--------- Good morning everyone. It's 8:30. I'll go ahead and call today's meeting of the Klay County Board of Commissioners to order. Our first item on the agenda today is a approval of the agenda. >> Madam Chair, I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. >> Second. >> Motion offered from Commissioner Bear, a
second from Commissioner Campbell to approve the agenda as presented. Any further discussion? Discussion. Discussion. All in favor of the motion signify by saying I >> I >> oppose. Same sign.
The agenda is approved. Citizens to be heard today. Are there any citizens wishing to address the board on any item that is not on the agenda? Any citizens to be heard? Steve, have we had any requests to speak? >> We have not, Madam Chair.
>> Thank you. Next item today is the approval of the payment of bills and vouchers. >> Move. We approve the bills and the vouchers. >> Second >> offered from Commissioner Krabnoff to approve the payment of bills and vouchers. A second from Commissioner Ebinger. Discussion.
Any discussion? Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Oppos. Same sign. >> Carried. The minutes from April 14th, 2026 were in the packet.
>> Move to approve. Second >> motion offered from Commissioner Campbell to approve the minutes as printed. A second from Commissioner Bear. Any further discussion? >> Discussion. Discussion. All those in favor of the motion signify
by saying I. >> I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Minutes are approved. Item two today. I request the approval of the recommended appointment of our Klay County Emergency Manager. Good morning, Sheriff. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. Thanks for
having us here this morning. We are here this morning to approve uh Lieutenant Nicole Reno as the new Klay County Emergency Manager. As you aware, Lieutenant Tweeten is going to be retiring from his position and taking a different uh role. If you would like to share that, he definitely can. Um but,
um we're here because uh Minnesota State Statute 12.25 indicates that the county board does have to uh approve the recommendation. So, uh just a little history on Nicole. She came to us uh nearly 10 years ago um from the Morhead Police Department. She had nearly 10 years of experience there. She is our
current assistant emergency manager. Um she's been working on getting her certificates for the full emergency management. So, she's been working towards this. This is a goal of hers. She is a member of the triad and she's been an SRO with us and she's kind of held a variety of different hats with
the sheriff's office. So, she's been a a good addition to the sheriff's office nearly 10 years ago. We're very happy to have her. are happy that she has decided to take on this role. I think she's going to do a great job in the role and I would definitely recommend her for the approval.
>> Thank you, Sheriff. First of all, I know he's hiding back there, but um Gabe, >> we are really, really fortunate to have had the work ethic and the leadership that Gabe has helped offer uh to this
role. certainly has been incredibly active in in a lot of issues that have involved this board, but our townships and our cities and the communication stream between triaging the the multitude of events that you have. Huge gratitude to you for all of the time
that you've uh given to Klay County. We're really grateful for that and obviously wish you nothing but the best in the future. Um so congratulations on this next step uh to uh the recommendation for today. Really excited
to see this opportunity for you. I know that in your personal life you also uh have a servant heart and do a lot to better all of Klay County and I I can't think of a better person that could fill this role. I I really do feel like this is a great opportunity for you as well.
>> Thank you. >> Uh yes, Commissioner Ebinger. uh echo the chair's comments to Gabe. You've done a great job here and and uh you've set a high standard. Uh Nicole, we worked together for 10 years at Morehead
PD. You did a great job there. You've done an excellent job for Clay Caddy. And with that, I'd like to nominate uh Lieutenant Nicole Reno. U here this says as lieutenant. Is she already officially a lieutenant?
>> That's correct. Yeah. Good. Lieutenant Nicole Reno uh as uh Klay County Emergency Manager. >> Second. >> A motion offered from Commissioner Ebinger, a second from Commissioner Campbell. Any further discussion on this
piece? >> In the memo, it highlights the cost components and I believe the motion covers all the points you needed it to. Correct. Okay. Any further discussion?
Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. I >> oppose. Same sign. Carried. Congratulations. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you, Gabe. >> Thank you.
>> Item three today is a request approval to authorize the sheriff's office to purchase an enclosed trailer for range equipment and supplies. Sheriff. >> Yeah. Um what this is is we're looking at purchase an enclosed trailer to use to transport um range supplies now from
RSL storage facility to the Glenden Run Gun Club where we're able to use their outdoor range. Uh as you are aware, we're no longer able to use Morhead PD's outdoor range due to safety concerns cited by the police chief. Um therefore we bought some memberships out at the
Glenn and Ron Gun Club and that's where we're going to be um doing our qualifications and our night shoots uh etc. What this trailer would be used for, it would be used to um transport our targets, our target stands, our barricades, our barricade stands, ammunition, and any other related
supplies that we would need. Um we would store um we'd store those items in the trailer for the week that we're out there shooting. And then when we um come back, we would then keep those items in the trailer and store it at self storage um until we need it. Again, as you can
see, I'm not requesting any additional funds for this. We have um funds in salaries because we are going to uh with a vacant position here soon. So, just um with the salaries not including benefits, we're going to have a savings about $8,400.
Um and that's with an anticipated start date of June 1. I don't believe we're going to have somebody hired by June 1, so there should be uh plenty to cover the cost of the trailer of just over $7,100. >> Thank you for the memo. Sheriff, can you
uh give me a little bit of the timeline about when you were notified we were no longer able to use the range? >> Yes. I was heading down to the cities for a meeting. I believe it was about mid-March, we were notified that we were no longer able to use that and that was
effective immediately. immediately. >> Yep. >> Questions. >> Commissioner Ebinger. >> Um, just a comment and I'd like the sheriff to edit this if I'm off base on
anything. Uh, we tried almost 20 years ago to get a range built. When I say we, it's when I was chief of Morehead Police Department. Sheriff Burrquist went with me.
Um, it did not make it through the the uh process at that point. I think I got $10,500 and they put that wall up and we had to change our range to an oblique from the
burm. And uh I don't see any way with any kind of investment you're ever going to make that range something that is desirable for law enforcement use. And I would uh I don't want to jump the
gun on anything. This is the sheriff's process and his call to make. But I'd like the members here to understand this is a legitimate need for the county. uh that we come up with a long-term solution that'll work. Uh
you know, I've not been out to the Glendon location. I don't know if it's capable for tactical shoots and the kind of things you want to be able to give your people at least once a year. Something different uh where they can enhance their skills.
In Minnesota, we need to be outdoors in the dark and outdoors when it's cold to qualify every year to meet the the re realistic demands of the of the profession. So, I just sheriff, if you have a comment on any long long-term
plans you might have, this certainly is a legitimate request. Uh, but if it's too early to talk about that, I'll be at your disposal for any anything you want to do on that. >> Yeah. also our current county administrator um he had sent out some
information here uh was the last week in regards to a capstone project. So there's what it is is graduate students that are needing research projects um and we did a request for um a graduate student to do a research project on the
feasibility of a range at the Glendon location and see what we would need to do to build that and costs um associated with that. So, we are in the process of that. We're going to have hopefully we'll get approved uh with that request and then um we'll have somebody do the
research and then bring it back to the board to for you to review. >> I appreciate that. And with that, I I'll make a motion um for the purchase approve the approve the purchase of the
uh trailer described in the in this memo of the sheriff's office for the purpose of transporting and storing range equipment and supplies. >> Motion offered from Commissioner Ebinger, a second from Commissioner Bear. >> Madam Chair, does that does the motion
include $8,422? Yes. >> Or the safe, excuse me. What was the cost? >> It was uh >> $7,19,92. >> But if you want to do the $8,422, >> you don't anticipate any fit costs. >> I don't know. We should be able. >> So the 71 covers
>> Yeah, it should. We if there are any uh costs associated with it, we should be able to take that away. Right. >> Okay. So, does the motion cover it that number, Dave? >> Yes. 7,192. >> Okay. The second. Yes, >> Commissioner Campbell. >> I'm done.
>> Any further discussion? I'm excited about the opportunity of the partnership at the Rotten Gun Club. Uh, you know, we've we've talked about the needs out there. There's been U planning commission hearing on that. I know several schools utilize that for their
um their target teams. Really um glad that we're able to find a partnership there. Uh but I think it doesn't underline my disappointment at the partnership that fell apart on the other range piece. Uh partnerships are how we get through so many uh problem solving
pieces. So that's a disappointment. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the MOS motion signify by saying I >> I post same sign carried. Thank you, Sheriff. >> Thank you. Item four today
is the annual department update from public health. Jessica, good morning. >> We need additional chairs. >> Going to rotate. Okay.
>> Good morning, madam chair and commissioners. Let me see if I can get my PowerPoint going here. All right, there we go. Uh, so, uh, we are here for our 2025 public health
update. Um, I'm going to begin by just giving a brief overview of the department and then each supervisor is going to give a more detailed update on their individual units. So, uh, this first page I'm just sharing the mission of public health, which is to asssure optimal health for all Klay County
residents through effective community planning, services, and partnership. Uh, Klay County Public Health has been providing services to our residents for over 50 years. What's up? Oh, okay. Perfect. All right. Our organizational structure is made up
into seven core units. Adult health, which is our largest unit, Suz's unit. Family health, which is Liz's unit. Environmental health, health promotion, finance, wick, and emergency preparedness. We have 53 total staff, 46
FTEEs, and then seven variable hour contracted employees. We also participate in partnership for health which is the community health board that serves Clay and Becker counties. The purpose of our CHB is to
engage in activities designed to protect and promote the health and general population of these two counties. Uh by forming this twocount CHB uh we're able to effectively promote services within the two local counties. Um, as you all
know, uh, prior to 2026, we were a 4count CHB, which included Ottertale and Wilin. Uh, at the beginning of 2026, we transition to a twocount CHB, which allows a more focused approach on Clay
and Becker counties. All right. And now I'll turn it over to Susie to provide her updates. >> Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. Um our role in adult health is to ensure high quality care um regular regulatory compliance and
consistent support to our clients. Um our case loads average 62 clients for the M Minnesota Senior Care and Minnesota Senior Health Options for our care coordinators and 208 clients for our special needs basic care care coordinators. We currently serve
approximately 1,650 clients in Klay County. Um, the population we serve are adults who need long-term services and supports. Um, individuals with complex medical, cognitive, behavioral, and functional needs, and people seeking community-
based services, community services and supports, home care, and waivered supports. Um, we work in state waiver programs as well as contract with three health plans. Um we complete yearly assessments and bianual updates to
determine the level of support needs and any health related follow-up required. Um we develop person- centered support plans and reflect our clients strengths, goals, preferences and risks. We support clients in accessing the right services
at the right time to maintain independence and stability and we provide ongoing case management. Um our impact we with the services we provide we help motans access needed services to remain safe and stable. We promote
independence and community living. We reduce unmet needs and preventable preventable health crisis and we strengthen continuity of care across our LTSS systems. Madame Chair and commissioners, that concludes my update and I'm happy to
take any questions. >> Any questions? Right, we'll turn it over to Liz. Madame Chair and commissioners, thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here today to share all that our public
health nurses do in family health, school nursing, disease prevention and control, and the clinic. Um, so with family home visiting, it is a voluntary evidence-based public health service. We support pregnant individuals and
families with young children. Um, and Why does this matter? Um, early childhood 0 to3 is the most critical period for brain development. Families experiencing stressors such as economic hardship, mental health challenges,
housing instability face higher risks. Without early support, communities see an increase in health care costs, lower school readiness, and higher child protection involvement. So family home visiting really is an intervention that
reduces long-term system costs. Um so we deliver um prenatal parenting education to families. We also assess for child development, social emotional screening, infant care, breastfeeding support, connections to health care, mental
health, social services. Um services are relationalbased and tailored to family goals. Um, so our programs align with Minnesota Department of Health standards. Our accountability includes data reporting,
performance monitoring, and continuous quality improvement. We are funded through um a mixture of um state funding, federal grants, TANA funds, and local public health dollars.
Through this, children experience healthier birth outcomes, improve development. Families also g um gain stronger parenting skills and improve stability. Communities benefit from reduced child maltreatment and lower
long-term costs. Um, we also collaborate with health care providers, social services, early childhood programs, and community organizations to create a coordinated support system. Um, we are prevention focused. We are
strength-based. Um, and our outcomes are proven to reduce long-term costs for our community. Um, we also focus on disease prevention and control. It is a core public health
function um focused on preventing, identifying and responding to communicable disease to protect community health. Um our public health nurses monitor disease trends, respond to cases and outbreaks and educate the public and reduce spread.
Um so how this works within public health is that we do get cases reported um from ND MDH. Um, it's assigned to local public health and then our public health nurses contact individuals, assess exposure risk, provide guidance
and coordinate with MDH on complex situations. I also want to highlight our school nurses. They do wonderful work in our schools. So, we cover DGF and Ulin um school districts and they um help
support health, safety, academic su success of students. Um, in Minnesota, school nurses are registered nurses and often public health nurses and those are our nurses in in the schools. Um, and they are also licensed school nurses.
Um, they provide direct care, administer medications, respond to emergencies, coordinate care for students with chronic conditions, and they collaborate with families and healthcare providers. They support immunization compliance,
monitor communicable diseases, conduct screenings, and provide health education on hygiene, mental health, and wellness. They also partner with um public health um and also um school staff, healthcare
providers um to create this support system for all the students. Um and that is my report for today. Thank you. Great. Thank you both. Any questions on the presentation so far?
>> All right. Next, we will have Kent and Rory come up. I just want to thank you both before you step down for your work in the community. Uh really a broad scope of individuals that you work with and the education component, but also keeping our communities healthy and safe. Thank you.
>> Thank you. All right, Kent is up first. >> Good morning. >> Good morning. >> Well, I am glad to be here this morning and I will briefly run through environmental health. As you can see up on the screen, we've got some um bubbles
of the areas that we uh deal with. Uh these aren't all of them. Uh we go in many different directions and uh every day can be interesting in environmental health. Uh so as you can see uh continuing the license and licensing and
inspection, bars, restaurants, pools, campgrounds, special events, mobile food units. Um wanted to mention mobile food units are just exploding over the last couple of years and uh it's just uh really interesting to watch and be involved with. Uh just met with one last
week here on campus. It was about 9:30 in the morning. It was a taco truck and we were just trying to, you know, I was inspecting it for compliance and we had people stopping up and uh I said, you know, it's 9:30 in the morning. So, yeah, and he mentioned too, you
can't even stop for gas sometimes without someone coming up to the truck. And so, it's always interesting in environmental health. Uh >> tacos can you can have tacos at any time of the day. Let's be real. I wasn't going to go there, but yes, I agree.
>> I I I did. That's okay. >> Uh couple of points I wanted to make. Uh one, with our separation from Ottertale and Wilin counties, uh really looking forward to that with our rene renewed focus just within our county with our operators and our license holders. So,
I'm excited about that going forward. Um, with spring here, we are seeing our annual uh increase in phone uh phone sounds that are constant throughout the day. We have a lot of realtors and uh homeowners that are
going to be selling their properties and looking for compliance inspections and uh demolition permits for some things that are going to be coming down. And so, a lot of plans that have been made over the winter are coming together in the spring as they usually do. So, it's an exciting time. Um, some other things
that we continue to go on with, uh, the demolition permits and public health nuisances are another couple of things that, uh, we deal with. On this slide here, you can see some of our statistics. Uh, the, uh, graph there shows some of our septic details over
from last year to this year or I'm sorry, 2024 to 2025. And uh yeah, you can see that with the septic activity, the the tanks installed, the numbers of systems installed, and the compliance inspections have all been going up. So, I'm really really curious to see how
this year's this year goes and see where our our data is going to go from here because it was pretty dramatic last year and and as we all know, we're one of the very fast growing counties in Minnesota. So, I'm really interested to see what this year brings. Uh, another uh, big
thing I wanted to touch on was our hiring of Olivia M to the department. Uh, she came in with her full credentials for septic inspections and design and so forth and and she has been great. It's been really great to have someone in that position that's that
wants to be here so badly and has passion for this work. Um, I don't know that I'll really get into the details of the the graph and and numbers there. They kind of speak for themselves. So, I think I'll I can end there.
>> Questions? Commissioner Kavanagh? >> Yeah. So, back to the uh food inspections. Um is Becker County Does Becker County have their own? >> Yes. Becker County is actually uh the inspection and licensing is performed by
the Minnesota Department of Health. So, it's a state jurisdiction. >> And then so you have all county do you and then you also do everything in Morehead. Yes. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Yep. >> Additional questions.
>> All right. We'll turn it over to Rory. Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. I'm going to provide updates on the uh health promotion department or the branch. Um the vast majority of our work is funded through grants. And so the
first one we're going to highlight uh if you look at the grant uh graph, we're just wrapping up five years of a positive community norms grant in DGF school centric but in in those communities which is focused on substance use. And the the brown bars
indicate the vaping levels as determined by the Minnesota student survey in 2019, the green ones um in 2025 and then blue is the average. And so it's been quite positive. Um we are part of an existing
cohort and we're the fourth cohort over the last 10 15 years. And so vaping is down from 24% to 7. Um alcohol from 23 to 8, cannabis from 15 to to five. And all of those are are lower than the uh
on the Minnesota average. So that's that's quite positive for the positive community norms grant. Um at the same time, um we have a group called SHIP statewide health improvement program which continues to serve all four counties and they've done a great
deal of work on improving access to local foods and addressing food insecurity. Um the state chose the model that we had started in 2024 um as part of this West Central Minnesota food council to replicate in
larger community conglomerates around the state. And so we established this a couple of years ago and now are helping to lead a 16count um food council that serves our four plus some additional ones plus the staff from those those counties. And one of the things that
they're really focusing on is supporting food shelves to develop new food rescue plans or to improve on the plans that they already have. Um last year they also produced a multi-part webinar um which highlighted local food producers
or or local food innovative projects. Um one of which was the food forest in Johnson Park. if you know about the food forest um fruit trees, fruit bushes that are uh that have been planted and hopefully will bear fruit in the near future.
We have one staff who uh is our community engagement liaison. She uh she works with groups with our uh our known health disparities and and helps us um try to intentionally address those and connect with those groups so they have a
voice. In 2025, she trained um 32 MSUM nursing students and certified them to be mental health first aid um certified. So, these new nurses have an additional tool in their tool belt when they're out
doing their job um to be more aware and more maybe confident and qualified to help uh address mental health type challenges. Next slide, please. Um our work with the opioid um continues
and one of the especially innovative projects is the opioid response team. And so it was identified uh in late 2024 that we have a real small window when there's an opioid overdose to address it
um and then try to connect with that individual or their families to try to connect them with help. Um, and so Annabelle helps spearhead this formation of this opioid response team with Morhead Fire Department and Beth's Place Treatment Center. And so when there's an
overdose within 12 hours, um, the fire department conveys information to Beth's Place and they then try to connect this person to get them into care. And you can see in 2025 they offered followup to uh 31 individuals who were treated for
an overdose. Almost 23 almost twothirds of those um were successfully contacted. 42% accepted the invitation to uh the referral to Beth's place. um 38% completed an assessment uh a complete
assessment and almost a quarter um welcome received a transport to a local hospital. And so prior to 2025 this didn't exist in the community. There was probably a hope and a prayer that after an overdose somebody might seek help. This is an intentional effort to help
those folks get connected with the system and and we think it's working. Um, child and teen checkups is our program that works to ensure that uh those 0 to 20 um in our community who are on medical assistance uh are are
aware of and are getting preventative care treatments or appointments. Last year we contacted just short of 7,500 people and 75% of those folks indicated that they were planning to schedule the appointment that they were contacted
about. And finally, um, as part of a a larger mental health initiative in schools, uh, we have a contracted, uh, staff, Karen Nscorski, who initiated a program called
YAL, youth, as life leaders. And so we know that youth are much more likely to listen to their peers or seek help from peers than they are from teachers or their parents or adults in the community. And so Karen
helped spearhead this effort. We had five students in Morhead schools who were trained in 2025 to learn about 988 and suicide resources in the community. And then they were obligated to coordinate and train their peers. And what we found was those who
attended were much more uh knowledgeable. They were much more willing to recommend those resources to friends and actually use them themselves. And interestingly, two weeks ago, there was a suicide summit in in Fargo, Morehead, and that group of five
presented. And one young man, based on his life experiences, wrote a song and performed to those in attendance about how learning about the resources impacted him personally, but also how important it was for him to be able to have those skills and reach out to to
his peers. So, lots happening in health promotion. >> Great work. Any questions for Rory from the board? >> All right. Next, we'll have uh Brandon Nelson, our financial manager, and Tara Adet, our nutrition specialist. She's
filling in for Sue Olsen today. Brandon, you're first. Good morning. >> Okay. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. I'll provide the uh finance update for Klay County and also the CHB. as we learned uh the community
health board that we're a part of. Um so first off um for Klay County, our fiscal fiscal expenses for only Klay County that we ran through uh public health was about $10.36 million um last year in 2025. Um that's been up continuously the
past few years um with just our programs growing. Also, you know, our costs um our costs in our programs growing with the cola and um increasing costs in our um supplies and materials that we purchase every day for our grants um to
supply to run our programs. Um at the end of fiscal year 25, we had 57 staff um and that accumulated to 50.70 FTE um in our um public health program. Um so that's kind of a lot of um the
background with Klay County um you know only expenses. We also have the CHB that we were a part of um which is quite a large part of my job is running that um for the 4ount CHB last year with um Ottertale Wilin and also Becker. Um so
that took a lot of my time. So this year transitioning to a twocount CHB um has been different um and challenging in its own right. you know, learning um how Clay and Becker can be the ones to facilitate the CHB um rather than, you know, having Ottertale and Wilin as with
us as well. Um so, challenges and um you know, new experiences happening this year as well. Um but for the CHB that we're a part of as well, we ran um through 20,122,000 of expenses. Um so, as you can see, the CHB is about double what what we have
for Klay County only. So quite a bit of management that we have there um to make sure that all of the expenses are correct and reconciled and accounted for as well. Um so that translates to Klay County having about 800 vouchers that we ran through. Those are the vouchers that
um you know the uh commissioners approve every morning um for on Tuesday mornings here. Um so we appreciate you approving our vouchers to get to get our vendors paid. Um for the CHB, we're also responsible for verifying their vouchers as well. Um so there was about 2,700
vouchers that we verified last year and sent to the state. Um with those um with invoicing the state, that's how we get, you know, paid back um through our grants. We send in the, you know, we incur the expenses, we pay for them out of our budget, and then we send in those
expenses to the state so we're able to get uh reimbursed for those expenses. So that'll bring down our total ask for the levy for the board. Um so we want as much grant dollars as we can um to bring down that ask. Some of our largest um
grant funding sources are strong foundations which works in our family home visiting program that um Liz presented on earlier. Um we have our local public health grant which supports kind of the broad initiatives throughout public health um and supports our administrative staff um and also the
management of our grants where you know grants don't have a lot of um additional dollars allocated to management. Um so this is a way to you know kind of bolster those budgets um for the management um and oversight. Another large um fiscal funding source for us is
our child and teen checkup program um which Rory just touched on. Um, another is foundation of public health responsibility. Um, which is another broad grant um, for management and facilitation. Um, so just kind of a few funding sources or the main ones that we
want to focus on to ensure that we keep so that we have that those funding um, avenues available in the future. Um, so we can, you know, secure funding and we don't have to ask for that in our levy. Um, so a part of my um, division were
3.6 six FTEES right now. Um currently we're working on um our big initiatives for 25. Um we're working on our fee reviews. Um so as we mentioned that we um we brought to the board earlier um about you know environmental health fees, how we wanted to get more
consistent um throughout the years and throughout the county. Um and then also some of our school nursing license um contracts that we reviewed and wanted to get those more in line with our expenses as well. Um so we've been trying to review um now that we have um you know a
good base of fundamentals between having a grasp on the CHB and also the Klay County financials. Now we want to kind of optimize our financials. So that's kind of what we're doing for we started to do that in 25 and that's going to be a big initiative for 26. Um so we're looking at doing you know consistent fee
reviews um for 26. We're looking at, you know, um looking at our utilization between our nursing nursing and our adult health program to make sure that we're, you know, billing correctly and we're also, you know, billing at a line, um that's in rate with our costs. So, we don't want to be, you know, spending too
much in a program and we're under billing. So, we just want to understand what our main drivers of revenue are going to be. Um so, that's going to be a big initiative and looking at that in 26. Um and also, we're, you know, looking at doing the 2027 budget right now. We're starting that process up. Um
so that's kind of just a little bit of where um the finance um portion of public health is right now for 25 but also working on 26 goals. Um so any questions on the finance portion of that? >> Thank you for that report. Questions on the finance component?
>> Yes, Commissioner Ebinger. >> Just a comment. Uh Brandon has done a good job with the with the uh partnership for health that we've got. Uh we've had a lot of changes in the last couple of years and he's rolled
with punches and done an excellent job at keeping us a breast of what grants we've got separating the the the partners that were with us before and still maintaining some of the connections that we have to keep together. Uh it's been very gratifying
that I get positive feedback chair of that u I get positive feedback from Becker County about how we're a good fiduciary partner. So appreciate it. >> Thank you, Commissioner. >> Additional questions.
Thank you for that presentation. >> Just make sure it's green. You got it. >> Good morning. and I'm happy to be here for Sue today. Um, just to highlight with WIC, um, in support of the community for 2025, we served about an
average of 1488 women, infants, and children. Uh, we provide indi individualized nutrition assessments, education, and community referrals. There's three of us full-time um as designated breastfeeding specialists.
So, we provide a lot of lactation support. Um, the last couple years we've maintained above state averages for initiating breastfeeding. So, that's something we're very proud of in Klay County. Uh, some of the highlights for the year, uh, continuing to offer our
farmers market nutrition program for families. They can use at any the local farmers market. Last year, we distributed about 300 of those. Um there have been many state technology improvements through the wick app
through mobile management. We offer uh phone appointments for our participants and utilize language line as well. Um and then also they're adding a lot of new um food package changes. So offering a lot more variety and choices for our
families. >> Can I ask about that really quick? >> Sure. I'm hearing on that component they're trying to utilize more uh locally grown options like the farmers market pieces. Is that part of that or not?
>> So the farmers market is a separate funded program. >> Okay. So it's not that's not on the last piece. That's just the 300 farmers. Okay. >> Yep. >> All right. >> Which I still by the state how many coupons we get to distribute. >> Right. >> I think this is our third year year.
That's allowable. Now, Commissioner Kavanagh, did you have a question? >> And well, piggybacking on that. Um, just curious. So, these are um are they designated farmers markets or they throughout uh Fargo Morehead and I'm
going to, you know, some of our community gardens and sometimes um sell produce or how does that work? And then also, if I may, um there are some pretty big community garden uh operations in
this town. They're getting more and more all the time. Uh do you have a list that you help these people um so that perhaps they can be part of one? >> Oh. >> Or more food. >> So, how it works so far is we get a list
from the state. They usually send us a brochure of uh every every farmers market in the state that is uh collaborated with this program. Right now the one in Morehead um I think they're working on the Dworth site as well.
>> So this would be the one down by names. >> Yep. >> Okay. >> Y right. >> And then the next closest would be there's a f Fergus Falls area and Detroit Lakes would be the next closest. Well, if you're open to it on the community garden part, the activities,
where they are, who's involved, places of opportunity, if uh if that's of interest, uh let me know and and I can follow up on that for you. >> Sure. >> No, that'd be great. Could certainly provide that resource. >> Any other questions?
>> I didn't mean to interrupt your presentation. >> Oh, you're No, you're okay. That was that was our most of our highlights. So, >> fantastic. Additional questions. >> Does anyone have any questions on anything that we've might have missed?
>> We have one more. Savylvan Yep. >> Thank you. Thanks for it. All right. Last but not least, Savannah Stoma is going to give a overview of the emergency preparedness for 2025.
Good morning, Sylvanas. Thank you. Good morning, Madame Chair. Good morning, honorable commissioners. Um, I'm a little bit sad today cuz uh I lost my colleagues uh the retired Gibb and Chad. >> Yeah. >> But uh I know I'm optimistic that Nico
is going to add value to our team. So looking forward to to her. So for emergency preparedness uh Klay County we are preparing that's our our kind of like mindset to prepare our team because uh
disaster is not uh 8 to9 event it happens at any time. So we are trying to prepare uh update all of our plans and then uh train our staff. So for last year we've been
working on updating our infantry. We have our warehouse uh we got lots of materials in our warehouse and then we have this system called Salamanda live. So we are trying to kind of track all of what we have in our warehouse into the system so we know what we have. So if a
disaster happens, put in a request to MDH or regionally it going to take time but once you know what you already have then you can respond effectively until material comes and then you can be able to respond. And then uh training
training is one of our big thing that we are looking at. We are training statewise regionally and locally. Last year we opened a discussion section at Mohare Library where we train our residents on emergency preparness developing their preparedness kit and
that took a very long time but then we are stay in contact to resume it because it was very very helpful people uh came there and then ask questions and uh we used to have that at 8:00 so I used to go there like every Wednesday and I'm looking forward to resume that as well
and then uh in an approach to u mitigate uh or get our clients or stakeholders uh prepared in disaster respond. We distributed pretty close to 500 emergency go bags to our partners starting with the long-term healthcare
and then to some voluntary populations as as well. So whenever I go out there to conduct trainings, we carry these emergency packages and within those bags it has uh hand webs and everything that you can think about that you can just be able to
respond effectively or at first hand. So that was one thing that we did and then um we also um doing our community planning. So at public health this year we have
updated all of our charts and all of our plans and training our staff because we want people to know what to do. We don't want if an emergency happens and we say oh you are assigned to this and you like you don't know what to do. So we have created our ao charts and training all
of our staff in what to do. For example setting up our pods, setting up a shelter and everything. We have updated all of our plans and then uh one big >> explain what a pod is. >> POD is a point of dispensing just in case uh an emergency happens they want
to pass a vaccines or something we set it up. So we have closed pod and open pod. Yeah. And one um thing I wanted to share with you also we uh did not extend our SS site is a receiving and storage.
We used to have that at the name hall but then uh MDH said only wanted to maintain one site at the city level or the state level so they didn't extend that so we lost that
and then our program is um all about the volunteer population volunteer population like uh we developed this uh group with lots of immigrant populations in Clay County
that uh we go to them and then teach them what to do if an emergency happens. And then this group has really been effective and we work with this group with our Clay County Emergency Preparedness Coordinator as well, Dove, but he he has retired. So, a new guy
there has taken his position. So we try to put this group together again and uh to just get our community ready because if the community is not ready if a disaster happens the impact is very huge. Yeah. So
lastly all of our projects in the emergency preparedness they are grant funded. So that's all I have today. >> Fantastic. Any questions?
No. Easy. Thank you so much for the work and the report on that. Jessica, do you have any final? >> Well, I just wanted to say thank you to all of the supervisors and Tara for stepping up kind of last minute and filling in for Sue. We appreciate that. But that's just an example of the
wonderful staff that we have in public health. Uh, so I just want to acknowledge the great work that they do day in and day out to support the community, keep us healthy and safe. >> Thank you all. >> Any additional questions? Thank you to
all of you for the work. Uh, certainly appreciative of all of the different networks of collaboration that continues to happen through all of the the supervisors in the department there. Uh, and thank you very much for the report. Thank you. Item five is a request of approval for
step placement of a healthc care unit eligibility worker. Michaela, good morning. How are you? >> Good. How are you? >> Great, thank you. Good morning. Madame chair and commissioners, thank
you for having me today. Uh what I am requesting today is a step placement for grade 14, step nine for an internal candidate that would be appointed to the health care unit as an
eligibility worker. So, previously on March 17th, the board approved refilling a vacant eligibility worker position within the healthcare unit. And this request today is part of executing that approval. Uh, social
services is recommending the appointment of a highly experienced internal candidate to the position at grade 14 step 9. This candidate brings nearly a decade of prior experience in this exact role that we would be filling and has
previously performed at a very high level within the unit during their time with us. And as you know from our update last week, uh the healthcare unit provide continues to experience high case loads per worker and increasing workload demands. uh filling this role
with an experienced internal candidate would reduce the onboarding time significantly and would allow them to really hit the ground running and um assume a full case load in a in a quicker way and have that quality of work right out the gate. Um and this
approach would improve service delivery timelines and would reduce the workload strain on the rest of the team. And in contrast to hiring externally, this strategy would minimize the training burden and would just allow us to have more stabilization quicker on the
healthare team and would support our continuity of service as well to our clients. And although this step replacement would be above, you know, step one entry level, it would reflect their prior direct experience in the same position
and their attainment of the step that they were previously at with us. attached you will see the wage calculator and where you will see the budgeting for 2026's budget is this transition would project a net savings
of approximately $15,365 for 2026 and that savings that you would see would be on the back filling of the internals uh current position. So that's where you would see the savings for that. And this was brought to pick and
was recommended to bring forward to the board. And with that, I'll yield to any questions you may have. >> Thank you, Michaela. Great summary. Questions from the board. >> I was going to thank you for asking that. We did uh have a great discussion
at pick. uh really feel like the presentation summarized that it was a supported um really great opportunity to have a highly qualified uh individual go into that um that position again.
>> Sure. >> Yes, Commissioner Campbell. Yeah, this is uh it was discussed in pick and I know there's um this is an area where somebody's leaving one department and moving to another one and um sometimes
there's a little bit of um concern or the current department that they're in. It's hard for for them to see the people leave to go to another job. It's um it's something in in this particular
case, this person really I think they're actually moving down a little bit. >> Correct. >> And that's where the proposal or the request for the step nine would help. It would still be a decrease for that individual, but this would really help ease that a little bit.
>> But um this would this request would include backfill, right? >> Correct. and potentially another backfill. >> That could be a a backfill of a backfill depending on
how the next one works. But >> the back fill was also included on the March 17th approval. >> Correct. Yep. Thank you for highlighting that. Well, I'll make a motion that uh we approve the step um placement at uh
grade 14 step nine or grade 14 step nine for the eligibility worker for the healthcare unit position. >> Thank you. >> And with backfill. >> Correct. The back fill has already been covered >> at the last motion. >> Okay. Very good.
>> Second. So, a motion offered from Commissioner Krabanoff as presented in the memo, a second from Commissioner Ebinger. Any further discussion? Any further discussion? Great job of the president. >> Thank you. Thank you all. All those in
favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Carried. Thank you, Michaela. Six. Today is our annual department update from social services, the child support fraud and collections and fiscal services
department. We have Susan and Sandy here. Good morning to you both. Make sure your microphones are green. We're really proud of the work that you guys do in this department. We're excited to hear the presentation. Eric can help you if you need.
There you go. Okay, put your microphone. >> Good morning. >> Good morning. >> So, um, we're here today to talk about child support fraud and collections and we have a brand new presentation for you with our social service accounting
division. So, we're kind of excited for all of that. So, we're going to start with child support fraud and collections. Um, we have um three different unit or three different
programs that um are in this area. We have two fraud investigators, two collections officers, and 12 people in child support with six being child support officers and six being child support aids. um that I'll run that
program and and make things work for us. We're going to start with welfare fraud. Um wanted to point out that the type of fraud that we investigate in Klay County in this program is very different from the fraud that's in the news so much um
right now for the state of Minnesota. Um Minnesota has um investigators that work with certain programs and we are really working with the recipients um in the investigations that we do. So
we have two different types of investigations. We have fraud prevention which is trying to work with especially the um eligibility workers. When they take an application and they have questions, things aren't
quite adding up or they need more information, they can ask one of the investigators to do some checking on it to try and prevent a grant from going out in error. And that's the vast majority of what we do. We also do criminal investigations or backend in
investigations. Um that would be for money that's already gone out the door. Sometimes we find that when we start an FBI um might be at a renewal where they've been on a program for a period of time and we find out that um they really weren't
eligible. So it can kind of be a combination of the two. Um most of it is for um household composition. Somebody is living in the home that wasn't reported. Their income maybe should have been counted. That
type of thing or unreported income or employment or verification of residency. Um we have quite a team right now. Two new people, one with two years of experience, one who just passed probation. Um
they are pushing out investigations like you wouldn't believe. Um 2024 was our high at 638 referrals. In 2025 they had 781. Right now um we are just behind Henipin
and Ramsey County in our numbers. We're beating other metro counties in referrals and um so they're really doing an awesome job there. Um uh Sandy, if I might has a question.
>> What does a referral means? Where does it come from? >> Most of the referrals come from eligibility workers >> um in child support. Sometimes we also see something because we work common cases with eligibility um where we might send something there's
a state tip line or we might get an anonymous tip directly to the agency but the vast majority I'd say 98% come from eligibility workers >> internal. >> Yeah. Okay. Thank you. >> Um
let's see. And then in the bottom grid, um, just showing the dollar amounts and it kind of flipped. Um, I've never worked with these before and didn't realize how you have to set them up. So, um, so overpayments, that would be the
total dollar amount that went out in error. And so, in 2025, we had over $72,000 that we're now trying to collect back in overpayments. um the cost avoidance and the direct savings. If you flip those and look at
direct savings first, that's the dollar amount that we prevented from going out for like the next month or the grant, the initial grant. What the state does is they multiply it by three because it usually would take at least three months
for some of our internal systems to catch up and say, "Hey, something's going on here. You know, we see income or that kind of thing." So then they look at we avoided sending out almost $4 million
um in 2025 as a result of this work um criminal cases. So we uh we had always kind of taken the position of um going the criminal route if we found that somebody had
committed fraud and got um received public assistance and error. Um in 2025 we referred 11 cases for criminal actions with overpayments totaling almost $74,000. um we're coming back from the waiverss
that were implemented during the pandemic. So that's why you see really low numbers early on and then it gets higher as we hit 2024 and 2025. um with with the criminal um charges um and new staff that are looking at
things a little bit differently, they started really looking at how long it takes that action to to be completed. And you know, the courts take a while and sometimes it's we file it and then there's a warrant issued and it could be
quite a while before that person is found again, that type of thing. and it was taking just over 46 months to complete from start to finish on a criminal action. Um, and of those we had 40.8 that signed
a rule 2705. It's called a pre-trial diversion agreement. So there's really no um record if it gets paid off within the agreement that they make. We had 35.6 that were found guilty and 23.6 six that might have been dismissed for
various reasons. Um, through the FBI program, they offer what's called an administrative disqualification hearing, an ADHD, very similar to a rule 27.05.
Um, and we started doing them or trying them in 2024. So to date 25 cases have gone through that that uh program with an average turnaround time of about two and a half months. So quite a difference from going
through um the courts. So ADH follows a person if they are moving and applying for public assistance in another county in Minnesota or another state. Um so it could affect their eligibility there but
it doesn't show on a criminal record and um it's in lie of a criminal action. If if we start ADH there's very few instances where we could um go criminal after that fact. So with an ADH a
penalty for the first um occurrence is one year of um disqualification. Uh the second um time would be two years and the third is a permanent disqualification. But during those disqualifications,
other family members can still um be receiving public funds. Um we don't want to penalize children or that kind of thing to have some support in the home. Um it's really hard to pull statistics on the criminal piece of it because our
system is limited. So, we're tracking those on our own spreadsheet. Um, and then we're working on um a process for medical assistance because we haven't been able to do anything with that for well since the pandemic.
And now we have new rules that went into effect July 1st of 2025. Um, you have to have a court order in order to try and collect if the person doesn't voluntarily choose to pay. Um, but those cases are often higher in
overpayment amounts. So, like in previous years, if we've had a really high overpayment year, it might have been one medical case that was 60 to $80,000. Um, so with the medical now, we can either
do a voluntary repayment where they agree to pay a lump sum, they do installment payments, or they do a confession of judgment. or we have to if we have to go to an involuntary repayment that would be through a court action then we can do revenue recapture
and um a judgment by operation of law to try and collect on those funding and statutory requirements. Um because of the work that the fraud team did in 2024, the state increased our uh grant from
$125,000 to $189,000 for the state fiscal years of 26 and 27. Um that is 100% due to the hard work that the investigators put in and the numbers that they um investigated and
put out. Um so prior to this increase um our grant covered about 1.25 25 full-time um FTE. And this increase allowed us to increase it to a 1.5 FTE. And that
covers not just the wages, which um was with the old grant, but it also is covering overhead for the program, including including we were able to get a designated leased vehicle for fraud. So, they're now able to um take a county
car out when they're doing their investigations um rather than having to pay mileage and wear and tear on their own cars. Um the balance of the program is covered by 50% FFP
and then um gave you the statute information if you ever want to look up what the requirements are for collections. Um, some of what I talked about with the new medical rules will also roll over into what the
collections officers would do, but they are collecting on outstanding debts that are owed to various departments within social services as well as other departments within the county and also for the state. These positions are also eligible for 50% FFP
and they work very closely with eligibility workers, fraud investigators, the county attorney's office, funeral homes, the state office, and other departments within the state. Um, so they collect a number of different um programs and I have those
listed there for you. They also have some other duties that they need to work on. um estate recovery is one of the most timeconsuming tasks that they have. Um with those a person who's been on medical assistance at some
point in their life um has passed away and there are assets. So they have to locate the assets calculate reimbursement that the state and the county might be entitled to. They work with families that might not have
realized the county has a priority claim and that can be very uncomfortable and um tough to do. Um they might probate the estate if needed. Um you'll find that um some families if they find out
there's no money that will go back to them, they step away and so then we have to take take over and do the probate. um talked a lot about uh computer systems. Um at the state level, there is no
computer system for county collections. Um years ago, a number of counties grouped together to create a system called the agency collection system or ACS. It's archaic, but it's what we have. It uses something called guey. I don't even
know what that is. Um, so pulling reports off of that system is really an art form and we don't have many people who know how to do it. It's called spooling. You have to keep trying to get the right parameters to get the information you want and you do it over
and over and over again is how I understand it. Um, to pull off reports, most of the payments that come in for collections have to be posted into two different systems because those systems don't talk to each other.
and it's not very user friendly. Uh statistics for collections. Um this one again kind of flipped what I would have wanted. So at the bottom you're going to see that we collected more than $1.5 million.
And from that amount, some of it goes back to the states, some of it goes back to the feds. Um, but we brought $460,000 back to the county combination of public assistance reimbursement and county debt that we were collecting. So,
>> great job. >> Yeah. And then I just gave you some statutory requirements for the collections program. Then we get into child support services. So, um, child support does all of the different things that are kind of around
there. Um, you know, it's you don't hit establish parentage once and then never hit it again. They may have another child born out of wedlock. And so then you have to go in and establish on the exact same case. A parent moves and we have to go in to locate. We're always
trying to collect and process payments. they might move to another state and we have to send it interstate and then they move again and the case goes back to locate and it just keeps circling around all of the different types of things that that we can do. Um, of the 12 staff
that I have, we're set up in in teams of two um so that we always have backup for different types of operations and um don't lose experience quite as easily.
funding is based on performance incentives and federal financial participation dollars. Um, and so it looks at five different areas. So we're higher than the state average in paternity established order establishment and current collections.
or slightly under in a collections and um no and I'm sorry we're and we're higher in cost effectiveness also um we struggle with the current collections and AR's collections and I
think that's largely because of the high interstate case load that we have not a lot we can do about it but um it's something that we're always looking at and trying to figure out how we can improve in that area. In federal fiscal year 2025, we
distributed um almost 7,700,000. On average, we had over 2 thou 2,300 cases and total expenditures were 2 thou 2,300 plus thousand. um a breakdown of that
or a breakdown of the total distribution. Um the vast majority goes towards current support and then we're collecting toward a rears. That's about 22.6 of what we collected. Um we spent about
$3 or no we saved about $3.34 for every dollar that we spent. um 90% of our cases are not receiving a cash grant and approximately a third of our cases interstates. So um with
interstate, you know, we don't have control over what the other state will do. Um some states won't take a case that's rears only. They just or they'll take it, but they won't do anything with it. They won't take it to court to try and collect. Um
you know, we can't force that. Um, sometimes we get incoming cases where it's a very large dollar amount, $500, $600 a month as an ongoing support obligation and this person is receiving general assistance and has no ability to
pay and we can't get them to modify that order. So, that all counts against us in those numbers and I don't know how to change it. um total revenue for this program. Um
uh we I showed you total amount distributed. We actually um oh that's the next slide. I'm getting ahead of myself. um total revenue was one and a half million and out of that
um I'm showing you then what came back as the federal financial dollars, federal incentives and state incentives. I've never shown you this before, but I thought, you know, sometimes we've talked about partners in in child support. So this is um all of the
sources for how we get um obligations paid. So we collect it 7 million735. Um the vast majority of that comes through income withholding. Employers are definitely a partner in our program.
Um and we very much appreciate their their help. Um we also collect from other states, other sources. Um, we still have people that they want that receipt, so they'll bring in cash or their own
personal check um directly to the office or mail it in. Uh, we can intercept federal and state taxes. Um, we got quite a bit from unemployment or reemployment benefits and we can also freeze um bank accounts uh called
phitum. And then I gave you more statutory requirements so that you have that for your information. Just some changes and challenges. Um so in 2025 we had some staffing challenges. Um two new staff
and both of them have passed probation and are doing a great job. Um I'm the lucky person that Michaela was talking about. So, I'll have another person to hire for this year and and um so that will be a little bit of a change
for us. Um our fraud investigators continue to set records with investigation numbers and cost savings and um want to again point out their hard work and um the increased grant that we got to um help fund that
program. Um in collections, we're doing something we've never done before. Uh we're working with the county attorney's office to become what's called a special administrator on an estate recovery case. So it's similar to probate as I understand it, but um the bank
foreclosed on it. And so um we have to do something a little bit different on it to try and sell this place. Um, if we don't do this, we won't get any money at all, but we're hoping that we might get maybe $40,000
reimbursement by by taking this step. Um, collections also had uh been at a meeting where they learned about unclaimed funds at the state level and brought this to the county's attention and it's my understanding that several departments have select successfully
collected some money back from the department of revenue. Um, in the child support area, we're finally getting into the current century. Uh clients can now pay using a credit card, e-wallet, or online bank
transfer rather than writing a check. Um the state is also looking at system modernization for child support. Um they're going to move our current system into a cloud-based system and they're envisioning an incremental modernization
rather than a whole new system in one fell swoop. So, it'll take a little bit longer, but they're hopeful that this will be more affordable, a more affordable option and um get us what we need to be able to actually talk to
other computer systems and get into the cloud age. >> I don't know how many years counties are going to have to tell the legislature that that is continuing to be an issue. I mean, thank you for your all of you for the patience in dealing with such an
antiquated cluster. Um, we're hopeful as well. Uh, you know, ju can just several times throughout your presentation, you've talked about the fact that systems aren't speaking together.
There's gaps in that. there's um additional workarounds and those components and that just goes against the work that you're trying to do. I guess it goes against the work that all of the departments are trying to go, but particularly in a time when fraud is such a prevalent issue and we're hearing
about how do we mitigate it, boy, if someone could just listen to a county employee, uh they'd have a solution there. So, thanks again. Thanks for talking to the modernization piece. will try to help lift that need as well. >> Thanks. And then this is just some fun
facts. Um so child support came into play in the at the national level in 1975. Um so we're celebrating 50 years of this program. Um Minnesota passed in August of 1975
and um over the past 50 years the national program has collected more than $786 billion to help support families. Um the big biggest change really in the program I think is just the fact that
when this started it was to essentially reimburse the state for public assistance funds that were collected and that has completely flipped now where 90% of our cases are not on public assistance and so what we collected
directly supports um families in their homes. Um you can see on the graph here um in 1976 in Minnesota we had 323 people working in child support. We currently have 1,361.
Um our case load has exploded from the original amount and um just the collections that that the state does on an annual basis is over $500 million.
So, any questions about child support? >> Questions? Tried to talk fast because I know we're way behind time. >> That's okay. I really do appreciate the in-depth presentation. This is really helpful for us as we sort through it. Uh >> mad madam chair, if I could too. I I
would just want to back up. I mean, I know that the county attorney's office works across many different uh units, but uh we work very closely with Sandy's unit and and I know uh the uh collections uh piece, we've always done a lot of that anyway, but uh we really
have seen a great deal um of the uh increase in the fraud area uh and the work that's been going on there and and the great work that Sandy and her team have done, I think, well before there was ever much news about that uh they were doing a lot of work to to stop some
of those things and now and we're seeing cases that are being reported uh down in the Twin Cities and that type of thing. They're citing to cases that are from Klay County uh and how we were fixing things. And so uh kudos to her team for all the work that they've done on that. And then there's very much some
different things. There's a lot of unique things that happen in the financial world and ways to try to to uh get reimbursement to the taxpayers and and so there are creative ways that we've worked on whether it's funeral expense things, but also some of the uh
uh home and and uh estate uh pieces that we've really started to work on uh pretty closely to try to make sure that we're getting money back for the taxpayers. So, uh great great work from her team and and all the different teams, but it's been going very well. But we couldn't do it without the county attorney's office because they're with
us at all three of our programs. >> Additional questions. >> All right. >> All right, Susan, >> if you want me to. >> Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. Thank you for having me.
Um, thank you for giving me the opportunity to introduce the social services accounting team. We have five staff total including one statistical specialist, three accounting
technicians and one fiscal supervisor. This team is the financial backbone of social services. We ensure funding flows in and payments go out and without this work services cannot operate. We are very fortunate to have a veteran group
of with many years of experience and co and county knowledge. This slide shows one example of how our accounting team supports a major program area, childcare assistance, and the scale of work. At the center, you will
see we administer about $766,000 annually through this program. These are payments that go directly to child care providers so families can access care. We have one staff that processes an
average of 320 child care invoices per month. The state requires that payments be made within 21 days of receiving a completed bill. Our track record shows that Klay County um CCAP bills are processed as soon as
they're received. This staff also establishes and maintains approximately 40 North Dakota CCAP providers. Um, this staff used to do all of the Minnesota um or the Klay County providers as well, but as of April of 2025, the Minnesota CCAP
providers are now established at the state level. So, while this is accounting work, it is really operational support. Every payment processed helps keep services running and families supported.
We manage approximately $16.4 million in social services expenditures. These are the payments that support all of our services, providers, vendors, and program operations across social services.
We process an average of 781 invoices per month. revenue generation. So this slide focuses on the revenue side of accounting, how we bring dollars into the agency through direct claiming to
medical assistance and to the health plans. We generate about $3.17 million annually through direct claiming. This is a critical funding stream that helps offset costs of services.
These claims range from 15minute units to monthly units. About 74% of our claims are automated while 26% are manual. Even though automated claims make up the
majority, that remaining manual portion represents a significant workload. In 2025 alone, we processed nearly 3,000 manual claims. Each of these has to be handled
individually. There's no batch system to stream to streamline the process. It requires careful tracking, submission, and posting of each claim to ensure accuracy and reimbursement.
We have one fiscal supervisor who supports all programs across social services. The fiscal supervisor compiles all state fiscal reporting which is submitted to earn federal 4E revenue
uh grants and allocations and timestudy money. There are 60 scheduled reports per year. These span the income maintenance unit, the child support fraud and investigations unit, all six program
areas in social services, and the Klay County collaborative. This position performs budget preparation and year-to- date reporting, prepares worksheets for the county financial statement, and participates in
the state audit. So current challenges um this slide puts the the growth into perspective. Social services has increased by about 70% in the last 10 years. And the expenditures have grown to just
under 32 million. So for every one accounting staff person, they are now now supporting significantly more employees than they were 10 years ago. And as we add more staff to meet service
needs, we're not just adding program capacity, we're also increasing the volume of internal transactions that accounting has to manage. The key takeaway is that as expenditures and program activity have grown at this
pace, the financial and accounting workload behind the scenes has expanded with it on the horizon. Anytime you hear of changes impacting social services, it almost
it also most likely is going to have a significant impact on social services accounting. In the immediate future, we will be preparing for the challenges of the following um the governor's proposed changes. The Minnesota African-American
Family Preservation Act or MOFPA extra steps required for the anti-fraud enforcement efforts which includes more verification requirements for claiming and increased scrutiny excuse me of
providers and billing. So ending on a positive note um we do not have any social service fiscal auditing audit findings at this time. >> That's fantastic. Yeah, that is fantastic. That is a great
>> piece to end on. Any questions for Susan on this? Any questions on the whole presentation? Comments? We're We're just blown away by your efficiencies. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you guys. We are scheduled for a five minute break now. We'll go ahead and take that now. Okay, we are back online. Our next item number eight is the committee reports. Commissioner Ebinger, are you ready?
>> Sure, I am. Thank you, Madam Chair. Last Tuesday, the 21st, uh we all attended the uh Klay County Board of Commissioners workg groupoup session um with the HR Klay County HR, received some of their project updates and
legislative updates. Um was informative. I think we've really with Commissioner Krabangh working with them as a member. It's been a a good uh opportunity in these
meetings to get uh briefed and stay informed on what's happening with our our HR. On uh Wednesday the 22nd, I attended a diversion authority finance committee. Um, Miss Johnson was not able to attend,
so I was there as the primary. Had uh a number of service agreements that we were reviewed and all of them passed and were forwarded to the diversion board of authority
the following day. Um it was generally just uh business as usual. We did look at the wifia update the the loans there. Uh all of these were covered in the main meeting
the following day and I'll touch on them there. on Thursday attended the criminal justice advisory committee meeting. We had a uh update on community corrections
uh from uh from Dale and just kind of gave us a two the uh comprehensive plan a two-year update uh on community corrections.
Then we had a uh presentation on the treatment lindsy cassette on the treatment courts later that no I'm sorry on Friday the 24th
I'm missing something here in my notes later that day I attended the diversion authority uh board of authority. The uh items that we covered in finance were put on the consent agenda and passed.
We had uh executive director uh report update on uh the Minnesota legislative issues that the diversion authority is is staying on top of. Um,
we discussed the crop damage issues that we've had and we had presentation from Mr. uh Asterard at at the end of the meeting on public comment. He is still in negotiations
with and trying to get settlement on his issues there. But the uh core of engineers and the diversion have both had people come out to his property, look at the damage, and it's a process that's underway. >> As of yesterday, I spoke to him last night at the highway meeting. They have
not reached out to him. That's been over a week of nonresponsiveness. >> They've not reached out to him. >> Well, was there was a discussion on the 23rd. He was there and >> No, I understand. I'm saying that they had said that there would be something
within a week. The diversion was day four and so um it's been well over a week since they've responded again. >> Okay. And moving forward here, Friday the 24th, uh
we had a uh county retreat. Sorry, I've got everything out of order here. A county uh for strategic planning and budget impact retreat. I really was impressed with not just the way this was structured. I think it was productive. I
think we got a lot of information. Uh I think that uh it opened my eyes to a few things that are going on with staff including AI which I'll get to in a minute. There are a lot of efficiencies that I think promising
things in in the future using AI and that was one of the topics of discussion. We uh looked at some of the concerns we've got with the upcoming budget uh with the great the uh big beautiful bill and the act and some of the unfunded
mandates that that presents a potential challenge for us. Uh I think we I think we had a good opportunity to hear these things as a commission and be prepared uh a little
more prepared on what the challenges will be and getting a budget this year. A lot of it's coming out of St. Paul. Uh we have a presence there thanks to a couple of our commissioners and lobbyists and I hope that uh we can continue to head off some of these
issues. But I I think it's going to happen that we're going to have to figure out how to make stretch things a little further simply by what's being passed down to us that we have no control over. One of the things that uh I was very
interested in hearing the response from some of our department directors on uh AI artificial intelligence. I am skeptical or I was skeptical. I heard some very smart people that I have a lot of faith in that are
comfortable with using that uh uh that technology. I went ahead on uh yesterday and jumped in on the chat GPT user group that Mark Sloan has started. There were 35 people at that meeting. I didn't have
anything to contribute but I listened and that's what I needed to do. I think that with the policy we've got, with the people we've got implementing it, um we're not only not vulnerable to some of the some of my
fears, uh that we'd have have uh some automated system walk us down the path of doom. I think our people are on top of it and they understand how to use it. They're continuing to try and find ways to use
it. long term, I think it presents a lot of opportunities for us, but that remains to be seen, but I think we have the right people doing it and Mark is is uh really did a good job moderating and directing the discussions yesterday. And
that completes my report. >> Thank you, Commissioner Ebinger. Commissioner Kraoff. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh going back to last Tuesday, uh I also as part of the joint um county H, uh Commissioner Amber
gave a good report on that. I will just add um as part of their meetings, it's been good to see monthto month that uh overall they're meeting their budget uh that they have currently in place and uh
their vacancies are few now and most their projects are complete. Um and the last thing I'll say like us uh they're also facing their challenging in housing and housing supports uh uh through the
uh upcoming uh HR1 uh through the federal government as most of H's funds uh are federal. Um uh later that day I had the adult mental health um LAC group. Um big part of that
meeting was the development of the uh uh report that they will give this uh board um in third week of May I believe it is. U beyond that we had agency updates from about nine different providers that were
out the meeting. Um so normally each month we get somewhere around 25 to 30 participants with uh 10 to 12 of them being providers and the rest being consumers. So it's a good sharing information. We learn from each other
and and I know referrals from one another um come through those meetings for those providers. uh Wednesday. Uh I'm uh as I mentioned last week, I uh was elected uh chair of
the West Central Initiative Economic Development. Uh on Wednesday, I met with the uh director Greg Wagner and uh went through an orientation with him. Later that day, I had a meeting with our
nonsecure finance uh group team uh discussing our uh strategies each continued it each week through with our lobbyists uh from Winthrop and Weinstein. And then last uh later that day, I had
the uh Klay County Historical uh culture society uh board meeting. Um the main part of that we're working on our marketing uh looking at our marketing strategies for the year. Uh again with u
major purpose of those uh for increasing memberships, admissions and uh donations. Thursday um that uh was later uh early evening I guess for the uh comm uh
community action partnersh prairie. Uh it was our annual meeting that headed over at the tax event center. Um the the annual event is actually a monthly
meeting that we uh add on to. So, um we did have our regular meeting and went through our um uh excuse me, our our our reports uh and then we um did the approvals uh of nine
different grant opportunities. Then we went into our program and then our executive director Lori Schwarz uh did a 2025 year in review. Uh this is uh this year celebrating our 60th
anniversary of having CAP LP and um um uh and and she did a great job of reviewing things that went over the years and the things that we've done here in Clay and Wil County. We then had service awards that were given to people
with over five years of u of service to um to the organization. those went up to the from five 10 15 there was 25 and there was a a 15 and a 25. Um so anyway
thank you to all those uh dedicated um um employees that that work for this great organization. Then there were three awards uh at the end four actually. Uh we had the volunteer extraordinaire award. Uh it was given to
Ammer Nurvy Conway for involvement uh as a parent uh with Head Start and other policy committees over the years. Um gotten to know her pretty well over the year and her uh contributions are really
appreciated. We also had the community builder award. Uh over this last year, we came together with a uh entity out in Holly called Reach. Uh Reach works with a counseling uh food pantry and a uh
thrift store that was generated years ago by Mark Hogan uh citizen in the Holly area and Mark was given that award as community builder. And then we also had our leadership award. It's called
the Dennis Height Camp Leadership Award given once a year for a leaders uh of our organization long-term leadership capabilities uh noted for their activities and their values and being part of our board policies and that was
given to Commissioner Jenny Mojo. So much appreciated Jenny for all the things you do and we continue to work on this board together. So it's all good. Uh and um that was that part that was the meeting as a whole. It was
wonderful. Um oh at the end I will make one other point. Uh uh I want to say it we also had a special award given to uh Lauren Ingerbritson who most of us know and Lauren has been on that board for over two uh two decades. It's been a
long long time. So he's he's no longer now a township officer. So uh he will not be longer with our any longer with our board. But many many stories about the man and uh his dedication service
whether to his townships play county or this organization over the years is um something to be uh honored and u you don't see a lot of. So anyway, thank you Lauren. Uh then uh yesterday I had the
food commission steering committee. Uh we're getting our agenda together for our next food commission meeting u May 13th. Um, we'll be reviewing uh uh and giving updates to updates to our
Boulevard Garden blueprint and u um and then uh we're also looking at um excuse me, Morehead has their current policy on that, but we'll just see how everything aligns with what Morhead's doing in other communities. So, that is my
report. >> Thank you, Commissioner Kra. >> Commissioner Campbell. I also we also um attended of course the workg group session last Tuesday afternoon. I don't need to report anymore on that. Wednesday we had the
Prairie Lakes Solid Waste Advisory or Solid Waste Committee um board meeting and we went over the finances there. Um currently we're about $250,000 over last year and in our bank balances.
Everything is going well. They replaced some significant equipment in this last year. Uh there's going to be about another 6,000 tons of um ash that's going to be used on another road project in Becker
County. And we are um looking at having a another stack testing done that on the facility that's done every three years as well as a new air quality permit that's done every five years. That's all coming up this year.
That that same afternoon I attended the building committee meeting. Uh we talked about the power plant roof needing replacement. Uh we talked about um a proposal for uh security for the main
entrance downstairs, the courthouse. There's a a new plan in place and reviewed and um looking at trying to see that move forward this year. Um Joe is working on on some plans there and how
we can potentially fund that, but there'll be more to come on that as well. And then we continue to look at the uh long-term planning for the family service center. As you know, we all know over the years that's going to take some
significant upgrades as that building ages. And I think Joe's got a good plan in place over the next 5 to 10 years on how to deal with that. And uh this board's going to have to come up with how to pay for it. So,
uh, on Thursday morning the 23rd, I attended the Clay County Solid Waste Advisory Committee meeting. We had a really good report from Mara on the recycling update and she was heavily
involved with the um, national um, recycling day or earth week. So, that was uh, she She did a very good job representing Klay County in that regard
and we got a good update from Corey on the landfill updates as well. Um then after that we had a pick committee meeting and we talked about the eligibility
worker that we acted on today and we are having continued discussions about uh the Klay County compensation system in itself whole how that whole thing comes together in terms of grids and stuff
like that. So that's that's just in a a lot more to come on that in the future. From there that day we had our more Clay County Joint Powers Authority meeting. Um we approved approved a tax exemption
application. Um, we had some uh discussion regarding the Wolverton properties and um right now there's uh they're not being able to get the
access rights that we need for that yet. So there's there's work between legal and the Buffalo Red on how to move forward with that. Uh we did have some u nest uh some reimbursements on some moving issues and
we heard from uh CW Valley co-op. They're concerned about some property that they have that's um outside of the footprint and they're um they're thinking that they need to have a ring levy. And according to all of the information
that we have is the the diversion project itself has no no impact on that property. So um and they they still have some concerns. They maybe aren't trusting that data. So, um, working with
you, I asked them to our engineers from the diversion authority to meet with them as well as with the Buffalo Red and if there were to be a ring levy, what what could be some resources that could be used to help them in that regard?
And then we had a commissioner reimbursement. In other words, that's one of the three commissioners who oversee um um land value issues related to eminent domain. Then later
that day, we had the diversion board of authority meeting. I think uh that's been well covered by Commissioner Ebinger. Um, I do want to point out that the diversion authority did
approve the um 50/50 match on anything that the um Minnesota legislature would um given funding. Uh the whiffy update, we've we've actually taken $47.5 million. There's
still over about a $500 million to draw. But within this next year, we're looking at um funds exceeding $1 billion being paid out just this year. So that's a there's a significant amount of money still to be paid out.
On Friday, I attended the uh retreat and that I that went well. Um, I just want to also point out on AI, it's a AI can be a real useful tool.
Uh, but it also can come with a lot of um concerns, you know, and I you take a look on some of the things now that are being created by AI that are probably not in the best interest of the public. But um
if somebody were to go into your word document or whatever, if you have trouble writing, if you if you were to write something up and and ask co-pilot if you're depending on what you're using 365 or whatever and it's amazing how they can rewrite something for you in
that AI that really um can really be a useful tool as well. Then yesterday morning I attended the West Central Regional Water. We had some discussions after the um
court hearing where we were approved of our district and we have just a point of clarification we have about 1,200 people already interested in rural water. um about a thousand of those are actual
rural residents that don't live in our small cities. So there's um a lot of interest to going out there and and the areas where they've incorporated these water districts that only grows the minute that starts to get available more
and more people will hook up. So, it's uh really encouraging and now now the now that the the big issue right now is the the funding and we continue to work on that and I want to compliment Ezra Commissioner Bear on his work as well
down at the state legislature and in uh working towards getting uh funding for that project. That's significant work being done. And then also then last night I did attend the open house for the uh county highway 52
county highway 12 roundabout project. Uh I didn't stay the whole time. There was um people were coming and going but uh there was we had plenty of staff on hand. There was a lot of people that came with interest questions and current concerns. I think where uh people were
probably most interested is is um during the project what are the alternative routes and that type thing. There's a lot of a lot of there was a lot of comments and questions on that and um I think there was certainly the right people were there to answer those
questions for those folks. And uh going back to the um issue regarding the Askigard property that was in the diversion project and I know Commissioner Mosu said it's been a week. Um one of the things that
we have to remember this this particular claim is basically against the core of engineers. This wasn't a diversion project. It was a core of engineers project and it was a core of engineers contractors
that I think have really um not upheld their their end of the deal in terms of their contract. And you know so I I think I want to be clear that we need to designate the difference of what is a diversion authority responsibility and what is the
core of engineers responsibility and this whole claim that the askards have and I think it's appropriate one was in regards to what the contractors did or did not do during the
construction phase of the project of the core project which um in as in Asigard's opinion and I think we can agree cause damage to his property. So, but I I just
wanted to make that clarification so that we're clear that where we believe the responsibility lies. And it's really unfortunate that we've been talking about this for quite some time and there still seems to be um a lack of
communication at that level. So, I'm I'm certainly disappointed in all my time of working with the core, they've been pretty good. But on this particular issue and when we can move forward into the operations and maintenance of this, we better have better communications than there are right now because it's it's
not good. And um in the future when that project does need to be implemented and there are potential damages that are that are going to occur out there, we better be um on the spot and working with our land owners. And there I'll end my little
conversation with that. >> Thank you for your reports, Miss Commissioner Campbell. Commissioner Bear. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Last week, I was also at last Tuesday, I was also at the work group with the Clay County HA. I don't have to discuss that anymore. And then on Wednesday, I was also at the
buildings committee where Commissioner Campbell gave a good update there. We also reviewed the 2027 project review on what will be happening next year with the building committee. Then on Thursday, I was at the criminal
justice advisory board meeting as well where Commissioner Ebinger gave a great update with that. So I have nothing to add on that. And Friday, I was also at the the Klay County employee supervisor retreat,
which I'd like to thank all the all the supervisors and department heads for being there. I think it was very well attended, and I thought I'm hoping everybody came out of there with some some ideas on how to move forward. I thought it was a great retreat. On Monday, I was also at the West
Central Regional Water Board meeting up in H Hallstead where Commissioner Campbell also was there and he gave a good update. Um, that is all my reports and I'll be heading down to uh Nuts and Bolts with the AMC coming tomorrow
through Friday. So, I'll be down in St. Paul and I plan on getting over to the capital to talk to legislators about the West Central Region Water Project. So, that is all my reports. Madam Chair, >> you Commissioner Bear, last Tuesday, I also attended the HR uh workg groupoup
session. I appreciate hearing all of their project updates, their legislative update, and then what their budget forecast and potential requests will be for this board. Certainly, we'll take that under advisement given the uh current status of all the needs. I
attended the planning commission meeting that evening. We did hear a interim use request for a uh gravel pit, gravel mine in Holly Township. That did go ahead and I'm sorry, uh Park Township. We did
recommend or we did approve that component. The next item that we talked about was the Klay County Land Development Subdivision ordinance amendment. Uh as you as you know vacation home rentals and VBOs's uh are really popular right now. Making sure
that uh planning and zoning department have that um standards at least acknowledged in the ordinance is really important. There was discussion around uh if that's something that makes sense for Klay County. uh you know given the
reports that we had from public health there it's not only a planning and zoning issue it goes into public health and how hot tubs if you will are permitted felt that it was important to bring those um conversations forward Matt will be working on that in
coordination with this board and that concluded that meeting we did I was able to attend the Earth Day celebration proclamation reading since commission Commissioner Campbell was at the Prairie Lakes uh solid waste meeting. Lots of good trash
meetings happening that day. Appreciate one the opportunity to host that in Klay County with our colleagues from West Fargo, Fargo, Morehead, Dworth. Uh and then two, having our staff give great uh presentations. Mara uh did a wonderful job presenting the different Earth Day
activities throughout the county and then gave a walkthrough for folks to see the resource recovery opportunities uh and work that happens there and then also she was able to do um some news interviews. So hopefully you were able to catch that. Uh Dworth invited me to
the groundbreaking at the new Aresco facility that's across the um street to the north. really excited about that opportunity um going in uh the development going in on their newly annexed acres there. I attended the compliance
committee after that. We had a pretty long discussion on uh data requests and what's what's public data, what's not public data, who does that. Lots of information there. Staff um is working really hard and diligently to uh stay in
compliance on so many different issues there. had a discussion about pay uh platforms and what how we can take automated payments and where we can take automated payments. Thanks for the work that happens at that committee. I
attended a Klay County Legislative Planning Committee uh meeting with our um lobbyists. Uh sometimes I feel like if we report on a Wednesday meeting on a Tuesday, the amount of water that goes under that bridge by the time we get to this is wild. But one, huge work happening from
our lobbyists uh in St. Paul right now with all of our projects and enormous work that happened from Steve last week. Uh we had an additional reach out from the capital investment committee leadership on additional information and
dialing in some financial components and presentations and the amount of meetings that happened last week and the ability for Steve to still get a phenomenal presentation coordination sent to them uh is huge. So huge thank you to that
you on that. Uh really exciting that we're continuing to move forward with that. There were some other hiccups that happened throughout the um the rest of the week, but I'm I'm hopeful that that projection keeps going. And then had an opportunity I was it was
requested as um the commissioner representing a district that has a solar project proposal did meet with uh that company on what their proposal going to the public use commission will be in the fall. I've requested that Steve works
with planning and zoning and legal to have uh an opportunity for this board to be updated on all of those pieces. Uh really important um uh affects on how it would present for the area. I think
that's important that we all know that. The next day, I also attended the SWAT committee meeting. Commissioner Campbell updated that really well. I do want to highlight uh not only Mara uh with the recycling pieces. Um I think there was was it 900 students that she'd worked
with in the last five months on Klay County solid waste education pieces. That was really exciting to hear all the districts that she worked with on that. Uh but two uh county staff worked really really hard. If you c recall, we had a citizen advis a citizen
uh group that came forward with a request that we do some partnership uh in regards to organics recycling uh applying for an a grant and they were really excited to do all the work and uh bring forward that proposal.
Unfortunately, uh the excitement of that group kind of waned, but the excitement of our staff continued as we see a huge value in that. But, um they shifted really quickly and all of the grant writing fell on staff and uh one, it's unfortunate that that's the way it
happened. Uh really thankful for staff for shifting. Um I heard it was a very late night in the application process. So, um I know that that was challenging, but hopefully we are able to move forward with something uh that makes sense. I know that they've had
conversations with um the schools and some of our bigger um organics producers on how that could be implemented throughout the county. After that, we had a pick committee meeting. We did discuss the eligibility
worker placement and then um another Klay County compensation this the general system discussion at that meeting. After that, we had the flood mitigation working group with the city of Morhead, the um diversion authority, the chamber,
and Klay County on moving that request forward and continued strategy on lobbying efforts. I think we did have an update um on some federal grants that were being applied
for. After that, I attended the MCC JPA meeting. good updates on the excess lands update. Uh folks have reached out to me on land dispersals. Um some of these uh acres
that have been purchased for mitigation that the the project no longer needs, how that is being advertised to the broader community. If you Google um the FM diversion excess lands available, uh
that page will come up. We're working with communications on how to better let people know about that, but there are lands on the Minnesota and North Dakota side that the diversion authorities um wanting to sell. We talked about a
couple project updates uh on the land management side, a tax exempt application and a update on a property that's unfortunately um been difficult to get personal property off of. and then a resolution of necess necessity
for the Wolverton area that those property rights are really important not only for the project as a whole but as the Buffalo red watershed uh moves forward in their Wolverton project those are all components that need to be uh addressed and then talked about and
approved a relocation reimbursement and in other business we did have representatives from the CW Valley co-op I requested that they go start at that committee level. They'd been Commissioner Kabanoff and I were at the Buffalo Red WHED and they had some
concerns on um how components could affect them. I think particularly they're interested in how the Wolverton piece uh what what will be slowed down with the tieback levy on the east side of the railroad. Um they felt they
had some additional information and I'm appreciative that they're working with project staff on addressing that piece. and then had the uh commissioner reimbursement. As noted that afternoon, I attended the pollinator pad patio party with the SWCD
extension feeasants forever. Great opportunity to raise some money for the uh crustwood site. My understanding is there was hopefully going to be a control burn this week. I'm not sure if that ended up happening yet, but >> day by day.
>> Okay. Day by day. All right. I like it. Uh that evening I also attended the CAPLB board of directors annual meeting. Great updates uh and work. I believe we approved applying for over a million dollars in grants. Huge work there. Grants are tricky to write and I
appreciate that they're working on those. Um shocked and blown away the honor is I can't even tell you. Um, having been on that board for 11 years and seen the caliber of people that have um been
honored with that uh Dennis Height Camp award, I I don't think I I qualify for being in there, but I'm certainly grateful for that. Um, the next uh day we attended the management retreat. Huge gratitude to the strive committee for
working on that presentation. uh having that dialogue with all of the different departments, finding actionable items, uh coming out of it as a board, I'm hopeful that we can find some ways that those conversations can articulate into
savings and and how we continue to find efficiencies for our citizens. Yesterday, I attended the Lakeland Mental Health Center board of directors meeting. Great updates. Uh we do continue to have some challenges at um Alexandria and some programming margins,
but overall the health of the organization is great. Acknowledge that uh Ottertale County's human services director will be retiring semi. It sounds like Ottertale County and Wilin County have had an agreement in shared services. So she'll continue to stay on
um doing some work for Wilin, but will no longer be on our board. I'm not quite sure. I'm thinking that our Klay County director should be close into the rotation there. And then we had had a great employee recognition. Huge um gratitude to folks. Uh pretty amazing to
see people that have worked at that organization for 38 years and 40 years. Thankful for that. and then had the opportunity to hear from uh one of the um practitioners that works in the River Project and how he's seen firsthand the
uh how that's benefited um folks that are in custody, but also how they've tried to mold that to work with employees as well uh to allow them to access services if needed. And then last night I was uh had the
opportunity to attend the highway tracking preconstruction meeting for the 52 and 12 um construction. Great. Um one we had local businesses that attend. Several of them that were concerned about how the staged um detours could
affect their businesses. Um, uh, one was really grateful that it it was early season, it wasn't going to affect their business, and then had a, uh, gravel company that just need, uh, needed to figure out how to strategize delivery. Um, thanks to the highway department for
being present there. I think we had 25 or 30 folks that showed up. Uh, really great dialogues. And I think that I'll also be attending the nuts and bolts training and having opportunities to meet the legislature
with our lobbyist and commissioner Kavanagh and Commissioner Bear. I believe that concludes my reports. Steve, >> oh just real quick, I neglected to uh say that I was part of the retreat on Friday with the managers directors and
thanks to all very productive. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, last Tuesday I participated in the H commissioners uh meeting that's been well covered. On the 22nd, I met with Matt Lysathth from Morehead Downtown, Inc. is he's gets his
feet underneath him. We had some ongoing conversations about economic development in Klay County. Um, that afternoon participated in the legislative legislative planning uh for the non-secured detention uh with our lobbyists. So, it's been well covered.
uh and also then participated in the solar project developer meeting that was commissioner Mojo uh noted again uh very interesting and more information to come there. uh participated in the building committee that afternoon. I would just
note that it mentioned earlier this year uh that uh from a space issue at the law enforcement center uh this the city of Morhead area has they've lo they have no no longer have enough offices in that building. Uh and so uh if you recall
several weeks ago there's apparently some discussion at the city of Morhead about looking at another location. Uh and so the building committee met uh part of that will be bringing forward next week a proposal uh to look at a spacing the space spacing issues that are at the law enforcement center. Uh
and uh as you recall it was it was built to expand uh and but just to identify what the best path is moving forward. Uh the sheriff mentioned about applying uh putting their name in on a capstone uh capstone request. SWAC is also or
excuse me, solid waste is also doing that. One of the challenges that they've had out at the uh at the resource recovery and at our um our landfill is fires, the lithium batteries. And so they're looking to uh looking to have a
student come in do their capstone presentation on uh when we capture those. We also then have a liability issue of storage and what to do with them. And so uh that uh that was submitted. uh also participated in the pick meeting which has been well covered
uh also the flood mitigation meeting uh that's been well covered MCCJPA also participated there again the management retreat I want to thank uh thank the board for their continued commitment for events like that uh it's
takes a great deal of of uh resource time to to bring bring everyone together to have conversations uh but uh believe that there was many positive things that came come out of that that'll hopefully be impactful as we move forward in the 2027 budget that is less than a month
away. Uh and uh that uh yesterday participated in the water district meeting virtually. Uh again was a exciting recap of uh of our court action uh and also uh what may be coming ahead here once funding uh is approved uh with
the over 1100 people that are interested in receiving the service. Um yesterday I also participated in the chat GPT user group. Again I think that uh again it's great to get a group of people together that have different experiences with
that. And again we're we're starting to train uh our our Klay County Chat GPT is the vendor that we're using trying to to train that so it becomes uh more user friendly for all of our all of our employees.
Uh just in talking with Justin yesterday, just to note, road restrictions south of Highway 10 are going to come off on Friday. North of 10 will come out within 10 days. Uh he anticipates that it'll probably need all 10 days. So that concludes my report.
>> Thank you, Mr. Larson. Mr. Milton. >> Uh thank you, Madam Chair. Uh I I wanted to mention I I had the opportunity last week to attend the YMCA uh woman of the year program. Uh it was an excellent uh banquet program and there were 34 outstanding women who were nominated
across numerous different categories. uh our own uh Michelle Carney uh the victim service director uh was one of the nominees that was honored and uh for her work both for helping victims uh domestic violent victims, victims to
navigate court uh but then also uh for her work uh helping youth uh uh creating the ARPAC and and working towards restorative justice practices and uh so all that was uh uh terrific to see her uh nominated and honored. and then also
the the rest of the great nominees. So, terrific event. I also wanted to mention as the board's aware, uh probably close to about a year ago, authorized the Klay County Attorney's Office to work towards getting a facilities dog. Uh and I can
report that, um uh Cand Doines has now named a facilities dog for us, uh Edison. And so we're expecting that uh we he's a very really cute dog uh yellow lab that we'll expect to get somewhere around May 15th. Uh there's uh some
different trainings that uh Pam will have to go through to get the dog and then some other local training, but we'll be able to get him here shortly and and then once we have him here, we'll be sure to get him up here to the board. But definitely already want to work towards u obviously working with
victims is the primary piece but we want to look towards right away working him into the juvenile facility and helping with some of that and some of the trauma some of those kids have seen. And then uh finally I too uh attended the Klay County Planning Retreat. Uh I just
wanted to say what an outstanding uh event uh and the work uh that we see by so many invested employees. Um there I think what struck me is how many uh things we're already doing so well and the efficiencies that we see from our
employees and and and just I think what commissioner was saying the the uh the layout and the the program how it was done with the different roundts and as we're talking about some of the different efficiencies that are happening or or looking to to implement something and somebody else said well
we're already doing something close to that in in different uh department and how can we look to do that and and add that there. So, uh there was just a lot of really good uh discussion and and clearly that we're not just sitting around waiting for things to happen. We're we're working to continue to
streamline and better ourselves and better our efficiency. So, it was a terrific event. So, that's all I have. Thank you. >> Thank you, Sarah. Anything else before the board today? Darren, sorry.
>> That's okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. A lot of my stuff has already been covered. I didn't was not here yet last week. Um but the week prior we had a pick meeting, a step three grievance. Um had a HR staff meeting, worked on some data requests from the state auditor,
MCA trip HR payroll meeting. Um worked on the 2027 budget city county meeting and finished the 2027 risk assessment for MCT. Um, also attended the Earth Day press conference when I echo your
sentiment so that Mera did a great job on that. Uh, sat in on the compliance committee meeting which has already been covered by Commissioner Mojo. Legislative planning meeting. Uh, engineering tech interviews for highway. Um, also sat on the building committee meeting with Joe and Commissioner
Campbell who covered that very well. Uh I was also at the swack meeting, the pick meeting and uh same sentiments about the manager's retreat. Very good um program there. Uh yesterday I attended a MC regional meeting and I
also attended the chat GBT user group meeting that Commissioner Ebringer has already covered. That concludes my report. >> Thank you. I apologize. Any other business before the board? If not, our next board meeting will be May 5th at 8:30. We are adjourned. Part: 2
Good morning everyone. It's 8:30. I'll go ahead and call today's meeting of the Klay County Board of Commissioners to order. Our first item on the agenda today is a approval of the agenda. Madam Chair, I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. Second. >> Motion offered from Commissioner Bear, a
second from Commissioner Campbell to approve the agenda as presented. Any further discussion? Discussion. Discussion. All in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Oppose. Same sign.
The agenda is approved. Citizens to be heard today. Are there any citizens wishing to address the board on any item that is not on the agenda? Any citizens to be heard? Steve, have we had any requests to speak? We >> have not, Madam Chair.
>> Thank you. >> Next item today is the approval of the payment of bills and vouchers. >> Move we approve the bills and the vouchers. >> Second. >> Offered from Commissioner Krabnoff to approve the payment of bills and vouchers. A second from Commissioner Ebinger. Discussion.
Any discussion? Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Opposed. Same sign. Carried. The minutes from April 14th, 2026 were in the packet.
>> Move to approve. >> Second. >> Motion offered from Commissioner Campbell to approve the minutes as printed. A second from Commissioner Bear. Any further discussion? Discussion. Discussion. All those in favor of the motion signify
by saying I. I >> oppose. Same sign. Minutes are approved. Item two today, a request the approval of the recommended appointment of our Klay County Emergency Manager. Good morning, Sheriff. >> Good morning, Madam Chair,
commissioners. Thanks for having us here this morning. We are here this morning to approve uh Lieutenant Nicole Reno as the new Klay County Emergency Manager. As you aware, Lieutenant Tweeten is going to be retiring from his position and taking a different uh role. If you would like to share that, he definitely
can. Um but um we're here because uh Minnesota State Statute 12.25 indicates that the county board does have to uh approve the recommendation. So, uh just a little history on Nicole. She came to us uh nearly 10 years ago um from the Morhead Police Department. She had
nearly 10 years of experience there. She is our current assistant emergency manager. um she's been working on getting her certificates for the full emergency management. So, she's been working towards this. This is a goal of hers. She is a member of the triad and she's been an SRO with us and she's kind
of held a variety of different hats with the sheriff's office. So, she's been a a good addition to the sheriff's office nearly 10 years ago. We're very happy to have her. We're happy that she has decided to take on this role. I think she's going to do a great job in the role and I would definitely recommend her for the approval.
Thank you, Sheriff. First of all, I know he's hiding back there, but um Gabe, >> we are really, really fortunate to have had the work ethic and the leadership that Gabe has helped offer uh to this
role. certainly has been incredibly active in in a lot of issues that have involved this board, but our townships and our cities and the communication stream between triaging the the multitude of events that you have. Huge gratitude to you for all of the time
that you've uh given to Klay County. We're really grateful for that and obviously wish you nothing but the best in the future. Um so congratulations on this next step uh to uh the recommendation for today. Really excited
to see this opportunity for you. I know that in your personal life you also uh have a servant heart and do a lot to better all of Klay County and I I can't think of a better person that could fill this role. I I really do feel like this is a great opportunity for you as well.
>> Thank you. >> Uh yes, Commissioner Ebinger. uh echo the chair's comments to Gabe. You've done a great job here and and uh you've set a high standard. Uh Nicole, we worked together for 10 years at Morehead
PD. You did a great job there. You've done an excellent job for Clay County. And with that, I'd like to nominate uh Lieutenant Nicole Reno. U here this says as lieutenant. Is she already officially a lieutenant?
>> That's correct. Yeah. Good. Lieutenant Nicole Reno uh as uh Klay County Emergency Manager. >> Second. >> A motion offered from Commissioner Ebinger, a second from Commissioner Campbell. Any further discussion on this
piece? >> In the memo, it highlights the cost components and I believe the motion covers all the points you needed to correct. Okay. Any further discussion?
Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. I >> oppose. Same sign. Carried. Congratulations. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you, Gabe. >> Thank you.
>> Item three today is a request approval to authorize the sheriff's office to purchase an enclosed trailer for range equipment and supplies. Sheriff. >> Yeah. Um what this is is we're looking at purchase an enclosed trailer to use to transport um range supplies now from
RSL storage facility to the Glenn and Rod Gun Club where we're able to use their outdoor range. Uh as you are aware, we're no longer able to use Morhead PD's outdoor range due to safety concerns cited by the police chief. Um therefore we bought some memberships out
at the Glenn and Ron Gun Club and that's where we're going to be um doing our qualifications and our night shoots uh etc. What this trailer would be used for, it would be used to um transport our targets, our target stands, our barricades, our barricade stands, ammunition, and any other related
supplies that we would need. Um we would store um we'd store those items in the trailer for the week that we're out there shooting. And then when we um come back, we would then keep those items in the trailer and store it at self storage um until we need it. Again, as you can
see, I'm not requesting any additional funds for this. We have um funds in salaries because we are going to uh with a vacant position here soon. So, just um with the salaries not including benefits, we're going to have a savings about $8,400.
Um and that's with an anticipated start date of June 1. I don't believe we're going to have somebody hired by June 1, so there should be uh plenty to cover the cost of the trailer of just over $7,100. >> Thank you for the memo. Sheriff, can you
uh give me a little bit of the timeline about when you were notified we were no longer able to use the range? >> Yes. I was heading down to the cities for a meeting. I believe it was about mid-March, we were notified that we were no longer able to use that and that was
effective immediately. immediately. >> Yep. >> Questions. >> Commissioner Ebinger. >> Um, just a comment and I'd like the sheriff to edit this if I'm off base on
anything. Uh, we tried almost 20 years ago to get a range built. When I say we, it's when I was chief of Morehead Police Department. Sheriff Burrquist went with me.
Um, it did not make it through the the uh process at that point. I think I got $10,500 and they put that wall up and we had to change our range to an oblique from the
burm. And uh I don't see any way with any kind of investment you're ever going to make that range something that is desirable for law enforcement use. And I would uh I don't want to jump the
gun on anything. This is the sheriff's process and his call to make. But I'd like the members here to understand this is a legitimate need for the county. uh that we come up with a long-term solution that'll work. Uh
you know, I've not been out to the Glendon location. I don't know if it's capable for tactical shoots and the kind of things you want to be able to give your people at least once a year. Something different uh where they can enhance their skills.
In Minnesota, we need to be outdoors in the dark and outdoors when it's cold to qualify every year to meet the the re realistic demands of the of the profession. So, I just sheriff, if you have a comment on any long long-term
plans you might have, this certainly is a legitimate request. Uh, but if it's too early to talk about that, I'll be at your disposal for any anything you want to do on that. >> Yeah. So, our current county administrator um he had sent out some
information here uh was the last week in regards to a capstone project. So, there's what it is is graduate students that are needing research projects. Um and we did a request for um a graduate student to do a research project on the
feasibility of a range at the Glendon location and see what we would need to do to build that and costs um associated with that. So, we are in the process of that. We're going to have hopefully we'll get approved uh with that request and then um we'll have somebody do the
research and then bring it back to the board to for you to review. >> I appreciate that. And with that, I I'll make a motion um for the purchase approve the approve the purchase of the
uh trailer described in the in this memo of the sheriff's office for the purpose of transporting and storing range equipment and supplies. >> Motion offered from Commissioner Ebinger, a second from Commissioner Bear. >> Madam Chair, does that does the motion
include $8,422? Yes. >> Or the safe, excuse me. What was the cost? >> It was uh >> $7,19,92. >> But if you want to do the $8,422, >> you don't anticipate any fit costs. >> I don't know. We should be able. >> So the 71 covers
>> Yeah, it should we if there are any uh costs associated with it, we should be able to take that away. >> Okay. So does the motion cover it that number, Dave? >> Yes. 7,192. >> Okay. The second. Yes, >> Commissioner Campbell. >> I'm done.
>> Any further discussion? I'm excited about the opportunity of the partnership at the Rotten Gun Club. Uh, you know, we've we've talked about the needs out there. There's been U planning commission hearing on that. I know several schools utilize that for their
um their target teams. Really um glad that we're able to find a partnership there. Uh but I think it doesn't underline my disappointment at the partnership that fell apart on the other range piece. Uh partnerships are how we get through so many uh problem solving
pieces. So that's a disappointment. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I >> I post same sign carried. Thank you, Sheriff. >> Thank you. Item four today
is the annual department update from public health, Jessica. Good morning. >> We need additional chairs. >> Going to rotate. Okay.
>> Good morning, madam chair and commissioners. Let me see if I can get my PowerPoint going here. All right, there we go. Uh, so, uh, we are here for our 2025 public health
update. Um, I'm going to begin by just giving a brief overview of the department and then each supervisor is going to give a more detailed update on their individual units. So, uh, this first page I'm just sharing the mission of public health, which is to asssure optimal health for all Klay County
residents through effective community planning, services, and partnership. Uh, Klay County Public Health has been providing services to our residents for over 50 years. What's up? Oh, okay. Perfect. All right. Our organizational structure is made up
into seven core units. Adult health, which is our largest unit, Suz's unit. Family health, which is Liz's unit. Environmental health, health promotion, finance, wick, and emergency preparedness. We have 53 total staff, 46
FTEEs, and then seven variable hour contracted employees. We also participate in partnership for health which is the community health board that serves Clay and Becker counties. The purpose of our CHB is to
engage in activities designed to protect and promote the health and general population of these two counties. Uh by forming this twocount CHB uh we're able to effectively promote services within the two local counties. Um, as you all
know, uh, prior to 2026, we were a 4count CHB, which included Ottertale and Wilin. Uh, at the beginning of 2026, we transition to a twocount CHB, which allows a more focused approach on Clay
and Becker counties. All right. And now I'll turn it over to Susie to provide her updates. >> Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. Um our role in adult health is to ensure high quality care um regular regulatory compliance and
consistent support to our clients. Um our case loads average 62 clients for the M Minnesota Senior Care and Minnesota Senior Health Options for our care coordinators and 208 clients for our special needs basic care coordinators. We currently serve
approximately 1,650 clients in Klay County. Um, the population we serve are adults who need long-term services and supports. Um, individuals with complex medical, cognitive, behavioral, and functional needs, and people seeking community-
based services, community services and supports, home care, and waivered supports. Um, we work in state waiver programs as well as contract with three health plans. Um we complete yearly assessments and bianual updates to
determine the level of support needs and any health related follow-up required. Um we develop person- centered support plans and reflect our clients strengths, goals, preferences and risks. We support clients in accessing the right services
at the right time to maintain independence and stability and we provide ongoing case management. Um our impact we with the services we provide we help motans access needed services to remain safe and stable. We promote
independence and community living. We reduce unmet needs and preventable preventable health crisis and we strengthen continuity of care across our LTSS systems. Madame Chair and commissioners, that concludes my update and I'm happy to
take any questions. >> Any questions? Right, we'll turn it over to Liz. >> Madame Chair and commissioners, thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here today to share all that our public
health nurses do in family health, school nursing, disease prevention and control, and the clinic. Um, so with family home visiting, it is a voluntary evidence-based public health service. We support pregnant individuals and
families with young children. Um, and why does this matter? Um, early childhood 0ero to3 is the most critical period for brain development. Families experiencing stressors such as economic hardship, mental health challenges,
housing instability face higher risks. Without early support, communities see an increase in health care costs, lower school readiness, and higher child protection involvement. So family home visiting really is an intervention that
reduces long-term system costs. Um so we deliver um prenatal parenting education to families. We also assess for child development, social emotional screening, infant care, breastfeeding support, connections to health care, mental
health, social services. Um services are relationalbased and tailored to family goals. Um, so our programs align with Minnesota Department of Health standards. Our accountability includes data reporting,
performance monitoring, and continuous quality improvement. We are funded through um a mixture of um state funding, federal grants, TANA funds, and local public health dollars.
Through this, children experience healthier birth outcomes, improved development. Families also g um gain stronger parenting skills and improve stability. Communities benefit from reduced child maltreatment and lower
long-term costs. Um, we also collaborate with health care providers, social services, early childhood programs, and community organizations to create a coordinated support system. Um, we are prevention focused. We are
strength-based. Um, and our outcomes are proven to reduce long-term costs for our community. Um, we also focus on disease prevention and control. It is a core public health
function um focused on preventing, identifying and responding to communicable disease to protect community health. Um our public health nurses monitor disease trends, respond to cases and outbreaks and educate the public and reduce spread.
Um so how this works within public health is that we do get cases reported um from ND MDH. Um, it's assigned to local public health and then our public health nurses contact individuals, assess exposure risk, provide guidance
and coordinate with MDH on complex situations. I also want to highlight our school nurses. They do wonderful work in our schools. So we cover DGF and Ulin um school districts and they um help
support health, safety, academic su success of students. Um in Minnesota, school nurses are registered nurses and often public health nurses and those are our nurses in in the schools. Um and they are also licensed school nurses.
Um they provide direct care, administer medications, respond to emergencies, coordinate care for students with chronic conditions. They collaborate with families and healthcare providers. They support immunization compliance, monitor
communicable diseases, conduct screenings, and provide health education on hygiene, mental health, and wellness. They also partner with um public health um and also um school staff, healthcare
providers um to create this support system for all the students um and that is my report for today. Thank you. >> Great. Thank you both. Any questions on the presentation so far?
>> All right. Next, we will have Kent and Rory come up. I just want to thank you both before you step down for your work in the community. Uh really a broad scope of individuals that you work with and the education component, but also keeping our communities healthy and safe. Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> All right, Kent is up first. >> Good morning. Good morning. >> Well, I am glad to be here this morning and I will briefly run through environmental health. As you can see up on the screen, we've got some um bubbles
of the areas that we uh deal with. Uh these aren't all of them. Uh we go in many different directions and uh every day can be interesting in environmental health. Uh so as you can see uh we're continuing the licens and licensing and
inspection. Bars, restaurants, pools, campgrounds, special events, mobile food units. Um wanted to mention mobile food units are just exploding over the last couple of years and uh it's just uh really interesting to watch and be involved with. Uh just met with one last
week here on campus. It was about 9:30 in the morning. It was a taco truck and we were just trying to, you know, I was inspecting it for compliance and we had people stopping up and uh I said, you know, it's 9:30 in the morning. So, yeah. And he mentioned too, you
can't even stop for gas sometimes without someone coming up to the truck. And so, it's always interesting in environmental health. Uh, >> tacos can you can have tacos at any time of the day. Let's be real. >> I wasn't going to go there, but yes, I agree.
>> I I I did. That's okay. Uh couple of points I wanted to make. Uh one with our separation from Ottertale and Wilin counties. Uh really looking forward to that with our rene renewed focus just within our county with our operators and our license holders. So
I'm excited about that going forward. Um with spring here, we are seeing our annual uh increase in phone uh phone sounds that are constant throughout the day. We have a lot of realtors and uh homeowners that are going to be selling their properties and
looking for compliance inspections and uh demolition permits for some things that are going to be coming down. And so a lot of plans that have been made over the winter are coming together in the spring as they usually do. So it's an exciting time. Um some other things that
we continue to go on with uh the demolition permits and public health nuisances are another couple of things that uh we deal with. Uh on this slide here you can see some of our statistics. Uh the uh graph there shows some of our
septic details over from last year to this year or I'm sorry 2024 to 2025. And uh yeah, you can see that with the septic activity, the the tanks installed, the numbers of systems installed, and the compliance inspections have all been going up. So,
I'm really really curious to see how this year's this year goes and see where our our data is going to go from here because it was pretty dramatic last year and and as we all know, we're one of the very fast growing counties in Minnesota. So, I'm really interested to see what
this year brings. Uh, another uh big thing I wanted to touch on was our hiring of Olivia M to the department. uh she came in with her full credentials for septic inspections and design and so forth and and she has been great. It's been really great to have someone in
that position that's that wants to be here so badly and has passion for this work. Um I don't know that I'll really get into the details of the the graph and and numbers there. They kind of speak for themselves. So I think I'll I can end
there. >> Questions? Commissioner Kavanagh? Yeah. So, back to the uh food inspections. Um, is Becker County Does Becker County have their own? >> Yes. Becker County is actually uh the
inspection and licensing is performed by the Minnesota Department of Health. So, it's a state jurisdiction. >> Okay. And then, so you have all county and then you also do everything in Morehead. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Yep. >> Additional questions?
All right. I'll turn it over to Rory. Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. I'm going to provide updates on the uh health promotion department or the branch. Um the vast majority of our work is funded through grants. And so the
first one we're going to highlight uh if you look at the grant uh graph, we're just wrapping up five years of a positive community norms grant in DGF school centric but in in in those communities which is focused on substance use. And the the brown bars
indicate the vaping levels as determined by the Minnesota student survey in 2019, the green ones um in 2025 and then blue is the average. And so it's been quite positive. Um we are part of an existing
cohort and we're the fourth cohort over the last 10 15 years. And so vaping is down from 24% to 7. Um alcohol from 23 to 8, cannabis from 15 to to five. And all of those are are lower than the uh
on the Minnesota average. So that's that's quite positive for the positive community norms grant. Um, at the same time, um, we have a group called SHIP, statewide health improvement program, which continues to serve all four counties, and they've
done a great deal of work on improving access to local foods and addressing food insecurity. Um the state chose the model that we had started in 2024 um as part of this West Central Minnesota Food Council to replicate in
larger community conglomerates around the state. And so we established this a couple of years ago and now are helping to lead a 16count um food council that serves our four plus some additional ones plus the staff from those those counties. And one of the things that
they're really focusing on is supporting food shelves to develop new food rescue plans or to improve on the plans that they already have. Um last year they also produced a multi-part webinar um which highlighted local food producers
or or local food innovative projects. Um one of which was the food forest in Johnson Park. if you know about the food forest um fruit trees, fruit bushes that are uh that have been planted and hopefully will bear fruit in the near future.
We have one staff who uh is our community engagement liaison. She uh she works with groups with our uh our known health disparities and and helps us um try to intentionally address those and connect with those groups so they have a
voice. In 2025, she trained um 32 MSUM nursing students and certified them to be mental health first aid um certified. So, these new nurses have an additional tool in their tool belt when they're out
doing their job um to be more aware and more maybe confident and qualified to help uh address mental health type challenges. Next slide, please. Um our work with the opioid um continues
and one of the especially innovative projects is the opioid response team. And so it was identified uh in late 2024 that we have a real small window when there's an opioid overdose to address it
um and then try to connect with that individual or their families to try to connect them with help. Um, and so Annabelle helps spearhead this formation of this opioid response team with Morhead Fire Department and Beth's Place Treatment Center. And so when there's an
overdose within 12 hours, um, the fire department conveys information to Beth's Place and they then try to connect this person to get them into care. And you can see in 2025 they offered followup to uh 31 individuals who were treated for
an overdose. Almost 23 almost twothirds of those um were successfully contacted. 42% accepted the invitation to uh the referral to Beth's place. um 38% completed an assessment uh a complete
assessment and almost a quarter um welcome received a transport to a local hospital. And so prior to 2025 this didn't exist in the community. There was probably a hope and a prayer that after an overdose somebody might seek help. This is an intentional effort to help
those folks get connected with the system and and we think it's working. Um, child and teen checkups is our program that works to ensure that uh those 0 to 20 um in our community who are on medical assistance uh are are
aware of and are getting preventative care treatments or appointments. Last year we contacted just short of 7,500 people and 75% of those folks indicated that they were planning to schedule the appointment that they were contacted
about. And finally, um, as part of a a larger mental health initiative in schools, uh, we have a contracted, uh, staff, Karen Ncorski, who initiated a program called
Y'all, youth as life leaders. And so we know that youth are much more likely to listen to their peers or seek help from peers than they are from teachers or their parents or adults in the community. And so Karen
helped spearhead this effort. We had five students in Morehead schools who were trained in 2025 to learn about 988 and suicide resources in the community. And then they were obligated to coordinate and train their peers. And what we found was those who
attended were much more uh knowledgeable. They were much more willing to recommend those resources to friends and actually use them themselves. And interestingly, two weeks ago, there was a suicide summit in in Fargo, Morehead, and that group of five
presented. And one young man, based on his life experiences, wrote a song and performed to those in attendance about how learning about the resources impacted him personally, but also how important it was for him to be able to have those skills and reach out to to
his peers. So, lots happening in health promotion. >> Great work. Any questions for Rory from the board? >> All right. Next, we'll have uh Brandon Nelson, our financial manager, and Tara Adet, our nutrition specialist. She's
filling in for Sue Olsen today. >> Brandon, you're first. Good morning. >> Okay. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. I'll provide the uh finance update for Klay County and also the CHB. as we learned uh the community
health board that we're a part of. Um so first off um for Klay County, our fiscal fiscal expenses for only Klay County that we ran through uh public health was about $10.36 million um last year in 2025. Um that's been up continuously the
past few years um with just our programs growing. Also, you know, our costs um our costs in our programs growing with the cola and um increasing costs in our um supplies and materials that we purchase every day for our grants um to
supply to run our programs. Um at the end of fiscal year 25, we had 57 staff um and that accumulated to 50.70 FTE um in our um public health program. Um so that's kind of a lot of um the
background with Klay County um you know only expenses. We also have the CHB that we were a part of um which is quite a large part of my job is running that um for the 4ount CHB last year with um Ottertale Wilin and also Becker. Um so
that took a lot of my time. So this year transitioning to a twocount CHB um has been different um and challenging in its own right. you know, learning um how Clay and Becker can be the ones to facilitate the CHB um rather than, you know, having Ottertale and Wilin as with
us as well. Um so, challenges and um you know, new experiences happening this year as well. Um but for the CHB that we're a part of as well, we ran um through 20,122,000 of expenses. Um so, as you can see, the CHB is about double what what we have
for Klay County only. So quite a bit of management that we have there um to make sure that all of the expenses are correct and reconciled and accounted for as well. Um so that translates to Klay County having about 800 vouchers that we ran through. Those are the vouchers that
um you know the uh commissioners approve every morning um for on Tuesday mornings here. Um so we appreciate you approving our vouchers to get to get our vendors paid. Um for the CHB, we're also responsible for verifying their vouchers as well. Um so there was about 2,700
vouchers that we verified last year and sent to the state. Um with those um with invoicing the state, that's how we get, you know, paid back um through our grants. We send in the, you know, we incur the expenses, we pay for them out of our budget, and then we send in those
expenses to the state so we're able to get uh reimbursed for those expenses. So that'll bring down our total ask for the levy for the board. Um so we want as much grant dollars as we can um to bring down that ask. Some of our largest um
grant funding sources are strong foundations which works in our family home visiting program that um Liz presented on earlier. Um we have our local public health grant which supports kind of the broad initiatives throughout public health um and supports our administrative staff um and also the
management of our grants where you know grants don't have a lot of um additional dollars allocated to management. Um so this is a way to you know kind of bolster those budgets um for the management um and oversight. Another large um fiscal funding source for us is
our child and teen checkup program um which Rory just touched on. Um another is foundation of public health responsibility um which is another broad grant um for management and facilitation. Um so just kind of a few funding sources or the main ones that we
want to focus on to ensure that we keep so that we have that those funding um avenues available in the future. um so we can you know secure funding and we don't have to ask for that in our levy. Um so a part of my um division we're 3.6
FTEES right now. Um currently we're working on um our big initiatives for 25. Um we're working on our fee reviews. Um so as we mentioned that we um we brought to the board earlier um about you know environmental health fees, how we wanted to get more consistent um
throughout the years and throughout the county. Um and then also some of our school nursing license um contracts that we reviewed and wanted to get those more in line with our expenses as well. Um so we've been trying to review um now that we have um you know a good base of
fundamentals between having a grasp on the CHB and also the Klay County financials now we want to kind of optimize our financials. So that's kind of what we're doing for we started to do that in 25 and that's going to be a big initiative for 26. Um, so we're looking at doing, you know, consistent fee
reviews, um, for 26. We're looking at, you know, um, looking at our utilization between our nursing nursing and our adult health program to make sure that we're, you know, billing correctly and we're also, you know, billing at a line, um, that's in rate with our costs. So, we don't want to be, you know, spending
too much in a program, we're under billing. So, we just want to understand what our main drivers of revenue are going to be. Um, so that's going to be a big initiative and looking at that in 26. Um, and also we're, you know, looking at doing the 2027 budget right now. We're starting that process up. Um,
so that's kind of just a little bit of where, um, the finance, um, portion of public health is right now for 25, but also working on 26 goals. Um, so any questions on the finance portion of that? >> Thank you for that report. Questions on the finance component?
Yes, Commissioner Ebinger. Just to comment, uh Brandon's done a good job with the with the uh partnership for health that we've got. Uh we've had a lot of changes in the last couple of years and he's rolled with the punches
and done an excellent job at keeping us a breast of what grants we've got, separating the the the partners that were with us before and still maintaining some of the connections that we have to keep together. Uh it's been
very gratifying that I get positive feedback chair of that. Uh I get positive feedback from Becker County about how we're a good fiduciary partner. So appreciate it. >> Thank you, Commissioner. >> Additional questions.
Thank you for that presentation. >> Just make sure it's green. You got it. >> Good morning. and I'm happy to be here for Sue today. Um, just to highlight with WIC, um, in support of the community for 2025, we served about an
average of 1488 women, infants, and children. Uh, we provide indivi individualized nutrition assessments, education, and community referrals. There's three of us full-time um, as designated breastfeeding specialists.
So, we provide a lot of lactation support. Um, the last couple years we've maintained above state averages for initiating breastfeeding. So, it's something we're very proud of in Klay County. Uh, some of the highlights for the year, uh, continuing to offer our
farmers market nutrition program for families. They can use it at any the local farmers market. Last year, we distributed about 300 of those. Um there have been many state technology improvements through the wick app
through mobile management. We offer uh phone appointments for our participants and utilize language line as well. Um and then also they're adding a lot of new um food package changes. So offering a lot more variety and choices for our
families. >> Can I ask about that really quick? >> Sure. I'm hearing on that component they're trying to utilize more uh locally grown options like the farmers market pieces. Is that part of that or not?
>> So the farmers market is a separate funded program. >> Okay. So it's not that's not on the last piece. That's just the 300 farmers. Okay. >> Yep. >> All right. >> Which I still by the state how many coupons we get to distribute, right? >> I think this is our third year year.
That's allowable. Now, Commissioner Koff, did you have a question? >> And well, piggybacking on that, um, just curious. So, these are um are they designated farmers markets or they throughout uh Fargo Morehead and I'm
going to, you know, some of our community gardens that sometimes um sell produce or how does that work? And then also, if I may, um there are some pretty big community garden uh operations in
this town. They're getting more and more all the time. Uh do you have a list that you help these people um so that perhaps they can be part of one? >> Oh. >> Or more food. >> So, how it works so far is we get a list
from the state. They usually send us a brochure of uh every every farmers market in the state that is uh collaborated with this program. Right now the one in Morehead um I think they're working on the Dworth site as well.
>> So this would be the one down by names. >> Yep. >> Okay. >> Yep. >> Right. >> And then the next closest would be there's a F Fergus Falls area and Detroit Lakes would be the next closest. But if you're open to it on the community garden part, the activities,
where they are, who's involved, places of opportunity, if uh if that's of interest, uh let me know and and I can follow up on that for you. >> Sure. >> Yeah, that'd be great. >> Could certainly provide that resource. >> Any other questions?
>> I didn't mean to interrupt your presentation. >> Oh, you're No, you're okay. That was that was our most of our highlights. So, >> fantastic. Additional questions. >> Does anyone have any questions on anything that we've might have missed?
>> We have one more. Savylvanas. Yep. >> Thank you. Thanks, All right. Last but not least, Sylvanas Stoma is going to give a overview of the emergency preparedness for 2025.
Good morning, Sylvanas. Thank you. Good morning, Madame Chair. Good morning, honorable commissioners. Um, I'm a little bit sad today cuz uh I lost my colleagues uh the retired Gibb and Chad. >> Yeah. >> But uh I know I'm optimistic that Nico
is going to add value to our team. So looking forward to to her. So for emergency preparedness uh Klay County we are preparing that's our our kind of like mindset to prepare our team because uh
disaster is not uh 8 to9 event it happens at any time. So we are trying to prepare uh update all of our plans and then u train our staff. So for last year we've been working on
updating our infantry. We have our warehouse uh we got lots of materials in our warehouse and then we have this system called Salamanda live. So we are trying to kind of track all of what we have in our warehouse into the system so we know what we have. So if a disaster
happens, put in a request to MDH or regionally it going to take time but once you know what you already have then you can respond effectively until material comes and then you can be able to respond. And then uh training
training is one of our big thing that we are looking at. We are training our statewise regionally and locally. Last year we opened a discussion section at Mohare Library where we train our residents on emergency preparness developing their preparedness kit and
that took a very long time but then we are stay in contact to resume it because it was very very helpful people uh came there and then asked questions and uh we used to have that at 8:00 so I used to go there like every Wednesday and I'm looking forward to resume that as well
and then uh in an approach to u mitigate uh or get our clients or stakeholders uh prepared in disaster respond. We distributed pretty close to 500 emergency go bags to our partners starting with the long-term healthcare
and then uh to some voluntary populations as as well. So whenever I go out there to conduct trainings, we carry these emergency packages and within those bags, it has uh hand webs and everything that you can think about that you can just be able to
respond effectively or at first hand. So that was one thing that we did. And then um we also um doing our community planning. So at public health this year we have
updated all of our charts and all of our plans and training our staff cuz we want people to know what to do. We don't want if an emergency happens and we say oh you are assigned to this and you like you don't know what to do. So we have created our ao charts and training all
of our staff in what to do. For example setting up our pods, setting up a shelter and everything. We have updated all of our plans and then uh one big >> explain what a pod is. >> POD is a point of dispensing just in case uh an emergency happens they want
to pass a vaccines or something we set it up. So we have closed pod and open pod. Yeah. And one um thing I wanted to share with you also we uh did not extend our SS site is a receiving and storage.
We used to have that at the name hall but then uh MDH said only wanted to maintain one site at the city level or the state level so they didn't extend that so we lost that
and then our program is um all about the volunteer population volunteer population like uh we developed this uh group with lots of immigrant populations in Clay County
that uh we go to them and then teach them what to do if an emergency happens. And then this group has already been effective and we work with this group with our Clay County Emergency Preparedness Coordinator as well, Dove, but he he has retired. So, a new guy
there has taken his position. So we try to put this group together again and uh to just get our community ready because if the community is not ready if a disaster happens the impact is very huge. Yeah. So
lastly all of our projects in the emergency preparedness they are grant funded. So that's all I have today. >> Fantastic. Any questions?
No. Easy. Thank you so much for the work and the report on that. Jessica, do you have any final >> Well, I just wanted to say thank you to all of the supervisors and Tara for stepping up kind of last minute and filling in for Sue. We appreciate that. But that's just an example of the
wonderful staff that we have in public health. Uh, so I just want to acknowledge the great work that they do day in and day out to support the community, keep us healthy and safe. >> Thank you all. >> Any additional questions? Thank you to
all of you for the work. Uh, certainly appreciative of all of the different networks of collaboration that continues to happen through all of the the supervisors in the department there. Uh, and thank you very much for the report. Thank you. Item five is a request of approval for
step placement of a healthc care unit eligibility worker. Michaela, good morning. How are you? >> Good. How are you? >> Great, thank you. Good morning. All right, Madame Chair and commissioners,
thank you for having me today. Uh, what I am requesting today is a step placement for grade 14, step nine for an internal candidate that would be appointed to the health care unit as an
eligibility worker. So, previously on March 17th, the board approved refilling a vacant eligibility worker position within the healthcare unit. And this request today is part of executing that approval. Uh, social
services is recommending the appointment of a highly experienced internal candidate to the position at grade 14 step 9. This candidate brings nearly a decade of prior experience in this exact role that we would be filling and has
previously performed at a very high level within the unit during their time with us. And as you know from our update last week, uh the healthcare unit provide continues to experience high case loads per worker and increasing workload demands. uh filling this role
with an experienced internal candidate would reduce the onboarding time significantly and would allow them to really hit the ground running and um assume a full case load in a in a quicker way and have that quality of work right out the gate. Um and this
approach would improve service delivery timelines and would reduce the workload strain on the rest of the team. And in contrast to hiring externally, this strategy would minimize the training burden and would just allow us to have more stabilization quicker on the
healthare team and would support our continuity of service as well to our clients. And although this step replacement would be above, you know, step one entry level, it would reflect their prior direct experience in the
same position and their attainment of the step that they were previously at with us. attached you will see the wage calculator and where you will see the budgeting for 2026's budget is this transition would project a net savings
of approximately $15,365 for 2026 and that savings that you would see would be on the back filling of the internals uh current position. So that's where you would see the savings for that. And this was brought to pick and
was recommended to bring forward to the board. And with that, I'll yield to any questions you may have. >> Thank you, Michaela. Great summary. Questions from the board. Questions? >> I was going to thank you for asking
that. We did uh have a great discussion at pick. uh really feel like the presentation summarized that it was a supported um really great opportunity to have a highly qualified uh individual go
into that um that position again. >> Sure. >> Yes, Commissioner Campbell. Yeah, this is u it was discussed in pick and I know there's um this is an area where somebody's leaving one department and moving to another one and um sometimes
there's a little bit of um concern or the current department that they're in. It's hard for for them to see the people leave to go to to another job. But it's um it's something in in this particular
case, this person really I think they're actually moving down a little bit. >> Correct. >> So that's where the proposal or the request for the step nine would help. It would still be a decrease for that individual, but this would really help ease that a
>> but um this would this request would include back fill, right? >> Correct. and potentially another backfill. >> That could be a a backfill of a backfill depending on
how well the next one works. But >> the back fill was also included on the March 17th approval. >> Correct. Yep. Thank you for highlighting that. Hey. Well, I'll make a motion that uh we approve the step um placement at uh
grade 14 step nine or grade 14. Step nine for the eligibility worker for the healthcare unit position. >> Thank you. >> And with backfill. >> Correct. The back fill has already been covered >> at the last motion. >> Okay. Very
>> second. >> So, a motion offered from Commissioner Krabanoff as presented in the memo. Second from Commissioner Einger. Any further discussion? Any further discussion? Great job of the president. >> Thank you. Thank you all. All those in
favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Carried. Thank you. Michaela. >> Six. Today is our annual department update from social services, the child support, fraud, and collections and fiscal services
department. We have Susan and Sandy here. Good morning to you both. Make sure your microphones are green. We're really proud of the work that you guys do in this department. We're excited to hear the presentation. there can help you if you need.
There you go. Put your microphone on. >> Good morning. >> Good morning. >> So, um, we're here today to talk about child support fraud and collections and we have a brand new presentation for you with our social service accounting
division. So, we're kind of excited for all of that. So, we're going to start with child support fraud and collections. Um we have um three different unit or three different
programs that um are in this area. We have two fraud investigators, two collections officers and 12 people in child support with six being child support officers and six being child support aids. Um that all run that
program and and make things work for us. We're going to start with welfare fraud. um wanted to point out that the type of fraud that we investigate in Klay County in this program is very different from the fraud that's in the news so much um
right now for the state of Minnesota. Um Minnesota has um investigators that work with certain programs and we are really working with the recipients um in the investigations that we do. So
we have two different types of investigations. We have fraud prevention which is trying to work with especially the um eligibility workers when they take an application and they have questions, things aren't
quite adding up or they need more information, they can ask one of the investigators to do some checking on it to try and prevent a grant from going out in error. And that's the vast majority of what we do. We also do criminal investigations or backend in
investigations. Um that would be for money that's already gone out the door. Sometimes we find that when we start an FBI um might be at a renewal where they've been on a program for a period of time and we find out that um they really weren't
eligible. So it can kind of be a combination of the two. Um most of it is for um household composition. Somebody is living in the home that wasn't reported. Their income maybe should have been counted. That type of thing or unreported income or
employment or verification of residency. Um we have quite a team right now. Two new people, one with two years of experience, one who just passed probation. Um they are pushing out investigations like
you wouldn't believe. Um 2024 was our high at 638 referrals. In 2025 they had 781. Right now um we are just behind Henipin and Ramsey County in our numbers. We're
beating other metro counties in referrals and um so they're really doing an awesome job there. Um uh Sandy, if I might has a question. >> What does a referral means? Where does
it come from? >> Most of the referrals come from eligibility workers >> um in child support. Sometimes we also see something because we work common cases with eligibility um where we might send something there's
a state tip line or we might get an anonymous tip directly to the agency but the vast majority I'd say 98% come from eligibility workers >> internal. >> Yeah. Okay. Thank you. >> Um
let's see. And then in the bottom grid, um, just showing the dollar amounts and it kind of flipped. Um, I've never worked with these before and didn't realize how you have to set them up. So, um, so overpayments, that would be the
total dollar amount that went out in error. And so in 2025, we had over $72,000 that we're now trying to collect back in overpayments. um the cost avoidance and the direct savings. If you flip those and look at
direct savings first, that's the dollar amount that we prevented from going out for like the next month or the grant, the initial grant. What the state does is they multiply it by three because it usually would take at least three months
for some of our internal systems to catch up and say, "Hey, something's going on here. You know, we see income or that kind of thing." So then they look at we avoided sending out almost $4 million
um in 2025 as a result of this work um criminal cases. So we uh we had always kind of taken the position of um going the criminal route if we found that somebody had
committed fraud and got um received public assistance and error. Um in 2025 we referred 11 cases for criminal actions with overpayments totaling almost $74,000. um we're coming back from the waiverss
that were implemented during the pandemic. So that's why you see really low numbers early on and then it gets higher as we hit 2024 and 2025. um with with the criminal um charges um and new staff that are looking at
things a little bit differently, they started really looking at how long it takes that action to to be completed. And you know, the courts take a while and sometimes it's we file it and then there's a warrant issued and it could be
quite a while before that person is found again. That type of thing. and it was taking just over 46 months to complete from start to finish on a criminal action. Um, and of those we had 40.8 that signed
a rule 2705. It's called a pre-trial diversion agreement. So, there's really no um record if it gets paid off within the agreement that they make. We had 35.6 that were found guilty and 23.6 six that might have been dismissed for
various reasons. Um, through the FBI program, they offer what's called an administrative disqualification hearing, an ADH, very similar to a rule 27.05.
Um, and we started doing them or trying them in 2024. So to date 25 cases have gone through that that uh program with an average turnaround time of about two and a half months. So quite a difference from going
through um the courts. So ADH follows a person if they are moving and applying for public assistance in another county in Minnesota or another state. um so it could affect their eligibility there but
it doesn't show on a criminal record and um it's in lie of a criminal action if if we start ADH there's very few instances where we could um go criminal after that fact. So with an ADH a
penalty for the first um occurrence is one year of um disqualification. Uh the second um time would be two years and the third is a permanent disqualification. But during those disqualifications,
other family members can still um be receiving public funds. Um we don't want to penalize children or that kind of thing to have some support in the home. Um it's really hard to pull statistics on the criminal piece of it because our
system is limited. So, we're tracking those on our own spreadsheet. Um, and then we're working on um a process for medical assistance because we haven't been able to do anything with that for well since the pandemic.
And now we have new rules that went into effect July 1st of 2025. um you have to have a court order in order to try and collect if the person doesn't voluntarily choose to pay. Um
but those cases are often higher in overpayment amounts. So like in previous years if we've had a really high overpayment year, it might have been one medical case that was 60 to $80,000. Um,
so with the medical now we can either do a voluntary repayment where they agree to pay a lump sum, they do installment payments or they do a confession of judgment. or we have to if we have to go to an involuntary repayment that would be through a court action then we can do
revenue recapture and um a judgment by operation of law to try and collect on those funding and statutory requirements. Um because of the work that the fraud team did in 2024,
the state increased our uh grant from $125,000 to $189,000 for the state fiscal years of 26 and 27. Um that is 100% due to the hard work that the investigators put in and the
numbers that they um investigated and put out. Um so prior to this increase um our grant covered about 1.25 25 full-time um FTE and this increase allowed us to
increase it to a 1.5 FTE and that covers not just the wages which um was with the old grant but it also is covering overhead for the program including including we were able to get a designated leased vehicle for fraud. So,
they're now able to um take a county car out when they're doing their investigations um rather than having to pay mileage and wear and tear on their own cars. Um the balance of the program is covered by 50% FFP
and then um gave you the statute information if you ever want to look up what the requirements are for collections. Um, some of what I talked about with the new medical rules will also roll over into what the
collections officers would do, but they are collecting on outstanding debts that are owed to various departments within social services as well as other departments within the county and also for the state. These positions are also eligible for 50% FFP
and they work very closely with eligibility workers, fraud investigators, the county attorney's office, funeral homes, the state office and other departments within the state. Um so they collect a number of different um programs and I have those listed
there for you. They also have some other duties that they need to work on. Um estate recovery is one of the most time consuming tasks that they have. Um with those a person who's been on medical assistance at some
point in their life um has passed away and there are assets. So they have to locate the assets calculate reimbursement that the state and the county might be entitled to. They work with families that might not have
realized the county has a priority claim and that can be very uncomfortable and um tough to do. Um they might probate the estate if needed. Um you'll find that um some families if they find out
there's no money that will go back to them, they step away and so then we have to take take over and do the probate. um talked a lot about uh computer systems. Um at the state level, there is no
computer system for county collections. Um years ago, a number of counties grouped together to create a system called the agency collection system or ACS. It's archaic, but it's what we have. It uses something called guey. I don't even
know what that is. Um, so pulling reports off of that system is really an art form and we don't have many people who know how to do it. It's called spooling. You have to keep trying to get the right parameters to get the information you want and you do it over
and over and over again is how I understand it. Um, to pull off reports, most of the payments that come in for collections have to be posted into two different systems because those systems don't talk to each other.
and it's not very user friendly. Uh statistics for collections. Um this one again kind of flipped what I would have wanted. So at the bottom you're going to see that we collected more than $1.5 million.
And from that amount, some of it goes back to the states, some of it goes back to the feds. Um, but we brought $460,000 back to the county combination of public assistance reimbursement and county debt
that we were collecting. So, >> good job. >> Yeah. And then I just gave you some statutory requirements for the collections program. Then we get into child support services. So, um, child support does all of the
different things that are kind of around there. Um, you know, it's you don't hit establish parentage once and then never hit it again. They may have another child born out of wedlock and so then you have to go in and establish on the
exact same case. A parent moves and we have to go in to locate. We're always trying to collect and process payments. they might move to another state and we have to send it interstate and then they move again and the case goes back to locate and it just keeps circling around all of the different types of things
that that we can do. Um, of the 12 staff that I have, we're set up in in teams of two um so that we always have backup for different types of operations and um
don't lose experience quite as easily. funding is based on performance incentives and federal financial participation dollars. Um, and so it looks at five different areas. So we're higher than the state average
in paternity established order establishment and current collections. or slightly under in a collections and um no and I'm sorry we're and we're higher in cost effectiveness also. Um we
struggle with the current collections and AR's collections and I think that's largely because of the high interstate case load that we have. Not a lot we can do about it, but um it's something that we're always looking at and trying to figure out how we can improve in that
area. In federal fiscal year 2025, we distributed um almost 7,700,000. On average, we had over two thou 2,300 cases and total expenditures were 2 thou
2,300 plus thousand. Um a breakdown of that or a breakdown of the total distribution. Um the vast majority goes towards current support and then we're collecting toward a rears. That's about
22.6 of what we collected. Um we spent about $3 or no, we saved about $3.34 for every dollar that we spent. Um 90% of our cases are not receiving a cash
grant and approximately a third of our cases interstates. So um with interstate, you know, we don't have control over what the other state will do. Um some states won't take a case that's rears only. they just or they'll
take it but they won't do anything with it. They won't take it to court to try and collect. Um you know, we can't force that. Um sometimes we get incoming cases where it's a very large dollar amount, $500,
$600 a month as an ongoing support obligation and this person is receiving general assistance and has no ability to pay and we can't get them to modify that order. So that all counts against us in those numbers and I don't know how to
change it. Um total revenue for this program. Um uh we I showed you total amount distributed. We actually um Oh, that's the next slide. I'm getting ahead of myself.
um total revenue was one and a half million and out of that um I'm showing you then what came back as the federal financial dollars, federal incentives and state incentives. I've never shown you this before, but I
thought, you know, sometimes we've talked about partners in in child support. So this is um all of the sources for how we get um obligations paid. So we collect it 7 million735.
Um the vast majority of that comes through income withholding. Employers are definitely a partner in our program. Um and we very much appreciate their their help. Um we also collect from other
states, other sources. Um, we still have people that they want that receipt, so they'll bring in cash or their own personal check um directly to the office or mail it in. Uh, we can intercept federal and state taxes. Um, we get
quite a bit from unemployment or reemployment benefits and we can also freeze um bank accounts uh called phom. And then I gave you more statutory requirements so that you have that for your information. Just some changes and
challenges. Um so in 2025 we had some staffing challenges. Um two new staff and both of them have passed probation and are doing a great job. Um I'm the lucky person that Michaela was talking
about. So, I'll have another person to hire for this year and and um so that will be a little bit of a change for us. Um our fraud investigators continue to set records with investigation numbers and cost savings
and um want to again point out their hard work and um the increased grant that we got to um help fund that program. Um in collections, we're doing something we've never done before. Uh we're working with the county attorney's
office to become what's called a special administrator on an estate recovery case. So it's similar to probate as I understand it, but um the bank foreclosed on it. And so um we have to do something a little bit different on
it to try and sell this place. Um, if we don't do this, we won't get any money at all, but we're hoping that we might get maybe $40,000 reimbursement by by taking this step.
Um, collections also had uh been at a meeting where they learned about unclaimed funds at the state level and brought this to the county's attention and it's my understanding that several departments have select successfully collected some money back from the
department of revenue. Um, in the child support area, we're finally getting into the current century. Uh clients can now pay using a credit card, e-wallet or online bank transfer rather than writing a check.
Um the state is also looking at system modernization for child support. Um they're going to move our current system into a cloud-based system and they're envisioning an incremental modernization rather than a whole new system in one
fell swoop. So, it'll take a little bit longer, but they're hopeful that this will be more affordable, a more affordable option and um get us what we need to be able to actually talk to other computer systems and get into the
cloud age. >> I don't know how many years counties are going to have to tell the legislature that that is continuing to be an issue. I mean, thank you for your all of you for the patience in dealing with such an
antiquated cluster. Um, we're hopeful as well. Uh, you know, ju can just several times throughout your presentation, you've talked about the fact that systems aren't speaking together.
There's gaps in that. there's um additional workarounds and those components and that just goes against the work that you're trying to do. I guess it goes against the work that all of the departments are trying to go, but particularly in a time when fraud is such a prevalent issue and we're hearing
about how do we mitigate it, boy, if someone could just listen to a county employee, uh they'd have a solution there. So, thanks again. Thanks for talking to the modernization piece. will try to help lift that need as well. >> Thanks. And then this is just some fun
facts. Um so child support came into play in the at the national level in 1975. Um so we're celebrating 50 years of this program. Um Minnesota passed in August of 1975
and um over the past 50 years the national program has collected more than $786 billion to help support families. Um the big biggest change really in the program I think is just the fact that
when this started it was to essentially reimburse the state for public assistance funds that were collected and that has completely flipped now where 90% of our cases are not on public assistance and so what we collected
directly supports um families in their homes. Um you can see on the graph here um in 1976 in Minnesota we had 323 people working in child support. We currently have 1,361.
Um our case load has exploded from the original amount and um just the collections that that the state does on an annual basis is over $500 million.
So, any questions about child support? >> Questions? Tried to talk fast because I know we're way behind. >> That's okay. I really do appreciate the in-depth presentation. This is really helpful for us as we sort through it. Uh >> mad madam chair, if I could too. I I
would just want to back up. I mean, I know that the county attorney's office works across many different uh units, but uh we work very closely with Sandy's unit and and I know uh the uh collections uh piece, we've always done a lot of that anyway, but uh we really
have seen a great deal um of the uh increase in the fraud area uh and the work that's been going on there and and the great work that Sandy and her team have done, I think, well before there was ever much news about it uh they were doing a lot of work to to stop some of
those things and now and we're seeing cases that are being reported uh down in the Twin Cities and that type of thing. They're citing to cases that are from Klay County uh and how we were fixing things. And so uh kudos to her team for all the work that they've done on that. And then there's very much some
different things. There's a lot of unique things that happen in the financial world and ways to try to to uh get reimbursement to the taxpayers and and so there are creative ways that we've worked on whether it's funeral expense things, but also some of the uh
uh home and and uh estate uh pieces that we've really started to work on uh pretty closely to try to make sure that we're getting money back for the taxpayers. So, uh great great work from her team and and all the different teams, but it's been going very well. But we couldn't do it without the county attorney's office because they're with
us at all three of our programs. >> Additional questions. All right. >> All right, Susan, >> if you want me to. >> Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. Thank you for having me.
Um, thank you for giving me the opportunity to introduce the social services accounting team. We have five staff total including one statistical specialist, three accounting
technicians and one fiscal supervisor. This team is the financial backbone of social services. We ensure funding flows in and payments go out and without this work services cannot operate. We are very fortunate to have a veteran group
of with many years of experience and co and county knowledge. This slide shows one example of how our accounting team supports a major program area, childcare assistance, and the scale of work. At the center, you will
see we administer about $766,000 annually through this program. These are payments that go directly to child care providers so families can access care. We have one staff that processes an
average of 320 child care invoices per month. The state requires that payments be made within 21 days of receiving a completed bill. Our track record shows that Klay County um CCAP bills are processed as soon as
they are received. This staff also establishes and maintains approximately 40 North Dakota CCAP providers. Um, this staff used to do all of the Minnesota um or the Klay County providers as well, but as of April of 2025, the Minnesota CCAP
providers are now established at the state level. So, while this is accounting work, it is really operational support. Every payment processed helps keep services running and families supported.
We manage approximately $16.4 million in social services expenditures. These are the payments that support all of our services, providers, vendors, and program operations across social services.
We process an average of 781 invoices per month. revenue generation. So this slide focuses on the revenue side of accounting, how we bring dollars into the agency through direct claiming to
medical assistance and to the health plans. We generate about $3.17 million annually through direct claiming. This is a critical funding stream that helps offset costs of services.
These claims range from 15minute units to monthly units. About 74% of our claims are automated while 26% are manual. Even though automated claims make up the
majority, that remaining manual portion represents a significant workload. In 2025 alone, we processed nearly 3,000 manual claims. Each of these has to be handled
individually. There's no batch system to stream to streamline the process. It requires careful tracking, submission, and posting of each claim to ensure accuracy and reimbursement.
We have one fiscal supervisor who supports all programs across social services. The fiscal supervisor compiles all state fiscal reporting which is submitted to earn federal 4E revenue
uh grants and allocations and time study money. There are 60 scheduled reports per year. These span the income maintenance unit, the child support fraud and investigations unit, all six program
areas in social services, and the Klay County collaborative. This position performs budget preparation and year-to- date reporting, prepares worksheets for the county financial statement, and participates in
the state audit. So current challenges um this slide puts the the growth into perspective. Social services has increased by about 70% in the last 10 years and the expenditures have grown to just
under 32 million. So for every one accounting staff person, they are now now supporting significantly more employees than they were 10 years ago. And as we add more staff to meet service
needs, we're not just adding program capacity, we're also increasing the volume of internal transactions that accounting has to manage. The key takeaway is that as expenditures and program activity have grown at this
pace, the financial and accounting workload behind the scenes has expanded with it on the horizon. Anytime you hear of changes impacting social services, it almost
it also most likely is going to have a significant impact on social services accounting. In the immediate future, we will be preparing for the challenges of the following um the governor's proposed changes. the Minnesota African-American
Family Preservation Act or MOFPA, extra steps required for the anti-fraud enforcement efforts, which includes more verification requirements for claiming and increased scrutiny, excuse me, of
providers and billing. So, ending on a positive note, um we do not have any social service fiscal auditing audit findings at this time. That's fantastic. Yeah, >> that is fantastic. That is a great
>> piece to end on. Any questions for Susan on this? >> Any questions on the whole presentation? Comments? We're We're just blown away by your efficiencies. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you guys. We are scheduled for a five minute break now. We'll go ahead and take that now. Okay, we are back online. Our next item number eight is the committee reports. Commissioner Ebinger, are you ready?
>> Sure am. Thank you, Madam Chair. Last Tuesday, the 21st, uh we all attended the uh Klay County Board of Commissioners workg groupoup session um with the HR Klay County HR, received some of their project updates and
legislative updates. Um was informative. I think we've really with Commissioner Krabangh working with them as a member, it's been a a good uh opportunity in these
meetings to get uh briefed and stay informed on what's happening with our our HR. On uh Wednesday the 22nd, I attended the diversion authority finance committee. Um, Miss Johnson was not able to attend,
so I was there as the primary. Had uh a number of service agreements that we were reviewed and all of them passed and were forwarded to the diversion board of authority
the following day. Um it was generally just uh business as usual. We did look at the WIFIA update the the loans there. Uh all of these were covered in the main meeting
the following day and I'll touch on them there. on Thursday attended the criminal justice advisory committee meeting. We had a uh update on community corrections
uh from uh from Dale and just kind of gave us a two the uh comprehensive plan, a two-year update uh on community corrections.
Then we had a uh presentation on the treatment lindsy cassette on the treatment courts later that no I'm sorry on Friday the 24th
I'm missing something here in my notes later that day I attended the diversion authority uh board of authority. The uh items that we covered in finance were put on the consent agenda and passed.
We had uh executive director uh report update on uh the Minnesota legislative issues that the diversion authority is is staying on top of. Um,
we discussed the crop damage issues that we've had and we had presentation from Mr. uh Asterard at at the end of the meeting on public comment. He is still in negotiations
with and trying to get settlement on his issues there. But the uh core of engineers and the diversion have both had people come out to his property, look at the damage, and it's a process that's underway. >> As of yesterday, I spoke to him last night at the highway meeting. They have
not reached out to him. That's been over a week of nonresponsiveness. >> They've not reached out to him. Well, there was a discussion on the 23rd. He was there and >> No, I understand. I'm saying that they had said that there would be something
within a week. The diversion was day four and so um it's been well over a week since they've responded again. >> Okay. And moving forward here, Friday the 24th, uh we had a uh county
retreat. Sorry, I've got everything out of order here. A county uh for strategic planning and budget impact retreat. I really was impressed with not just the way this was structured. I think it was productive. I
think we got a lot of information. Uh I think that uh it opened my eyes to a few things that are going on with staff including AI which I'll get to in a minute. There are a lot of efficiencies that I think promising
things in in the future using AI. That was one of the topics of discussion. We uh looked at some of the concerns we've got with the upcoming budget uh with the great the uh big beautiful bill and the act and some of the unfunded
mandates that that presents a potential challenge for us. Uh I think we I think we had a good opportunity to hear these things as a commission and be prepared uh a little
more prepared on what the challenges will be and getting a budget this year. A lot of it's coming out of St. Paul. Uh we have a presence there thanks to a couple of our commissioners and lobbyists and I hope that uh we can continue to head off some of these
issues. But I I think it's going to happen that we're going to have to figure out how to make stretch things a little further simply by what's being passed down to us that we have no control over. One of the things that uh I was very
interested in hearing the response from some of our department directors on uh AI artificial intelligence. I am skeptical or I was skeptical. I heard some very smart people that I have a lot of faith in that are
comfortable with using that uh uh that technology. I went ahead on uh yesterday and jumped in on the chat GPT user group that Mark Sloan has started. There were 35 people at that meeting. I didn't have
anything to contribute but I listened and that's what I needed to do. I think that with the policy we've got, with the people we've got implementing it, um we're not only not vulnerable to some of the some of my
fears, uh that we'd have have uh some automated system walk us down the path of doom. I think our people are on top of it and they understand how to use it. They're continuing to try and find ways to use
it long term. I think it presents a lot of opportunities for us, but that remains to be seen. But I think we have the right people doing it and Mark is is uh really did a good job moderating and directing the discussions yesterday. And
that completes my report. >> Thank you, Commissioner Ebinger. Commissioner Kavanaghoft. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh going back to last Tuesday, uh I also was part of the joint um county HR Uh, Commissioner
Amber gave a good report on that. I will just add um as part of their meetings, it's been good to see monthto month that uh overall they're meeting their budget uh that they have currently in place and
uh their vacancies are few now and most their projects are complete. Um and the last thing I'll say like us uh they're also facing their challenging in housing and housing supports uh uh through the
uh upcoming uh HR1 uh through the federal government as most of H's funds uh are federal. Um uh later that day I had the adult mental health um LAC group. Um big part of that
meeting was the development of the uh uh report that they will give this uh board um in third week of May I believe it is. U beyond that we had agency updates from about nine different providers that were
at the meeting. Um so normally each month we get somewhere around 25 to 30 participants with uh 10 to 12 of them being providers and the rest being consumers. So it's a good sharing information we learn from each other and
I know referrals from one another um come through those meetings for those providers. uh Wednesday. Uh I'm uh as I mentioned last week, I uh was elected uh chair of the West Central Initiative Economic
Development. Uh on Wednesday, I met with the uh director Greg Wagner and uh went through an orientation with him. Later that day, I had a meeting with our nonsecure finance uh group team uh
discussing our uh strategies each continued it each week through with our lobbyists uh from Winthrop and Weinstein. And then last uh later that day, I had the uh Klay County Historical
uh culture society uh board meeting. Um the main part of that we're working on our marketing uh looking at our marketing strategies for the year. Uh again with u major purpose of those uh for increasing memberships, admissions
and uh donations Thursday um that uh was later uh early evening I guess for the uh comm uh community action partnersh prairie. Uh it was our annual meeting that headed
over at the TAC event center. Um the the annual event is actually a monthly meeting that we uh add on to. So, um we did have our regular meeting and went
through our um uh excuse me, our our our reports uh and then we um did uh approvals uh of nine different grant opportunities. Then we went into our program and then
our executive director Lori Schwarz uh did a 2025 year in review. Uh this is uh this year celebrating our 60th anniversary of having CAP LP and um um
uh and and she did a great job of reviewing things that went over the years and the things that we've done here in Clay and Wal County. We then had service awards that were given to people with over five years of u of service to
um to the organization. those went up to the from 5 10 15 there was 25 and there was a a 15 or 25. Um so anyway, thank you to all those uh dedicated um um
employees that that work for this great organization. Then there were three awards uh at the end four actually. Uh we had the volunteer extraordinaire award. Uh it was given to Ammer Nurvy Conway for her involvement uh as a
parent uh with Head Start and other policy committees over the years. Um gotten to know her pretty well over the year and her uh contributions are really appreciated. We also had the community builder award uh over this last year. We
came together with a uh entity out in Holly called Reach. uh Rich works with a counseling uh food pantry and a uh thrift store that was generated years ago by Mark Hogan uh citizen in the
Holly area and Mark was given that award as community builder and then we also had our leadership award. called the Dennis Height Camp Leadership Award given once a year for a leaders uh of
our organization long-term leadership capabilities uh noted for their activities and their values and being part of our board policies and that was given to Commissioner Jenny Mojo. So much appreciated Jenny for all the
things you do and we continue work on this board together so it's all good. uh and um that was that part that was the meeting as a whole. It was wonderful. Um oh at the end I will make one other point. Uh I want to say we also had a
special award given to uh Lauren Inger Britson who most of us know and Lauren has been on that board for over two uh two decades. It's been a long long time. So he's he's no longer now a township
officer. So uh he will not be longer with our any longer with our board but many many stories about the man and uh his dedication service whether to his townships play county or this organization over the years is um
something to be uh honored and u you don't see a lot of. So anyway, thank you Lauren. Uh then uh yesterday I had the food commission steering committee. Uh we're getting our agenda together for our next food commission meeting u May
13th. Um, we'll be reviewing uh uh and giving updates to updates to our Boulevard Garden blueprint and u um and then uh we're also looking at um excuse me, Morehead has their current policy on
that, but we'll just see how everything aligns with what Morhead's doing in other communities. So, that is my report. >> Thank you, Commissioner Grain. Commissioner Campbell. I also we also um attended of course the
workg groupoup session last Tuesday afternoon. I don't need to report anymore on that. Wednesday we had the Prairie Lakes Solid Waste Advisory or Solid Waste Committee um board meeting and we went over the finances there. Um
currently we're about $250,000 over last year and in our bank balances. Everything is going well. They replaced some significant equipment in this last year. Uh there's going to be about another
6,000 tons of um ash that's going to be used on another road project in Becker County. And we are um looking at having a another stack testing done that on the facility that's done every three years as well as a new air quality permit
that's done every five years. That's all coming up this year. That that same afternoon I attended the building committee meeting. Uh we talked about the power plant roof needing
replacement. Uh we talked about um a proposal for uh security for the main entrance downstairs, the courthouse. There's a a new plan in place and reviewed and um looking at trying to see
that move forward this year. Um Joe is working on on some plans there and how we can potentially fund that, but there'll be more to come on that as well. And then we continue to look at the uh long-term planning for the family
service center. As you know, we all know over the years that's going to take some significant upgrades as that building ages. And I think Joe's got a good plan in place over the next 5 to 10 years on how
to deal with that. And uh this board's going to have to come up with uh how to pay for it. So, uh, on Thursday morning the 23rd, I attended the Clay County Solid Waste Advisory Committee meeting.
We had a really good report from Mara on the recycle recycling update and she was heavily involved with the um national um recycling day or earth week. So that was
uh she she did a very good job representing Klay County in that regard and we got a good update from Corey on the landfill updates as well.
Um then after that we had a pick committee meeting and we talked about the eligibility worker that we acted on today and we are having continued discussions about uh the Klay County compensation system
in itself whole how that whole thing comes together in terms of grids and stuff like that. So that's that's just in a a lot more to come on that in the future. From there that day we had our more Klay
County Joint Powers Authority meeting. Um we approved approved a tax exemption application. Um, we had some uh discussion regarding the Wolverton properties and
um right now there's uh they're not being able to get the access rights that we need for that yet. So there's there's work between legal and the Buffalo Red on how to move forward with that.
Uh we did have some u nest uh some reimbursements on some moving issues and we heard from uh CW Valley Co-op. They're concerned about some property that they have that's um outside of the
footprint and they're um they're thinking that they need to have a ring levy. And according to all of the information that we have is the the diversion project itself has no no impact on that
property. So um and they they still have some concerns. They maybe aren't trusting that data. So, um, working with you, I asked them to our engineers from the diversion authority to meet with them as well as with the Buffalo Red and
if there were to be a ring levy, what could be some resources that could be used to help them in that regard? And then we had a commissioner reimbursement. In other words, that's one of the three commissioners who oversee um
um land value issues related to eminent domain. Then later that day, we had the diversion board of authority meeting. I think uh that's been well covered by Commissioner Ebinger. Um,
I do want to point out that the diversion authority did approve the um 50/50 match on anything that the um Minnesota legislature would um given funding.
Uh the whiffy update, we've we've actually taken $47.5 million. There's still over about a $500 million to draw. But within this next year, we're looking at um funds exceeding $1 billion being
paid out just this year. So that's a there's a significant amount of money still to be paid out. On Friday, I attended the uh retreat and that I that went well.
Um, I just want to also point out on AI, it's a AI can be a real useful tool. Uh, but it also can come with a lot of um concerns, you know, and I you take a look on some of the things now that are
being created by AI that are probably not in the best interest of the public. But um if somebody were to go into your word document or whatever if you have trouble writing if you if you were to write something up and and ask co-pilot if you're depending on what you're using
365 or whatever and it's amazing how they can rewrite something for you in that AI that really um can really be a useful tool as well. Then uh yesterday morning I attended the West Central Regional Water. We had some
discussions after the um court hearing where we were approved of our district and we have just a point of clarification. We have about 1,200 people already interested in rural water.
um about a thousand of those are actual rural residents that don't live in our small cities. So there's um a lot of interest to going out there and and the areas where they've incorporated these water districts that only grows the
minute that starts to get available more and more people will hook up. So, it's uh really encouraging and now now the now that the the big issue right now is the the funding and we continue to work on that and I want to compliment Ezra
Commissioner Bear on his work as well down at the state legislature and in uh working towards getting uh funding for that project. That's significant work being done. And then also then last night I did attend the
open house for the uh county highway 52 county highway 12 roundabout project. Uh I didn't stay the whole time. There was um people were coming and going but uh there was we had plenty of staff on hand. There was a lot of people that came with interest questions and current
concerns. I think where uh people were probably most interested is is um during the project what are the alternative routes and that type thing. There's a lot of a lot of there was a lot of comments and questions on that and um I
think there was certainly the right people were there to answer those questions for those folks. And uh going back to the um issue regarding the ASIG guard property that was in the diversion project
and I know Commissioner Mojo said it's been a week. Um one of the things that we have to remember this this particular claim is basically against the core of engineers. This wasn't a diversion project. It was
a core of engineers project and it was a core of engineers contractors that I think have really um not upheld their their end of the deal in terms of their contract. And you know so I I think I want to be
clear that we need to designate the difference of what is a diversion authority responsibility and what is the core of engineers responsibility and this whole claim that the ask as guards have and I think and that's appropriate one was in regards to
what the contractors did or did not do during the construction phase of the project of the core project which um in as in Asigard's
opinion and I think we can agree cause damage to his property. So, but I I just wanted to make that clarification so that we're clear that the where we believe the responsibility lies. And it's really unfortunate that we've been
talking about this for quite some time and there still seems to be um a lack of communication at that level. So, I'm I'm certainly disappointed in all my time of working with the core, they've been pretty good. But on this particular
issue and when we can move forward into the operations and maintenance of this, we better have better communications than there are right now because it's it's not good. And um in the future when that project does need to be implemented and there are potential damages that are
that are going to occur out there, we better be um on the spot and working with our land owners. And there I'll end my little conversation with that. >> Thank you for your reports, Miss Commissioner Campbell. Commissioner Bear.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Last week, I was also at last Tuesday, I was also at the work group with the Clay County H. I don't have to discuss that anymore. And then on Wednesday, I was also at the buildings committee where Commissioner Campbell gave a good update there. We
also reviewed the 2027 project review on what will be happening next year with the building committee. Then on Thursday, I was at the criminal justice advisory board meeting as well where Commissioner Ebinger gave a great
update with that. So I have nothing to add on that. And Friday, I was also at the the Klay County employee supervisor retreat, which I'd like to thank all the all the supervisors and department heads
for being there. I think it was very well attended, and I thought I'm hoping everybody came out of there with some some ideas on how to move forward. I thought it was a great retreat. On Monday, I was also at the West Central Regional Water Board meeting up in H Hallstead where Commissioner
Campbell also was there and he gave a good update. Um, that is all my reports and I'll be heading down to uh Nuts and Bolts with the AMC coming tomorrow through Friday. So, I'll be down in St. Paul and I plan on getting over to the capital to talk to legislators about the
West Central Region Water Project. So, that is all my reports, Madam Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Bear. Last Tuesday, I also attended the HR uh workg group session. I appreciate hearing all of their project updates, their legislative update, and then what their
budget forecast and potential requests will be for this board. Certainly, we'll take that under advisement given the uh current status of all the needs. I attended the planning commission meeting that evening. We did hear a interim use
request for a gravel pit, gravel mine in Holly Township. That did go ahead and I'm sorry, uh, Park Township. We did recommend or we did approve that component. The next item that we talked about was the Klay County Land Development Subdivision ordinance
amendment. Uh as you as you know vacation home rentals and VBOs's uh really popular right now making sure that uh planning and zoning department have that um standards at least
acknowledged in the ordinance is really important. There was discussion around uh if that's something that makes sense for Klay County. Uh you know given the reports that we had from public health there it's not only a planning and zoning issue. it goes into public health
and how hot tubs, if you will, are permitted. Felt that it was important to bring those um conversations forward. Matt will be working on that in coordination with this board. And that concluded
that meeting. We did I was able to attend the Earth Day celebration proclamation reading since Commissioner Campbell was at the Prairie Lakes uh solid waste meeting. Lots of good trash meetings happening that day. Appreciate one the opportunity to host that in Klay
County with our colleagues from West Fargo, Fargo, Morehead, Dworth. Uh and then two, having our staff give great uh presentations. Mara uh did a wonderful job presenting the different Earth Day activities throughout the county and then gave a walkth through for folks to
see the resource recovery opportunities and work that happens there. And then also she was able to do um some news interviews. So hopefully you were able to catch that. Uh Dworth invited me to the groundbreaking at the new Arresco
facility that's across the um street to the north. Really excited about that opportunity. Um going in uh the development going in on their newly annexed acres there. I attended the compliance committee after that. We had a pretty
long discussion on uh data requests and what's what's public data, what's not public data, who does that. Lots of information there. Staff um is working really hard and diligently to uh stay in compliance on
so many different issues there. Had a discussion about pay uh platforms and what how we can take automated payments and where we can take automated payments. thanks for the work that happens at that committee. I
attended a Klay County Legislative Planning Committee uh meeting with our um lobbyists. Uh sometimes I feel like if we report on a Wednesday meeting on a Tuesday, the amount of water that goes under that bridge by the time we get to this as wild, but one huge work happening from
our lobbyists uh in St. Paul right now with all of our projects and enormous work that happened from Steve last week. Uh we had an additional reach out from the capital investment committee leadership on additional information and
dialing in some financial components and presentations and the amount of meetings that happened last week and the ability for Steve to still get a phenomenal presentation coordination sent to them uh is huge. So huge thank you to that
you on that. Uh really exciting that we're continuing to move forward with that. There were some other hiccups that happened throughout the um the rest of the week, but I'm I'm hopeful that that projection keeps going. And then had an opportunity I was it was
requested as um the commissioner representing a district that has a solar project proposal. Did meet with uh that company on what their proposal going to the public use commission will be in the fall. I've requested that Steve works
with planning and zoning and legal to have uh an opportunity for this board to be updated on all of those pieces. Uh really important um uh effects on how it would present for the area. I think
that's important that we all know that. The next day, I also attended the SWAT committee meeting. Commissioner Campbell updated that really well. I do want to highlight uh not only Mara uh with the recycling pieces. Um I think there was was it 900 students that she'd worked
with in the last five months on Klay County solid waste education pieces. That was really exciting to hear all the districts that she worked with on that. Uh but two uh county staff worked really really hard. If you c recall, we had a citizen advis a citizen
uh group that came forward with a request that we do some partnership uh in regards to organics recycling uh applying for a grant and they were really excited to do all the work and uh bring forward that proposal.
Unfortunately uh the excitement of that group kind of waned but the excitement of our staff continued as we see a huge value in that. um they shifted really quickly and all of the grant writing fell on staff and uh one it's unfortunate that that's the
way it happened. Uh really thankful for staff for shifting. Um I heard it was a very late night in the application process. So um I know that that was challenging but hopeful we are able to move forward with something uh that makes sense. I know that they've had
conversations with um the schools and some of our bigger um organics producers on how that could be implemented throughout the county. After that, we had a pick committee meeting. We did discuss the eligibility
worker placement and then um another Klay County compensation this the general system discussion at that meeting. After that, we had the flood mitigation working group with the city of Morehead, the um diversion authority, the chamber,
and Klay County on moving that request forward and continued strategy on lobbying efforts. I think we did have an update um on some federal grants that were being applied
for. After that, I attended the MCC JPA meeting. good updates on the excess lands update. Uh folks have reached out to me on uh land dispersals. Um some of these uh
acres that have been purchased for mitigation that the the project no longer needs, how that is being advertised to the broader community. If you Google um the FM diversion excess
lands available, uh that page will come up. We're working with communications on how to better let people know about that, but there are lands on the Minnesota and North Dakota side that the diversion authorities um wanting to sell. We talked about a couple project
updates uh on the land management side, a tax exempt application and a update on a property that's unfortunately um been difficult to get personal property off of. and then a resolution of necess
necessity for the Wolverton area that those property rights are really important not only for the project as a whole but as the Buffalo red watershed u moves forward in their Wolverton project those are all components that need to be uh addressed and then talked about and
approved a relocation reimbursement and in other business we did have representatives from the CW Valley co-op I requested that they go start at that committee level. They'd been Commissioner Krabanov and I were at the Buffalo Red WHED and they had some
concerns on um how components could affect them. I think particularly they're interested in how the Wolverton [ __ ] piece uh what what will be slowed down with the tieback levy on the east side of the railroad. Um they felt they
had some additional information and I'm appreciative that they're working with project staff on addressing that piece. and then had the uh commissioner reimbursement. As noted that afternoon, I attended the pollinator pad patio party with the SWCD
extension feeasants forever. Great opportunity to raise some money for the uh Crustwood site. My understanding is there was hopefully going to be a controlled burn this week. I'm not sure if that ended up happening yet, but
>> Okay. Day by day. All right. I like it. Uh that evening I also attended the CAPLB board of directors annual meeting. Great updates uh and work. I believe we approved applying for over a million dollars in grants. Huge work there. Grants are tricky to write and I
appreciate that they're working on those. Um shocked and blown away. The honor is I can't even tell you. um having been on that board for 11 years and seeing the caliber of people that have um been
honored with that uh Dennis Height Camp award, I I don't think I I qualify for being in there, but I'm certainly grateful for that. Um the next uh day we attended the management retreat. Huge gratitude to the strive committee for
working on that presentation. Uh having that dialogue with all of the different departments, finding actionable items, uh coming out of it as a board, I'm hopeful that we can find some ways that those conversations can articulate into
savings and and how we continue to find efficiencies for our citizens. Yesterday, I attended the Lakeland Mental Health Center board of directors meeting. Great updates. Uh we do continue to have some challenges at um Alexandria and some programming margins,
but overall the health of the organization is great. Acknowledge that uh Ottertale County's human services director will be retiring semi. It sounds like Ottertale County and Wilin County have had an agreement in shared services. So she'll continue to stay on
um doing some work for Wilin, but will no longer be on our board. I'm not quite sure. I'm thinking that our Klay County director should be close into the rotation there. And then we had had a great employee recognition, huge um gratitude to folks. Uh pretty amazing to
see people that have worked at that organization for 38 years and 40 years. Thankful for that. and then had the opportunity to hear from uh one of the um practitioners that works in the River Project and how he's seen firsthand the
uh how that's benefited um folks that are in custody, but also how they've tried to mold that to work with employees as well uh to allow them to access services if needed. And then last night I was uh had the
opportunity to attend the highway tracking preconstruction meeting for the 52 and 12 um construction. Great. Um one we had local businesses that attend. Several of them that were concerned about how the staged um detours could
affect their businesses. Um, uh, one was really grateful that it it was early season, it wasn't going to affect their business, and then had a, uh, gravel company that just need, uh, needed to figure out how to strategize delivery. Um, thanks to the highway department for
being present there. I think we had 25 or 30 folks that showed up. Really great dialogues. And I think that I'll also be attending the nuts and bolts training and having opportunities to meet the legislature
with our lobbyist and commissioner Kavanagh and Commissioner Bear. I believe that concludes my reports. Steve. >> Oh, just real quick, I neglected to uh say that I was part of the retreat on Friday with the managers, directors, and
thanks to all very productive. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, last Tuesday I participated in the H commissioners uh meeting. Uh, it's been well covered. On the 22nd, I met with Matt Lysathth from Morehead Downtown, Inc. is he's gets his
feet underneath him. We had some ongoing conversations about economic development in Klay County. Um, that afternoon participated in the legislative legislative planning uh for the non-secured detention uh with our lobbyists. That's been well covered. uh
and also then participated in the solar project developer meeting that was commissioner Mojo noted again uh very interesting and more information to come there. Uh participated in the building committee that afternoon. I would just
note that it mentioned earlier this year uh that uh from a space issue at the law enforcement center uh this the city of Morhead area has they've lo they have no no longer have enough offices in that building. Uh and so uh if you recall
several weeks ago, there's apparently some discussion at the city of Morhead about looking at another location. Uh and so the building committee met uh part of that will be bringing forward next week a proposal uh to look at a spacing the space spacing issues that are at the law enforcement center. Uh
and uh as you recall, it was it was built to expand uh but just to identify what the best path is moving forward. Uh the sheriff mentioned about applying uh putting their name in on a capstone uh capstone request. SWAC is also or
excuse me, Solid Waste is also doing that. One of the challenges that they've had out at the uh at the resource recovery and at our um our landfill is fires, the lithium batteries. And so they're looking to uh looking to have a
student come in do their capstone presentation on uh when we capture those. Uh we also then have a liability issue of storage and what to do with them and so uh that uh that was submitted. Uh also participated in the pick meeting which has been well
covered. Uh also the flood mitigation meeting uh that's been well covered. MCCJPA also participated there. Again the management retreat I want to thank uh thank the board for their continued commitment for events like that. Uh it's
it takes a great deal of of uh resource time to to bring bring everyone together to have conversations. Uh but uh believe that there is many positive things that came out of that that hopefully be impactful as we move forward in the 2027
budget that is less than a month away. Uh and uh that uh yesterday participated in the water district meeting virtually. Uh again, it was a exciting recap of uh of our court action uh and also uh what
may be coming ahead here once funding uh is approved uh with the over 1100 people that are interested in receiving the service. Um yesterday I also participated in the chat GPT user group. Again, I think that uh again, it's great to get a group of people together that
have different experiences with that. And again, we're we're starting to train uh our our Klay County Chat GPT is a vendor that we're using trying to to train that so it becomes uh more user
friendly for all of our all of our employees. Uh just in talking with Justin yesterday, just a note, road restrictions south of Highway 10 are going to come off on Friday. North of 10 will come out within 10 days. Uh he
anticipates that he'll probably need all 10 days. So that concludes my report. >> Thank you, Mr. Larson. Mr. Milton. >> Uh thank you, Madam Chair. Uh I I wanted to mention I I had the opportunity last week to attend the YMCA uh woman of the
year program. Uh it was an excellent uh banquet program and there were 34 outstanding women who were nominated across numerous different categories. uh our own uh Michelle Carney uh the victim service director uh was one of the
nominees that was honored and uh for her work both for helping victims uh domestic violent victims, victims to navigate court uh but then also uh for her work uh helping youth uh uh creating the ARPAC and and working towards
restorative justice practices and uh so all that was a terrific uh to see her uh nominated and honored and then also the the rest of the great nominees. So, terrific event. I also wanted to mention
as the board's aware, uh probably close to about a year ago, authorized the Klay County Attorney's Office to work towards getting a facilities dog. Uh and I can report that um uh Can Do Kines has now named a facilities dog for us, uh
Edison. And so we're expecting that uh we he's very very cute dog uh yellow lab that we'll expect to get somewhere around May 15th. Uh there's some different trainings that uh Pam will have to go through to get the dog and
then some other local training. But we'll be able to get him here shortly and and then once we have him here, we'll be sure to get him up here to the board. But uh definitely already want to work towards uh obviously working with victims is the primary piece, but we want to look towards right away uh
working him into the juvenile facility and helping with some of that and some of the trauma some of those kids have seen. And then uh finally, I too uh attended the Klay County Planning Retreat. Uh I just wanted to say what an outstanding uh event uh and the work uh
that we see by so many invested employees. Um there I think what struck me is how many uh things we're already doing so well and the efficiencies that we see from our employees and and and just I think what commissioner was
saying the the uh the layout and the the program how it was done with the different roundts and as we're talking about some of the different efficiencies that are happening or or looking to to implement something and somebody else said well we're already doing something close to that in in different uh
department and how can we look to do that and and add that there. So, uh there was just a lot of really good uh discussion and and clearly that we're not just sitting around waiting for things to happen. We're we're working to continue to streamline and better ourselves and better our efficiency. So,
it was a terrific event. So, that's all I have. Thank you. >> Thank you, Sarah. Anything else before the board did Darren? Sorry. >> That's okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. A lot of my stuff has already been
covered. I was not here yet last week. Um but the week prior we had a pick meeting, a step three grievance. Um had a HR staff meeting, worked on some data requests from the state auditor MC HR payroll meeting. Um worked on the
2027 budget city county meeting and finished the 2027 risk assessment for MCAT. Um, also attended the Earth Day press conference when I echo your sentiment so that Meera did a great job on that. Uh, sat in on the compliance
committee meeting which has already been covered by Commissioner Mojo. Legislative planning meeting. Uh, engineering tech interviews for highway. Um, also sat on the building committee meeting with Joe and Commissioner Campbell who covered that very well. Uh I was also at the swack meeting, the
pick meeting and uh same sentiments about the manager's retreat. Very good um program there. Uh yesterday I attended a MC regional meeting and I also attended the chat GPT user group meeting that Commissioner Ebringer has
already covered. That concludes my report. >> Thank you. I apologize. Any other business before the board? If not, our next board meeting will be May 5th at 8:30. We are adjourned.