent back into a conference committee it became the vehicle for the
solution to the ongoing dispute uh involving lyt in Uber and uh so it's it did some good there I guess uh but then at the end like Matt had referenced it became part
of the famous house file 5247 the tax bill it was one of the six or seven major issues that got put into what became that 1500 page Bill uh and it passed the Senate uh on the final vote
with about three to five 5 minutes to spare at midnight on Sunday night so let me just touch on the highlights of that bill from a transportation standpoint while there was very little money put into the bill in terms of cash allocation about 4 million bucks uh
through cancellations and some other kind of financial maneuverings there was 117.5 million in transportation related areas that did involved putting some money into the qus of Commerce program uh and the state uh Road constru
construction program uh probably as important or more important were some of the policy Provisions uh they did establish a Minnesota advisory Council on infrastructure which it's hoped over time will help us better control the cost of some of these projects and
create a better structure to prioritize the ones that we do the big issue though that we spent a lot of time on and Micah Engineers like yours Chris bird back here uh had a real impact on this Transportation greenhouse
gas emission assessment issue you know which we all spent a lot of time on that was a bill that was passed in 2023 well most of the attention was on all of the money that was being spent and you had to kind of prioritize where you spent
your time and effort and we did have a record year that year for money and transportation um but uh the work of of the county Engineers I think was extremely significant in the task force that was created out of that law and
they met every other week uh from July of 2023 to February of 2024 out of that came three or four fairly major changes that have helped us find a better way to deal with some of these difficult issues for one thing uh
they they changed the project analysis analysis requirements uh from a single project the project basis to a portfolio of projects around the state which gives us more flexibility uh to make changes uh
fit the structure we're supposed to fit without but mitigating some of the the problems that otherwise go with that it also creates an ongoing technical advisory committee uh which we hope will include city and county Engineers we've
made that case as strong as we can and we hope that will be the case but regardless regardless the the the creation of the structure of a of an ad an advisory committee on technical issues uh we think is going to be very
important it's already helped mitigate this issue and over time I think it'll do a lot more than that and then uh we retain safety as a top priority in terms of prioritizing Road and Bridge projects which is something that otherwise would have been changed uh I think for the
worst in most people's minds so those were all I think important uh policy changes our Engineers uh had a lot to do with those changes taking place and uh just the whole idea that the policy makers have now accepted the fact that
they should continue get advice from the technical people is uh major progress that takes me to the uh bonding bills which I've already said didn't pass house file 5220 house file 5162 uh
one of the things that ha or one of the things that's not going to happen at least not for another year that would have happened uh was the creation of what they called replacement accounts later called preservation accounts which was something that we were opposed to so
we've got an extra year to work on that in terms of the bonding bills to come uh the one thing we have to go from for next year in a bonding bill is the two chairs with about four days to go made
public the framework they thought should be the bonding bill which would have been about a $950 million bill 110 million of that roughly would have been dedicated to local roads Bridges the local Road Wetland program our
priorities frankly um that didn't occur because there was no bill uh you know we're able to Lobby we're able to testify but under the Constitution the only people that have the right to vote are the legislators and if they choose not to we don't have a good strategy for that and so that's what led to the final
results and uh I'll rest with that and be happy to answer any questions if I might Mr chair I'm just going to add one final personal comment um I've been doing this a long time this was my 50th session always enjoyed coming out to Benton County but I am
going to be retiring from Micah in September so I wanted to uh thank the board and uh Monty the administ rator and a special thanks to my friend back here Chris bird who I spent a lot of time with learned a lot from him um but on behalf of myself and Mike I just want
to say thank you for the courtesies extended to me and our organization over the years and uh I wish you well you got a great County and I'm sure it'll only get better and better so thank you for congratulations everything appreciate it hey Steve I got a question so we were
talking yesterday about the districts for the local Wetland replacement um act and you know ours is one of the highest in the state and is there any way we can get moved out of that District that includes the North Metro and into the one to the north of us we'll have to
talk to Bowser about that see we got a coalition I think it'll take a statutory change so okay yeah wow thanks again y thank you thank you yeah wow was a state state good morning Mr
chair and commissioner I am not retiring just just saying just for the record Nancy celeski and I cover Health and Human Services for Micah and it's a pleasure to be with you today let's see are we on the right spot oh a little bit off here um okay I got
this um so I'm going to start with the American or the a Minnesota African-American pres family preservation actually the second second bullet there um this is something the legislature has been working on for a number of years and they did make progress on it this year and what they've done is there going to be a a
two-year phase in program that's going to be hanin and Ramsay only um for two years and then they need to report back findings there's a working group that's associated with that um that will oversee and provide guidance to that
that phase in program at our request Micah did get a a position um to be able to appoint a position on that board we wanted to make sure or on that committee we wanted to make sure that counties of all sizes and geographical balance was considered as they're looking at this you know moving towards Statewide
implementation so we're on that we'll consult with AMC Maxa and others and make sure that we have the right people on that working group The working group um is to develop an imple implementation plan by September 1 of 2026 and then the effective date for
going Statewide is January 1st of 2027 next item is the Emergency Medical Services EMS funding um this is a bill that um had a lot of action frankly there was an original ask of $120 million for certain ambulance um areas
that were really really struggling in Greater Minnesota in the end they provided two Appropriations one for $24 million for certain again ambulance services and then they're doing A6 U million Sprint medic pilot Pro program
in uh in Three Counties and this is a a model where there'll be a vehicle that's roaming kind of around the area and and responding at the same time that the actual ambulance does but if they get there first they can then determine whether that ambulance is even necessary
so often the vehicle you don't get reimbursed if the vehicle is empty so sometimes you've got folks that are just being you know helped up or you know something like that and don't need uh a ride to the hospital and so it's intended to to make this more efficient and hopefully uh provide some reduce
some unnecessary expenses Etc so that did pass um one time appropriation and it's good until June of 2026 as you're all aware Health and Human Services can be tough to follow it has many different committees and
subcommittees involved um as an example this year one of the bills that we were following the Children and Families bill was actually tucked into the education bill um at the at the end so we were we were watching that as well so I'm going to start with that bill that was not
part of the end of session Mega bill that it did pass on its own um I'm going to call it the representative Pinto Senator Wickland Bill signed into law by the governor again is a standalone bill it has language relating to child protection and Welfare it requires a
review of child fatalities and near fatalities requires counties to establish local child mortality review teams and DHS is required to provide training and support to counties for that purpose they are creating a new
Supreme Court Council on Child Protection DHS is directed to review Systems in other states to see what um what's happening in other states in terms of making a recommendation on a common entry point for all of the calls that that go in reporting child
maltreatment DHS is also required to develop a an information system a new it system um dealing with child welfare we did get uh ssis money uh $10 million this year and DHS is to consult with counties and they did put $1
million into Child Care Improvement Grants there is language that allows Child Care Centers and family child care providers to develop a policy regarding immunizations for children over two months of age they created a family child care IDs
person and that is funded at $350,000 a year and I just want to highlight that one of the things that we really wanted to see was not not included in the final agreement and that was the Child Welfare fiscal analysis we were really pushing this because we want to highlight what it is that counties
put into the system for child protection in terms of property taxes and we'll continue to work on that it just didn't make it make it this time so moving on to the Hoffman nor bill this is the Human Services budget Bill uh there are a number of changes uh
to men choices that we've been working on for a while it does allow counties to continue contract for men choices assessments it modifies the timeline in which a county must visit an individual who has requested an assessment from 20 calendar days to 20 working days and it
extends the validity of men choices assessments from 60 days to 365 days I just want to point out that the County's proposal for a streamlined process uh regarding reassessments for those folks whose situations are not going to change
we didn't we were hoping to be able to get some some help there in um terms of having a less comprehensive assessment or reassessment each year unfortunately that does have a it does it does connect with the federal government so it does carry a cost and so we'll be coming back
to that we're not looking to not meet with these folks but just not put them through the grueling 789 hour um reassessment that they now have to do every year this bill also contains a task force on guardianship creating a task force on guardianship it does include a County employee
and they did do some um things on jail Health DHS is directed to submit a waiver for an MA demonstration project to provide health care and coordination services to bridge community- Based Services for individuals that are in Correctional Facilities as they're about
to leave the facilities it also creates a re-entry Services working group and does include County representation on that group as well and finally there's a pilot program to provide payment to counties to support Correctional facil that are administering long acting
injectable anti-yo medication for mental health treatment another thing you've heard a lot about is the priority Admissions and civil commitment the so-called 48 hour rule where you have to where people that were in jails were moved first into Direct Care and treatment there was a a
work group that worked uh very hard over the over the interum or excuse me well and then again they're still going but it's they've been doing it for about a year and a half now and you know the reality is we need bads there's a capacity issue we need it at the at the
local level we need it at the state level and we did not make a lot of progress there not a budget year coming back I think the fiscal note on on fixing the entire system is in the hundreds of millions of dollars so I mean it's just a very broken system but we did make some progress and I would
just mention that uh last year we received a a county cashare exemption for those folks that are um deemed mentally ill and dangerous and are waiting a bed at one state operated facility going to another we added um the depart people that are coming from corrections to that list for a certain
period of time um that does sunset in June of 2025 and so we're continuing to have that conversation as is this task force they did modify um a little bit of the 48 hour rule for people coming from jails by prioritizing using a framework
to prioritize who should go first um looking at things like the length of time the person's been on the waiting list one's medical Acuity whether they're a danger to themselves or others things like that they did create um an extension of the task force so they're
going to continue their work um and they are to come back with a report February of next year 2025 again um about the 48 hour problem and again about the um the need the capacity
issue there is going to be a mentally ill and dangerous Danger ous civil commitment reform task force there are three County appointments on that task force and they did provide a limited exception to up to 10 patients that are currently being boarded in hospital
settings these are folks again that have been civil committed but have nowhere to go um there was a doctor from HCMC that testified one day that they've had a patient in their hospital for two years so you can imagine the what they're looking at and that person's not getting the treatment that they so desperately
need so there's 10 folks from the hospitals that will be you know bumped up there was talk of of closing the Carlton car's facility that is did not happen that will remain open and then they did they did also include um DCT facilities need to offer
free communication tele telephone calls offer patients and clients while they're in their DCT facilities that's an extension of what was done for jails last year I think it was last year couple things public health related I just want to mention um the orac the
opiate Response Group there was a sunset on that group they eliminated that that Sunset so that continues there was no cost for it to continue but just had to get that off the books and then this is something Troublesome for for public health um the state is booking Savings of $7 million by reducing the Cannabis
education grant and that does go directly to local Health departments and so my understanding is um the department borrowed from the depart other department and so we need to you know stay on top of that but that is something I just wanted to
mention they also eliminated eliminated parental fees for parents whose children receive ma in disability or residential settings they did transition The Loan program for nursing homes that they um started last year for those financially distressed nursing homes and it can now
be used for other long-term services and supports in addition to nursing homes and then they are uh direct excuse me dhs's Direct directed to consult with counties to improve case management information systems so that was Hoffman nure then we go on to health and that is
Senator Wickland and and representative lebling and again both of these bills were put in that big Bill the four 1400 page 1500 page bill at the end of session um I'm going to start with the commissioner um by next year January
15th has to report to the legislature on on an alternative Health Care model and a County administ Ed rural medical assistance model or Karma so we have an another they'll be working with um counties and county based purchasing plans in terms of developing that that
model they set a telecommunications fee at 12 cents per month per line for the operation and maintenance of the 988 Suicide Prevention and crisis system another thing that we've been working on for a while that we're working there was action on this year
and that is the development of a covered benefit under ma to provide residential Mental Health crisis stabilization for children we have it for adults we don't have it for kids so there are kids that are going out of state um for services this does require the commissioner to
report findings um after consultation with us tribes providers Advocates Etc and that report is due next October of 2025 in terms of health insurance I just want to mention prior authorization they made some changes to the process for
folks that are um receiving outpatient mental health treatment or chronic health conditions and outpatient Su sud substance abuse treatment excluding the the drugs the meds turned out the the fiscal note was too high when when they looked at that so they're just looking
at the services for that but that will help in terms of um the barrier that folks that are struggling face going through that process all the time they also added rural Mental Health Service Providers to eligible recipients
of Mental Health Services Grants and this is outside of the seven County Metro area and it can't be the larger cities in the state including Deluth Mano Morehead Rochester or St Cloud they are directing the
Commissioner of Health to put out an RFI to assist in conducting a comprehensive evaluation of current health care needs and capacity in Minnesota and there's also language that requires counties to to notify an Indian child's tribe no later than 24 hours
after receiving information on a missing child those were kind of the highlights in that Health bill um there's a lot of other stuff and you're going to be receiving a big report but those are the highlights finally I just want to call out your staff I I work closely with uh
both Sandy scherg and Jaclyn litfin and I just wanted to highlight that and mention that they're they're great to work with and represent not only you but the county Statewide and with that I'm happy to answer any questions got any questions on the EMS
no the I know the EMS it was a it seems like a win but it's a very small dollar amount in the scheme of things but it it's a start right um it excuse me um they did start
with um $120 million ask and it was I have to say it was a bipartisan group of legislators they really came from all over said this this has got to get done this you know it was helpful but 30 million is not 120 and I'm sure that they're going to be back and they're
they're doing they're reorganizing the uh was it emsrb or whatever the regul they're building a state board now correct right so yeah everything transfers over to that yeah to that
board it's a start we got to keep going because if we we got all these districts that are uh our Medical Services Board District if we have to put all these back because we lose funding back into the county level it's going to cost everybody more money than what these
boards consist of right now so it's a problem okay thank you thank you have a few other items um uh aboard that uh we work on just a couple quick additions um on the EMS the the 26 is
certainly much less than the $120 million which was the initial ask I think the other piece is that the the formula also became more constrained so I think more of that 26 proportionately will go to Greater Minnesota than would have of the 120 so there was also some adjustment in terms of refining who gets
it and under the conditions which I think will be helpful for the Greater Minnesota challenge um that's being faced and then real quick on the Watershed districts I think that they're sorry not wated districts on the uh Road Wetland um how those boundaries are
crafted I think they also relate to the Watershed boundaries and where Bowser sees the water flowing and trying to align with those boundaries which is likely why you're situated where you're situated um just real quick then it's
sort of then transitioning into environment issues because that is an issue that is covered um in multiple areas um certainly bonding build is where we need the resources um there was a lot of work done around Mitigation Of nitrates and groundwater and conversation I don't have that on the
slideshow a lot of that dealt with Southeastern Minnesota counties in the kst region but also supporting um testing and monitoring Statewide the really the big thing that happened in the environment and we have tried to pick up our work uh for Micah over the
last couple years in the environment area because especially in solid waste that has a a lot of impacts on local government governments the uh Omnibus environment um uh budget bill that was adopted included uh a new uh packaging
waste reduction Act is what it's uh packaging waste uh uh and cost reduction act I think is technically uh what folks are wanting to call it um but it's an extended producer responsibility um system that will be
set up over the next um couple of years whereby uh anyone who is um brand any anyone who's branding packaging um into Minnesota will have to become part of an extended producer responsibility
organization they will pay fees into that organization those fees will help both to create greater recyclability of the material as well as to um help pay for some of the systems um and networks
that uh then try to steer that uh into re uhy cleaning instead of going into landfills including I think it'll help offset some of the costs that counties now you'll be able to get some reimbursement that counties now um undertake for that work packaging is 40%
of the waist stream right now um so there's still a lot of other wayist stream out there that you all know you have to deal with but that's a significant part of the waste stream and then in the interest of time I'll just note that back to the fix it notion there was a lot of a number of
implementation related changes and other changes related to the ear sick and safe time Law related to the pay family medical leave um uh related to the Cannabis law um uh related to some election law uh cleanups and funding
changes including um some um uh new policy items in the election law those are all things that will be in our our post session summary and happy to go into details if you have questions the one uh item on here that will involve some additional cost clearly um in more
on the part of counties is that there was an increase in for the parac correctional plan um for your membership that is part of that plan there is an increase in the an annuity upon retirement so the annuity multiplier to determine what your benefit will be so
that benefit will be higher uh and to offset uh or to pay for those costs going forward there will be an increase both in employer and employee contribution to the par Correctional a plan that will have some impact and I've passed that information uh on and we'll
provide more details on that so that's where things are out happy to answer any questions on any of that I will just say that the other thing that happened last year uh in 2023 is that the legislature changed their start date for a new legislative cycle to the uh second
Tuesday instead of the first Tuesday following the first Monday in January so a little bit uh less of a of a cramp start date relative to the beginning of the calendar year so the legislative session will start on January 14th 2025
uh after uh only the house is up for election this year um so after the fall elections happy to answer any questions board Matt can you comment on all about our new member or is that not not we
don't have one yet okay so we'll uh um we'll comment on that when we when we we are hopeful we think it would be fantastic okay yeah thank you for all the information appreciate that again congratulations Steve yeah thank you
thank you and and now we can turn to I'm looking at your administrator but now at least I can turn to some analysis on property tax uh information that I'm hoping to get to you I don't have for you yet um but we can really look forward to interim issues and appreciate the opportunity to hear uh any concerns
that you have or additional issues as we get Stu for 2024 five I 25 25 crazy thank you thank you all we appreciate you driving up thank you thank you even though he had to go through Sterns
yeah we're heading to Norms you're heading where to Norms yeah on our way nice you guys don't know that [Laughter] yet all right yeah we'll backtrack a little bit here
all right committee updates I'll seems like a a theory but let's keep them a little bit shorter yeah I'll start uh just had uh uh HS director profile position uh I also
had uh the regional homelessness taask task force we just started again small group and that was last Friday and that's all I had I can go next I was able to meet go to the city of Gilman's
council meeting on the 21st as we discussed yesterday a little bit on a road tour um I think they understanding that we're going to proceed with cassad three and five and they're Contin to reach out for funding that they can but they know that we're going to move ahead so of course they're very disappointed with the lack of
bonding possibility this year yeah Highway 23 Coalition board meeting on the 22nd along with commissioner Heen and the Human Services director is ideas was able to meet with uh Amanda um for a
business retention meeting distinctive uh cabinets here in Foley that was very good met for about an hour and a half quite a quite a complex they have there uh Tri County Solid Waste we had a joint board meeting with Pope Douglas and then we had a regular meeting after that also another business retention meeting with
silt sock here in Foley I was able to at least get on the the first part of that of the tour I hadn't been through that before so that's that's quite a facility there I I'll just also share Jason shared with us $110,000 in property taxes there at that facilities it's the city so um of course
we had our cow road tour yesterday thank you again Chris it was welld designed we got a lot of good information was able to see a lot of different things and commissioner pop and I were at our extension committee meeting last night uh you'll be seeing some updates coming for our memorandum of agreement uh that
is going up significantly that they're proposing so I'll leave it at that well on back of the 21st we had Library we set the 2025 budget um we will see a decrease it's just a matter of how much because we had a little issue with some numbers and we're going to meet again on
uh 18th of the finance committee is going to meet on the 18th of uh June um I don't know where we'll land we'll land somewhere between seven and 9,000 I would think on an decrease in funding
um we had be again we're going to work on the budget and commission kinsky is going to work on that because I will be gone at that time and then triol Solid Waste always seems to be an adventure um and the extension committee last night more updates to come on
that um the gsdc had their own bestor meeting and awards um I sat in on the legislative update from AMC and a
lot of that was covered on what in a session so um and then I was at the representative debing last night in um Sock Rapids one other bill that they had
mentioned was 4712 um that deals more with the social issues if anybody's interested what they do with that one all right H HR you good that was it okay uh I had my
emsrb meeting last week we kind of heard that it's it's a bridge Gap right now I got two years of funding but we're all preaching that if we don't get funding moving forward is going to come back on the county level and it's going to be way more cost to each County than than
keeping this board together um with that uh the the road tour yesterday was really good I I was here's the deal I don't I don't need to see roads that are beat up and everything like that but you really
get a u an advantage right in the back of a bus and you can feel it and I with that said I'm going to take and and kind of said say what I I said yesterday is I'm going to rely on the three of you
guys to give me what our priorities need to be moving forward Common Sense is a key from yesterday on these ditches I am I literally am so upset at these ditches and the thinking of these state agencies
right now I can't even yeah I who are the what are they doing what are they thinking it just it's so frustrating so I'm going to leave it at that and and we need to figure out we need to take pictures Ariel of exactly what Bowser and all of I'm going to
say I got some words I want to use for describing these individuals but they got lack of Common Sense and draining a wetland I mean these ditches have been been here way before all these Wetlands or they're they were built because of
the wetlands so we need to figure something out here so I'll leave it at that that's all I got Mr chair I had one one visit with Amanda at deau textile too last
week okay Monte Committees of the whole n approve okay so uh at the last board meeting you scheduled a budget present budget presentations for August 19th
which displaced the August Human Services Community Health Board commit the whole so we wanted to attempt to reschedule that one for August uh so I wanted to suggest looks like here Monday August
12th sorry Monday August 5th Monday August 12th or Tuesday August 13th reschedule the this is like the standing you know Human Services Community Health Board CS I would prefer
not to do the fifth I open the 12th or the 13th the fifth I would prefer not to do the fif prefer not okay so then it's the 12th or the 13th let's do the 12th the 12th
okay all right that's one be in the morning y yeah I think in the past those it start when 9 11 N9 yeah at nine so uh I I made y'all aware of the issue raised by Sheriff heck regarding
jail staffing issues we probably should have a committee the hole on that matter um Troy would like to meet with you all before he does his August budget presentation
so late June early July July 9th open we could do we're doing HR director in the morning on that yeah July 8th no can't do that we're temp we're
doing Human Services and one water one plan meeting July 15th looks good I have a potential conflict I don't know the answer to it yet that's usually not going to be in the morning well it could be you
could well 6:30 um what is July 1 like I'm out of tone I'm out of tone okay you're going to be here for the board
meeting or REM we'll find out um I'll give you coordinates can we move backwards into June 17th I I would have to do it remotely how about June 18th after the
board meeting that whole week I'm up at my camper okay so I I I would have to do it remotely I'll be coming back for the board meeting what's it like for everybody else in the 17th if he did the
remote I just got to be careful that week because I got remote meetings every day of the week and they're all two to three hours okay for County well then cuz I got atp3 on the 20th we move back into July then yeah we'll have
to uh 20 how about 22nd I going to be out you'll be out how about the 16th after the bo so after Bor being on the 16th and we could keep it just this one topic too destroy just this issue right
yeah do that just do it to so 7116 upon conclusion of County Board okay yeah good it good so the only else I have on my calendar is I had a note that it was time to schedule our next
joint meeting of cities townships in the county I had a note that our next one was going to be in the summer a summer meeting uh please correct me if I was wrong um no that's right but we better revert back to you two because you guys
know Township meetings and then also the farmers and what they got going on in their fields well let me ask you this and and not that it's not important do we have enough of an update to schedule it because we're going to be running into fall Township meetings also true that wouldn't include
the cities but I'm just trying to think off top my head if maybe maybe what we should do is reach out to the townships and ask them do you got any concerns that that you want to talk over at the next meeting or trying to schedule the next meeting and and if nobody has any concerns then
we just maybe postpone it or something or could we take it a step further and ask him if they have those concerns that we come prepared at the township ball meeting as that just a thought I I do know that a bunch of the township people mentioned that our
meeting is way better than the township meeting sure no I I understand yeah I've heard that too is the next Township Association it right um it's yeah I think they're going to they'll probably be moving it because I think it's supposed to be like the 19th and
that's when fall policy is y and it's also the flying I think out to DC and there's a conference I have yeah so we got to talk about that too uh um again I I want to get to the point
do we have enough to share with them well and and I was one that was a big proponent of this but I I think we taken a different angle than what I was looking at it I wasn't at first looking
at it as everybody from every Township and every board member and stuff like that I was looking at more as a committee assignment to where it it alternates and stuff like that every year kind of like what we do right now but to where you get together with all
the townships and you just talk about things not not give updates the updates are when we do the township deal so it's we just did more of a glorified Township just more an open Forum open
Forum correct that's what I was looking at but the last two meetings have been very good on what we've been doing so and in the city and the townships said that they'd rather have that because it was just an open for for and they could speak about anything well
so then if that's the case we set the time that works for us and whoever can come can come and then they do their Township meeting at the same time if they want so back to a date in the evening too though yep
yeah um how about I'm going to say August would be better than September July too early evening on July 22nd don't want to say to get it over I mean I just my own I will be out of town yeah I think that's okay because I think
it's more of a open form informal chat s right you can sit I don't need to be there right the reason I say July because we know what August and September going to be late mm let's see I could probably do 20on
second should we have it here this time soad of trying to coordinate something with the townships I mean in here yeah should be pretty full if the as many show up as last time okay I don't know see we were at watab last time yeah it was we at St
George or back to watab or uh it men's a little small yeah I think those two are our best options since and we got to keep it to where people can get to them kind of nice rotating back and forth a little bit
maybe I'm I'm F if if St George would do it so could we check with St George on the 22nd then and 6 6:30 yeah St George all right so we're gonna okay yeah I might
be back in time that I I'm flying back from KC so I might be back in time decided not to drive excuse me nothing I'm flying this time AIS didn't have anything available for him yeah Che Enterprise no one will to you
anymore he's blacklisted I might be gone but that's fine okay yeah might be hard to get us all there all the time okay you know that's so that's it Mr sh so we got let's see here in summary August 12th
9:00 the Human Services Community Health Board Cal uh July 16th the Bon inclusion County Board the the jail Staffing issue and then August 22nd 6:30 p.m. St George Town Hall The Joint meeting of cities
townships in the county Mr chair if I could add one I we keep kicking the can down the road but are we doing a county meal no we got to do that I mean we keep kicking this we've talked about it for a couple months Cook Out we either are or we aren't we better get
it scheduled we missed the chicken buy so now we're well I talked to Adam P He he'll let us buy okay um something commissioner kinsky is willing to help with so it may go around some of your
schedule then yeah I that's what I'm kind of concerned about you look at our you look at our schedules they just been filling up like there's no tomorrow um are we looking in
August your September you're gone my a I'm just gonna whatever works for the chair Tuesday July 30th first is a b County Fair Tuesday July
30th oh baton County Fair starts that day yeah anybody G to be there for it the start I'm still helping with our wing Booth okay um 29th Monday the
29th yeah I I would have a for sure a day and a half a prep if we do legs and wings and stuff like that and we don't have to do that that's just if we if we do it the if we do it the 29th maybe we look at doing burgers and stuff like that again okay just for the fact that
I'll have I'll have a full day of cooking beforehand and we can certainly do it a different time I'm just throwing that no I I I don't mind the the July 29th shouldn't be hot n wonderful weather why don't we schedule that and let me see if I can
get my right-and person too okay so can we tentatively schedule let's tentatively schedule it for the 29th and maybe what I'll do is making something I can talk to Kathy she she likes that stuff yeah so what I'm thinking is is maybe I'll do the 28th and I'll just
cook them all up at our camper and then we'll just stay overnight and come to the 29 how about you'd have conversation I'll do that let's schedule it for the 29th and we'll figure it out at least we get something on the calendar right we won't we won't announce subject to change we won't announce it until we get better since
yeah it's fine until we get Jar's approval okay yeah I think that could be a good data just a matter what we do put and you think you can get I'm 99% sure I'll verify that I'll make a phone call but I already yeah because maybe I'll just take and do that on the 29th and or
28th and do you have to just pre-cook that chicken yeah for four hours a batch how many batches probably three I might beely help on that why is that Kathy can do that Kathy can oh yeah okay I'll I'll ask her but I'm sure
she would we'll let you to chatty Cathy's we'll figure it out I do it in my smoker trailer though oh okay that's where I cook them yeah so I can do quite a few pounds how many pounds did we do last last night well there's 40 pounds in a case depending on if you want thighs or or
drumsticks and I can tell you that there was just grower sales the drumsticks were 12 bucks for 40 lbs I see drumsticks are so were the thighs though yeah they were everything so okay we'll do that and I mean I'm sure we can get some good beef patties
for Monty and FY no beef I've got some sawdust I'll throw yeah I think the 29th I think the 29th will work so yeah why don't you check on the chicken I'll verify could we get a motion to set the cows wait wait wait is
there any desire to set a to do a road I mean 5-year road construction plan uh yes there is we can attach that to uh existing cow or I can we leave it till after budget
season I mean the fiveyear road plan yeah I would say no but that's my opinion I think they need some direction oh I suppose cuz well August or September time frame I guess is is okay if we yeah I we're adopting it in end of
September or October time frame it's just that you know what August and September already like I know the the other thing would be sitting a drainage subcommittee meeting too I don't know if that happens with the cow motion or not no no no I think
you know that's something between these two bersion about that's Sonic cow no it's especially Tech it's a special mean that we have a cow coming up that we could attach I didn't know this was a full-time possession correct turning into it I you know Monty
the only thing I'm going to I'm going to warn warn everybody on is we're just into June and our weeks are gone gone for the whole summer and there's no personal you can't you know like summers are busy yep yep
yep do we have an existing C we can tag it to or not um we the next one is uh Beth you have the Cal calendar with you I can pull that up too I literally
have to retire to keep doing this job the next one is June I'm sorry when is it 12 uh the 12th we're in shago county or excuse me the 10th the 10th you're right on June 12th that's got uh
application Services data manager update emergency yeah yeah El is com I got something ARA funding for the city of St Cloud H cannabis legislation log already four items on there yeah
yeah you want to add anything to it no no the 12th no well I don't care you can add whatever you want by 2:00 I'm out of here a lot how about after we've got a cow on the 11th with the county attorney
candidates yeah that might work it's 8 to 10 that too soon it's a week um no how long is it going to be how long we want to make it be I mean it's basically can we get something done in an hour um I give you a lot of information
that for you to consider and we come back at a later meeting and you probably need two hours to talk to your two I have morning so that's not a good time what at n that I probably won't make anyway of course another one at
10:30 Monday the 17th did somebody say they're gone that week I am okay yeah and I don't know I'm okay too if we come back maybe the next meeting at it again we we do got to I just think we got to get it on the schedule because
we're running out of days do you see a lot of changes in well the basic it' be the fifth year so now we're adding fifth year and the big thing for us is because now that's the year we can apply for federal um surface
Transportation block grants that are always due end of December or first part of January and those were always so yeah our fifth year of our Five-Year Plan will be 2029 and that's the next round of federal you know Grant application so that's that's
the big thing is like we get something adopted by the Fall so we can attach that adopted plan to those applications and we know which projects we should pursue you know outside funding for as well so that's the big thing is um just so when do you put them there do end of
December or beginning of December um usually in December the surface Transportation block grant programs are usually do uh first week in January so I'm adopting I'm bringing to the board a
resolution of support in December okay you know what I'm going to be honest there's going to be there's going to be some of these that some people aren't going to be able to make we got to make it a Road's a big deal deal y y I know you don't like Thursdays and
Fridays I I will not okay Friday's no way unless I can be virtual our budget presentations are the week of the 19th of August of August all day I think that Monday and then half half day on tues on
Wednesday y how about after the board meeting on the 20th of August getting kind of late but that would work for me you have one in July we could stick it after oh we got the sheriff already
yeah something else after we don't what on the 16th we don't yeah we do we got oh we just came up we just did that one right well could we no I'm you want to put them together no okay that Sheriff's could
take longer to anything think and we got to do do diligence on this road is everybody oh we got a DDA discussion sex so and that's that's scheduled for the second right yeah
that's a pretty hefty topic yeah right what do you feel about August Chris pushing it um yeah that's fine I guess so I don't foresee any changes I don't six of the next year for
the for budgeting purposes how about the sixth there's nothing on the sixth of August after the meeting Monty can we be virtual for these absolutely right of course you can do I think the board policy says four four virtual cows four virtual board meetings how about Tuesday
the 6th after the board meeting there's nothing on there that I can see okay after what August 6 August 6 well you do that that work for you all right yeah I'll put it on my calendar moved it up a little bit it's not you either we're just it's
a lot of meetings you know if what it's worth I think in these times we're having cows after board means we'll do our best to try and keep those board meeting agendas short and maybe keep like ditch Authority after yeah unless absolutely necessary or is that the date
is that our ditch that's the 20th you're right so 20th we will definitely have a so then six is good right presentations can just get delayed things like that right yeah right and correct me if I'm wrong the Community
Health Board that's only if we need it we got it that's only if you need it right you know right on the 19th yeah so I guess we'll find out as you get closer do they really need really really really need it yeah motion hold on yeah motion second okay
we got a motion a second uh with that said maybe you just let them know if they do if they got a lot we don't want to turn them down because they've already got it set but if if they don't have a lot we can use that spot for another one another cow coming up true
yes kind yes exactly so good point all right got a motion in a second to approve the calls all in FA all in favor I I oppose same sign M GES all right we're a journey