--------- good morning everybody it's 8:30 we'll call this morning's meeting of the Clay County Board of Commissioners to order for Tuesday February 25th our first item is the approval of the agenda move second the mo move okay we
have a motion and a second any further discussion any further discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign motion carried citizens to be heard I see no citizens in the audience do we
have any online nothing Mr chair move on approval of payment of bills and vur whom to pay the bills second motion by commissioner kbov second by commission Fair any further
discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign motion carried and next we have the approval of minutes from February 25th along with the work group session minutes from February 2 or February 4th
excuse me move for approval of both thank you I will second okay we have a motion by commissioner evinger and second by commissioner bear to approve both sets of minutes any further
discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign motion carried all right next we will move into our 835 item and that's the request approval to hire for open
positions in public health and withdrawal management detox facility morning Kathy good morning Mr chair and Commissioners uh these positions for public health and withdraw management um
the two nurse positions were in our when we were um gradually filling positions in preparation for the uh new facility so we could be uh staffed for double the capacity um their positions that one is
a for a full-time LPN um and our staffing um level for lpn's I I don't think you had it in your information sheet because it's not on mine but the Staffing is for 13
full-time LPN so I think I missed the 13 there um and Staffing for the RNs we have four full-time and four variable hours so we're not doing as well with recruitment of our NS it's still a difficult challenge to to recruit our NS so um we would like approval to
hire um and and these are budgeted so they've been in my 2025 request as well as budgeted so the one um full-time LPN position and for two full-time RN positions um um if I also um requested
if we're not able to recruit um the RNs um after significant amount of time if we could fill an open RN position with an LPN it would still be helpful to have a nurse we need to have a nurse on
every shift um the RN's oversee the licensed practical nurse practice so um we have an RN supervisor and we have two RN leads so if we're just unable to get an RN it would be nice the LPN are paid you know on a different grade lower
grade so if we are unable to recruit that RN if you did that if it came to that where you would do that um does how would that work with still having the need for an
RN we we could fill as long as we have an RN which I think we'll have with our variable hour our leads um um on the on the shifts each shift or available by phone so if an LPN needs to check with
them about a specific um withdrawal medication or if we need to send someone in we'd still have an RN available by phone but yeah ideally we're hoping to get RNs we're we're hoping that's going to be the plan but we don't want to leave something open for six months and when we could have an LPN coverage so if
you did that then it would stay that way until maybe through attrition you could go back and try an RN again yes yes Mr chair that's correct and then we have the um one FTE administrative support Troy and I were planning to share a person um I don't know how workable
that'll be but that was what we budgeted for for 25 so one ft administrative support spend you know two or three days in each of our um areas um we don't I don't really have an administrative support person at this time so um
that was also again in our request and budgeted any questions I'm just curious about um the number of people that you have over there presently I'm just kind of curious on the count how many people are over there roughly sorry Mr chair and
commissioner krainov I don't have the exact count we do have we do have 13 um well we'll have 13 LPN with the yeah um and then we have um a number of um detox technicians as well um and I
don't know the number of that and then the RN level is the we have four full-time and four variable hour so so uh are you like half capacity over there right now or for staff we're we're yes
we're more than half capacity we're able to we're you know we're serving up to 23 at time so we have enough capacity because we have variable hour staff as well so we are still able to meet that
capacity level so it's been it's been of course it fluctuates but we still are able to have then open the two 16 beds on each side just out of curiosity do you have an easier time um getting nurses on a variable hour basis versus
full time we do I figured that absolutely yes y commissioner I have one question so so being fully staffed would have four fulltime and four variables hour for RNs right that we with with two more
RNs we'd like six oh you so fully staffed would be six full-time RNs okay that's what I just want to clarification thank you any other questions commissioner moo thank you not necessarily a question in
regards to this but I'm really curious to hear how it's going over there not sure if this is necessarily the appropriate time but um just wanting to maybe have some sort of an agenda item at some point to talk a little bit about how maybe we've seen efficiencies or
expansion of services to the clients based on the new facility I for one have been really curious to know kind of what our our daily numbers have been as well sure yeah when Troy gets back from his much needed time away I will um we make
sure we um provide an update on that all of the information the data and the and the work that's going on y all right so we have a a looking for a motion to approve the open positions for public health and withdrawal management
detox facility including one full-time administrative support employee and one full-time LPN and two full-time RNs I will make that motion thank you commissioner bear and we have a second by commissioner krainov any further discussion
any further discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I oppose the same sign thank you thank you Kathy all right next we have a presentation on the cast County Community Land
Trust c c clay yes I'm sorry thank you commission for hearing us today we typically come out uh once a year or so I'm just going to give a little update on on our progress and um for those of you that might not be aware
of the C Clay Community Land Trust I'll give you a little bit of a background there is some information within your packets as well for you to review at your leisure um as well as another entity that we're looking to start um we exploring to start that I will uh talk about later but just to give you a
little background quick on the land trust in 2015 there was a Workforce study completed that identified three major barriers to retaining and attracting a skilled Workforce which included housing affordable retainable housing transportation and and uh
quality affordable child care in 2018 FM area foundation uh decided to explore the creation of a land trust and thus created the C Clay Community Land Trust in 2020 they hired me as their first employee and director and since
then we have spun off from the FM area foundation and we're a standalone uh nonprofit that specializes in developing and retaining attainable Workforce housing uh throughout Cass and Cass County in North Dakota Clay County in Minnesota uh specifically the numbers
that you have in your packet are related to Clay County just so you're aware and some of the things um I will talk a little bit about both sides of the river but mainly uh Clay County here today we are um an entity that utilizes private and public resources uh
generally a lot of uh state grants for Minnesota Housing Finance Agency in in fact over the last three or four years here we have actually uh secured just over 6 million to uh produce 53 uh units of affordable or attainable uh long-term
housing what we do is we invest those dollars into properties uh to bring down the purchase price so that way somebody or a household that the 80% area median income within our area here can purchase a home give you a little bit of perspective for a family of four um the
the area median income in our area is about 89,4 uh on the Minnesota side they would say that it's just about 990,000 so pretty close but $90,000 in in in what we do is then we invest that money into the house and then through a shared Equity program
that we utilize so when through our investment the families of the household does not have to pay us back in but in return they are going to give up a portion of their Equity that they gain in the house the appreciated value of the house uh to to pass along to the next home buyer so by doing this model
when we invest into a property those homes go into the land trust and then stay forever affordable for the next generation of home buyers if we look um with that $6 million so far um we have uh completed
10 projects uh excuse me we have seven homeowners right now two are in dillworth and five of them are in Morehead uh but as I look into the 2025 um year here we are going to be starting or will be closing on three more properties uh here by mid April so
um on the Minnesota side bringing us up to a total of 10 but then our build plan in our um acquisition rehab which I'll talk a little bit about our activities in a second we're looking to add another uh four houses uh newly constructed a matter of fact we have two that are on
the market right now they're two six-bedroom homes over in the Johnson Farm area in Morehead uh that are really geared for multigenerational living or larger family living uh and then we're going to we're actually removing two blighted properties one in Dill one in Morehead to then put up brand new
housing uh units as well as we're um looking to find current housing that's on the market that we're going to acquire and then rehab and then put it back on the market below uh the the Mark or appraised price so again that way a household can afford uh buying we do
three major activities new construction in Greenfield um so brand new Lots uh we do those we also do uh acquisition rehab so finding existing housing stock we do we do believe very firmly in the idea of
infill and also uh restoring our existing housing stock and protecting it so we do invest in those homes typically they're the ones that sit in the market that we've all seen um that no one ever buys and so uh because they've got a lot of foundation issues or what whatever
else and so we go in and clean them up if they can be saved we save them and then turn around and sell them to uh to an income qualified buyer the last program we have is actually called a home buyer initiated program or hip what that program is is we have a
set of money or pool of money that we utilize to offer a home buyers a a subsidy or an investment if you will uh into a property to bridge the gap between what they can afford for a house and what they can uh and what the actual purchase price of the house is give you
a little bit more perspective a typical Land Trust uh homeowner uh qualifies for morage between 175,000 and 225 to 230 depending on the interest rates when we first started the uh Investments we were putting into properties were about
50,000 uh that was also a time when interest rates were at 3% and so it was a little bit easier but now our average investment has climbed over the last couple years to to 90,000 uh per per family uh typical inside your packet there's a uh
on the last page of uh this one I believe it's the last page there's just some Clay County Housing stats and kind of where we've been going and and what's going on for the last four or five years 2001 the average sales price of a house was 280,000 uh in 2024 the average sales
price in Clay County was 314,000 just about 314,000 so um so obviously a huge difference in in pricing which certainly has priced out a majority of our uh constituents and people we work with metr Cod completed a study back in
2023 that stated that less than 50% of our residents within the Casten clay Counties have the funds available or the ability to actually purchase the average priced House of 274,000 that was the average we went with back in 2023 again
the average now is 313,000 so more and more people every year becoming priced out of the of the housing market and being able to call this place home in addition to our building activities that I just described with the uh uh four new uh construction as
well as the uh as well as the 10 acquisition rehabs we're also looking to place another 10 uh or so uh homeowners within Clay County as part of our home buyer initiated program as well couple of those are some of the deals that
we're closing here by mid by mid April so um one other reason why I wanted to come just kind of give you a brief update of where we're at what we're doing um but one other thing thing I wanted to uh just share with you all is the uh idea that we're exploring to create a land bank uh and what a land
bank does is it acquires property through a variety of ways whether it's purchase or donation tax forfeiture whatever bler properties uh and they turn around uh clean up the site if it's brown field any kind of contamination clean it up clean up any kind of title
issues or any of those types of things and then safeguards the the property for or the community benefit down the road so whatever the community decides that is the benefit for that parcel of land that's what the land bank would look to sell it to an organization that fulfills
that uh that call from the community it varies a little bit from the land trust because the land trust specifically works or more typically works with single family housing the land that the land trust acquires is then uh safeguarded typically for single family
housing development projects uh down the road or when the Community sees fit where a land bank can be for housing it could be for commercial it could be Parks it could be anything uh really whatever the community and the community leaders decide they would like to have on that parcel of land so the idea is
for the land bank to to hold on to that land to make sure that we have good sensible growth as we continue to move forward uh as well as being partners with not only the counties uh but also with the cities as well I come here today to really ask for
for a few things um believe it or not Financial is obviously one of them but it's not my main my main ask today uh what I really am looking for is for us to find more ways to partner we all talk about affordable housing being a major
issue within our community we are one solution that not only is to help today's uh residents but next Generation residents as well and for us to collaborate more with Clay County and certainly our city leaders throughout uh Clay County to identify those properties
blighted properties that we can help take down and rebuild to help us find those vacant lots that need to be developed um to help find those those households that might be struggling and need a little help to get back on track those are all things we can do and help um but we want to be part of that
solution and be Forefront uh on your mind when we come across those issues throughout Clay County so that that that's my first ask I guess I really have is as we think about rural uh Clay County as well how can the land trust uh be of service and help I forgot to mention one of our rehabs that we have
actually is in Barnesville so we're we're we're moving out um I will admit for our first four or five years we're an office of two recently three now um so I was being a little selfish with our time and kind of keeping it close to Morehead dillworth um just because of travel time and things like that but as
we continue to expand we are getting into the Barnesville we're looking to expand to Holly and and a few other uh areas as well in Clay County so uh that that that's the first uh as can I can I ask you a question regarding that so you mentioned um the blighted
properties and you're you're trying to establish this bank to that would maybe kind of foresee or oversee all of that so part of if I understand it correctly part of
uh blighted properties when it comes to um well I think for us it it's municipalities are the ones who start that but when we get get involved if if there's tax forfeiture involved
and then part of what one of the requirements that we have if it doesn't go to a regular auction it has to be for a public purpose and I'm just wondering would your bank be considered a public purpose
yes because what we would be putting back on there would be defined by the public of what to put there the citizens so I would classify it as yes being for for public good okay for public use now if if you're specifically talking about a park if
that's the if that's what we had to put there if that's um public use then that's what we'd have to put there I you know then we'd have to work with developers or find the developers that would put a Parker whatever that public use definition would mean for each property may maybe I could have
rephrased that I think it needs to be a public entity public entity okay yeah so land bank can sell U property to for profit nonprofit whoever right it could be like I said it again it really comes back to whatever the community would decide they want to have there whether that's single family housing multif
family housing Park uh commercial use whatever okay okay okay the the the trick really would be for the L Bank to really um work with communities boards uh elected officials to determine what needs to go there and then help work
with those um with those entities to make sure that what they have envisioned for that parel fits a much larger plan and we would help to facilitate meeting that plan thank you the bank is concept is new to me
um so in in your Discovery as you're putting this together have you already kind of identified potential places yes um and and here here's a great example of one I know it's not on
on the Morehead side but a great example would be the Mid-American steel um site in Fargo right where you where a land bank could purchase that be gifted whatever uh have it clean it up work to get it all cleaned up clean up all the title issues and then work with elected
officials to determine what goes there next and then to and then to select who that developer is to build whatever has been determined to go there so that that's a great that that's a great uh example certainly there's lots of vacant land but everybody knows that one's very contaminated so that's why I use that
one as the example and then do you have a um um I'm familiar with your you know regular residential so when you're doing that do you have a um uh
direct Pro program you work with uh Minnesota Housing Finance yes yep a majority of our funding uh for the on the Minnesota side comes from Housing Finance Agency so not only have we been able to uh be awarded just over $6
million from them we also um through our programs can work with their firsttime home buyer programs down payment assistant programs and those as well so so there's other they identified you at for a certain block of money or you're just part of the competitive ho um and
acquiring the funds as a pathway yeah yes correct yes so so Minnesota housing uh sees us as a pathway to get more people into housing uh what they really like about the land trust model is the idea that it stays forever attainable for low to moderate income
households so their investment continues to grow as uh as the house appreciates and the reason the bank is kind of interesting me and one of the things we talk about in our economic development is is uh just more housing
needed right and I I just I always think of Prime with what you're doing private ownership but yet is there a way to create um more room for
multifam there is um if we were to do that we're into the ownership side so if we did multifam we would see that more as a row home or potential condos um which is something we have been looking at uh we're not 100% ready to do that as
part of a another collaboration uh we have we're working with Klay County Housing Authority in the city of Morehead to transition 17 of the Maple Court units from lowincome renter tenant occupied into owner occupied uh so that's going to be our first kind of
test uh into that market for an HOA and kind of a condo association and so we're using that as kind of our spring board um to see how we could uh build more density um and still offer some equity and some return on on their purchase
thank you yep great you can continue yeah oh sure now I forgot where I'm at my notes see how this goes I see uh re really um one other thing that's in your packet is uh I had our realtor pull a
list of all the houses that are between zero technically 55,000 and 275,000 there's 53 homes in all of Clay County that meet that requirement uh of those 53 20 of them are already pending
inspection or pending uh an actual sale two of them are mobile homes and two of them are condos so when you look at that um or yeah 50 I think it's 53 or 58 no don't have it right in front of me yeah it's uh 58 so there's actually 32 homes that are priced uh all of Clay County
that are priced uh within a somewhat of a range uh for a typical CLT buyer in a lot of cases that's still on the higher end a majority of those are um certainly towards that 275,000 uh compared to the 230,000 which is kind of our number to to begin talking with
our families so um certainly it's a need and if you look at uh the housing stats from 2021 that are included in your packet from this is all from uh the FM R TS Association but if you look at those stats from 2021 to 2024 um our housing numbers and sales
have been kind of Dipping some of that has to do with interest rates and a few things it's not just uh the housing crisis but that certainly does add to it and and so um certainly housing throughout Clay County is is kind of kind of teetering a little
bit and again we're we're just here to to help try to get more people in the home ownership at all levels with that I'll take any other questions that you might have um as well or any other things you are dying to know about the land
trust questions Paul Paul ask the ones I was going to ask okay I would just want to point out tron's done a really nice job of uh continually engaging with with the county uh I have a close friend who has
a child that's a young professional uh here in Morehead that otherwise didn't want to pay rent and otherwise wasn't probably in a situation to which uh they would have been able to buy a house and they were able to take advantage of this uh this um Land Trust opportunity the
other thing that I would note that uh very pleased to see is uh four or five years ago when Trenton first came on board uh as he mentioned earlier a lot of the the work that was being done was in the North Dakota side and I think uh this board kind of challenged him a little bit to to look on the Minnesota
side and I think that it's uh one of the things that they've been uh been making a focus in each of our conversations about getting getting projects done here in the on the in Clay County and so we appreciate that thank you thank you Steve one thing I a couple things I did forget to mention that I just briefly
want to say when you think of of a lot of times when people think of low to moderate income households they don't always assume Workforce uh housing or they don't assume people that are in the workforce we we're uh we're a step we're a step up from Habitat for Humanity and
between conventional home ownership and what I mean by that is uh our homeowners are teachers are um nurses uh they are construction workers in the military they're you the they people that are on the front lines doing a lot of the work
throughout our community um in order to qualify for our program you have to be able to get a conventional mortgage uh so that really um is is a defining moment between I'm like a habitat and us in the sense that uh all of our people
habitats are too but ours are ours are in the workforce in more more in professional jobs and need the help to get into housing so that's uh that that's one thing and then the other thing I just I I want to come back to if you ever want to go see what $224 $25,000 buys
nowadays let me know I'd be more than happy to bring you into some of the stuff that we've bought that we know we're going to have to tear down uh commissioner K HF you probably know this as well but I I've been in um a lot of homes that are at $225,000 that you either have to tear it
all the way down to the studs and start over or knock it down and and that's $225,000 it it for our average a professional family that's that that's a tough Market to be in right now and as those numbers are going to continue to increase our
need and and the need for an organization like ours is only going to grow if you want to come see that we have some great blighted properties if you ever want to come see them please make sure you have to dat in your tetanus shot but um but it's uh yeah we're we're doing a lot of different
things I just have one more question so you you had just mentioned about um the these applicants needing to be able to obtain a commercial or a a conventional conventional loan how does that work
when um part of what you do you require part of that asset to remain I I guess how does the bank deal with that when it seems to me that they wouldn't necessarily be getting the
full backing of the property yeah do you follow my question yes I I I think I do and I will uh try to answer the best I can we end up writing what's called a lease hold mortgage so it's a little bit of a different mortgage um we actually have uh five preferred lenders we work with that are willing to write those
mortgages uh so that that helps with that in the ground lease that we enter into with all of our um with all of our homeowners and then there's some Riders and stuff to do with some uh Fanny and Freddy uh mortgage writers but uh that's
when and if we ever had a homeowner that becomes delinquent or maybe uh foreclosure uh the land trust has the right of first refusal to purchase that home back and that's typically what we what we would do um if we have the cash available either that or sell it to
another income qualified family as soon as possible reason being is we don't want the banks to hang on to it any longer um but if it did get all the way to a foreclosure um we are part of that process as well so um and making sure that the bank gets made whole as well
good thank you commissioner Mojo thank you just maybe more of an informational item for me uh do the residents of the home pay the taxes or does the land trust pay the taxes residents of the home pay the okay so a couple years ago we dealt with maybe a clerical issue or a couple of
the properties had shown up in the publication at the end of the year because we're property tax delinquent is there a mechanism in which the land trust is notified prior to that sort of publication or how do we make miate that
yes uh actually those properties were held by us at that time when they were being delinquent um and that's because we were working through primarily one of them was a lot that we had in romkey park that we were working through a deal that took longer than we expected and so
we we're all up to date now but that was that was that um since then um we as a nonprofit for any land that we have uh in development is is actually um property tax free or exempt I guess so uh so that that has alleviated that
issue in the case where we do have uh we are notified when people become delinquent on their taxes uh property taxes as well so then we would start to work with them to figure out a plan to get them back on track and making sure that they don't lose the home or if they
you know job change or something has happened within their family life event get out of that home as soon as possible before um wrecks creates havoc on their uh credit and those things so thank you so that's that one other thing to note um Minnesota uh state of
Minnesota has passed a property tax um change for land trust so all Land Trust homeowners are actually taxed underneath the 4D uh property tax rate which is at 75 uh percent um I know it's a little bit lower now for multif family but but for land trust they're uh property taxed
at 75 which um certainly helps them to get into into home ownership and maintain it thank you so for families were you for families that might want to know more information or reach out to you how how do you how do people contact
you and and are you do you collaborate like with the Klay County HRA yeah yeah we we collaborate with as many people as as possible we we truly believe um you know Community is part of our name uh and we truly believe that in order for us to make an impact within
our community we need everybody at the table um to help us do that so we do part with Clay County H we uh we also do with cap LP Beyond shelter habitats uh other other organizations as well anybody that that is serving a group of people that uh could potentially get
into Home Ownership we're we're partnering with or ideas on how we can expand what we're partnering with as I mentioned before we're partnering with Klay County HRA for the M uh as well in the city of Morehead so so we'll have a few of those homeowners here in the next few months as well uh
transitioning um and I forgot the first part of the question now I think you oh Holly contact the the best part of it I forgot uh you can find us online certainly at cclay ct.org you
can always give us a phone call at 701 54828 uh that information should be in your packet as well but uh you can always email us as well but um yeah you can email us at hello cclay ct.org as well typically we find our home owners
through those partner Avenues um or our buyers through those partner Avenues as well as uh we list all of our houses through the MLS so we find a lot of people that way as well good anything else just thank you for all you do for
the real estate industry and for building our community thank you let us know how we can be part of the solution thanks for the update thank you thank you don't come in here mhm good morning good morning hi should I
sit yes you certainly can have a have a seat we have with us fi this morning and is going to give us an update on the we're at cultural Mall seam amedi as well yeah in seam yes good good
morning uh good morning thank you for having us uh me and Sama Medi um we are doing a lot of groundwork and uh very excited to report back to you and kind of uh tell you our journey and where we
are with the cultural mall and see where we can partner and get the County's assistance um I will start with kind of giving you a background of uh this work we started two years
ago and uh we first you know looked at uh our community we have done an study uh of Morhead community and surrounding area if this project is viable or if the community need it we have done a lot of
interview met with a lot of different leaders and the result was um it was received well and the community wanted to see this project to come in downtown so what we also have done is uh
collaborated with the um yamam Center to kind of um showcase the entrepreneurs who will be interested in the cultural mall so we do something that's called
cultural popups every month uh where every body comes together from different culture um the new Americans uh the indigenous Community uh we have three different organizations who are uh
collaborating um immigrant Development Center in indigenous Association and uh Morhead um inclusive Morhead so those three organization have decided to come together to Showcase and kind of you
know make test the water see uh if these entrepreneurs are interested so we opened up to the community and it was well received and we have done three popups this far and we like to welcome
you to our next popup it's uh March 11 uh if you have time from 5: to 7: please come support our entrepreneurs uh Morhead is growing FIA where is that located uh in yamam Center March 11th
from what uh from 5: to 7 thank you um so you will see a lot of entrepreneurs who are morans uh people who do handcraft um you know different uh we had bakeries we had so many good stuff
you will enjoy please take the time to come um Morhead it's growing uh it's the fastest growing um Community outside Twin City met uh with 56 language spoken in our schools and more than 10% households is
speak language other than English our community culture um our culture is very rich uh is one of our greatest asset however we currently lack um dedicated
spaces to celebrate share preserve and uh diverse culture and tradition that makes Morhead unique um the cultural Mall will fill this critical Gap by
creating a vibrant H uh for cultural exchange traditional art and Heritage preservation this space will future local artists uh cultural performance cooking demonstration and education
programs share our community diverse and traditional for a future generation so we are uh going to the um to give a chance to our community but also the Next Generation to celebrate and see uh
their older people who came to this uh Community we are still keeping so what you will see within the cultural mall it's uh bakeries food from different areas and we are working with uh those
um entrepreneurs and we also applied a grand through deed that collaborates with M State um and also um Prairie oh yeah cap caplp caplp and M
state to train entrepreneurs so we we have secured a grant that will train and make them uh ready with their certificate um so we have done a lot of groundw we are many and mighty
organization we are underfunded but we are very hopeful and very uh uh um you know on time and trying to push making sure our community have a chance in our area we have build a lot of relationship
seam will approach you she is our organizer on the ground to meet everybody and we are making sure our voice comes to you so thank you for having us this morning I sent some materials to show you uh you know the
draft of the architectural draft and also uh the cost of the project is 7 million the good stuff we have done is we secured bulk of that money almost 3 million uh the the money to buy the building the square American Square
building um we secured that money and we are raising other money working with OCS uh which is uh Department of Health and Human Services Federal but we also don't know uh with all the hopes that we are
jumping through that if this year we will submit an application we will wait to hear from them so that we will work with the county uh to get a a support uh because it's a Health and Human Service uh funding that will come from
Washington DC and that application opens up in June so I will be informing and be in contact to let you know to give us a a support uh to to be able to apply uh for that kind of and then we also
introduced a bill through the state uh uh SF 907 um that's 4 million that will complete our budget so um partners of um greater good they are based in and
Washington DC gave us a long to buy the building and then now we are going uh to look other funding through Department Health and Human Service that will bring it to us to 3 million now we are seeking
4 million through the state and so we have done a great work uh cam was with me uh the mayor was with us the chamber was with us uh we had Community Support we presented all the letters of support
from from all the entities that are in Morhead businesses uh nonprofits government yeah than to the administrat for the letter of support
thank you so much uh from the county Support also we presented they said we were the first group who had so much support uh so we are praying and working so so hard um in the house side we are having hiccups but we are working so
hard to get in there uh so thank you so much for having me well I know uh I think it was a couple of years ago that commissioner Mojo and I had the opportunity to to first uh sit down with you in the mayor's office and Morehead regarding this and and a very very
interesting and exciting uh opportunity I know U the cities has similar things that are very successful uh Winn is just an amazing area for cultural activities like this one of the things that I I and I know commissioner M will probably want
to come too but the the outline that you have here when you have small businesses that go in and they're they're going to go in there and maybe be able to Showcase their um what they like to do maybe it's I almost look at this as a an
incubator type of a deal where people can go in there and get a start there get name recog recognition and knowledge of their product and maybe then be able to move out and expand their business into the community is that is that a pretty accurate absolutely it's a place
to grow entrepreneurs to uh you know give them knowledge space to start affordable uh you know if we do what we are doing right now and raise this money we will be able to rent the space in
affordable cost um rather than the regular cost uh in the other area and then we will have a g you know a you know cap three years or four years for you to be in there after that you have
to present to the board to tell them that why you should stay um so or by or by then maybe they have the ability to move out onto their own yes so it will be a very great asset for our downtown it will make our downtown a v vibrant
place a place you want to go smelling good food and a lot of stuff we are working so hard and that building it will look so good we will pick up the building itself we will have mezanine up uh we will create a wedding places I am
working with Kevin Day in day out to show him my vision so uh we will get there for now we only secure the building we don't have the money to do the ration but we are working so hard all right commission moel thank you
maybe just uh a followup to the work that you're doing at the capital thanks for all of us had to Pivot a little bit after last session and I know that uh before there was a different building and I think you've pivoted and I'm really excited about the proposal before us uh the Immigrant Development Center
is seeking uh Legacy funds I know that uh before we were all kind of maybe seeking capital investment was able to listen in on the hearing last week Senator kuc and the others that testified did a really great job of advocating for that component and I also
would say is people who need to continually seek um creative ways to fund the projects that we want you've done a really great job of finding outside Partners to help reduce the amount from the state that you're asking so uh continue to um have support from
me in this I think it's a great opportunity to not only um uh show how diverse our citizens are but also be an incubator for emerging businesses I just really think this is a
really great proposal that um you know I I know in conversations with you FIA uh no one is more passionate than you but uh really excited to um have this in Morehead I think it's wonderful commissioner bear so you you
secured the building correct so you and then is is it just food going to be sold in this or is it all goods and wees uh it will be foods gift shops handmade stuff so you will have an idea if you come the popups you will have an idea of
what businesses will be there uh so you know handmade jewelries a taer a you know small gift shop that you know caters to minority Community or you know it's Unique to the other community for
fun of it to buy one piece and you know so and then it will be food and then it will be music and you know uh we will have you know uh some community members singing and that's what we did last uh
popup we had a an artist come uh and this popup we are planning to have another artist come so uh we are just planning to have real fun and and and very vibrant place um are you are you
confident that the parking would be sufficient I was talking to Kevin he said the parkings uh he said you know the railroad has extra parkings so we can we need to start negotiation or
talking to them or maybe leing the parking from them uh we are not there yet so when we get there we will work with them yeah I I I just compared to where your previous U consideration was it seems to me there was considerably
more parking there and I just want to make sure that it it the the draw that I potentially see from this can be significant and I don't know that everybody who would be coming there will be riding public transportation to get
there and um you know the the bus comes to the downtown area and so with the new American an they also uh you know they they uh Rite together you know two three people will come together that will save
us parking lot but we will work with our neighbors with the railroad to kind of sakur more parkings um FIA if you can work with the railroad you're are far more powerful than I thought but I agree I um I think it's
part of the emerging designs and I I think there's some more parking that will be designed into the other components of the downtown uh development too I just want to find a place that I can get some baklava like that's all I want the global market yes got a source
for that you have a source yes I do Mr kbov yeah just uh uh congratulations on getting the place um uh I have a question on your popups are are you doing that monthly and is it
always a same date of the of the month they are monthly as of now and they have been the second Tuesday of the month to complement the historical society's open Museum yeah on Tuesdays and that's when the yumc come center is open till 8 okay
just a good compliment okay just F to to the public so yeah and it hopefully it'll lead into the farmers market and grow that in Morehead happens on Tuesday starting in June great all right thank you any other
questions all right well hopefully you'll keep us updated on the progress yes um I'm thankful you guys wanted to hear from me yeah I was like Yay let's go I would like to spend more time and
have coffee with you guys I apologize for my uh shortcoming but soon as everything comes down I would like to get to know each one of you and as you um talk about that funding application that comes in June make sure that you
are are in contact with us and we can certainly provide uh new letters of support for that from from the county as well so thank you so much all right thank you thank you all right thank you Highway Department is here
yes good morning give us another million dollars this morning no just fining some projects out oh boy okay all right Justin you have several items for us this morning yeah so the first item I have is requesting approval of the final
contract voucher for three Bridge replacement projects sap 14598 078 sap 14610 034 and sap 146
37004 so who Excavating LLC was the general contractor on this one I thought they turned out really well um one of them was on County Road 115 one on Casa 10 and one on Casa 37 so the sap1 14598
078 the final amount to be approved would be $179,400 sap 14 61034 final amount to be approved would be467 $467,900 4 final amount 290 29655 and0 cents any questions for
me all right we will take these individually for motions so follow along with mot requirements I'm sure so I'll make a motion you approve the final contract for um saps uh
01458 or 598 078 the amount of $179,450 by saying I I oppose the same sign motion carried Mr chair I'll make a motion to approve the uh contract sap 014 610-0348 67,900
04- 6374 in the amount of [Music] $296,500 replac M projects tied into one contract B sap 14598 079 this one is on County Road 51 just
south of Comstock that's currently closed because it's heavily restricted and the we can't even drive over it with a plow truck so we're really excited to get that one done the second one is sap1 14599 105 this one is in Goose Prairie
Township that's this one's kind of been hanging out there for a little while so we're excited to get that one undone and then sap1 14599 d114 is in Elton Township just south of Downer I will say I have talked to both townships and they approved to
the projects and their share so these are all Township Bridges two of them two of them 598 079 is on County Road 51 right by the comto Trap Club Mr chair I'll make a motion to approve the advertising of the Three
Bridges as proposed with it I also I don't think it made it in your packet but um I am proposing a letting date of March 25th I'll modify my motion to include that date I will second that motion all right we have a motion by
commissioner MOS second by commissioner bear any further discussion just just one question have you notified the townships lately that you're going to put those out for bid um right after this meeting I will I'm a question just curious about
the time frame um it would be this summer sometime so we usually keep our contracts pretty open their box covert so they usually take about a week to install once we get them um usually we Center our completion dates around beat Harvest so it doesn't
screw anything up there okay thank you all right so we hav't we haven't been voted on that we we haven't voted we have motion a second we have a motion in yeah that's right okay all right any further
discussion further discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same motion carried thank you all right oh there he is okay all right morning good morning
morning this should be paper you this should be this should be [Laughter] hi all right we have with us this
morning our veteran service off Kurt can good morning good morning Mr chair board uh vso 2024 uh we'll start uh however we figure this out we have a little agenda you can see most of this is Air Force planes
because Kim put this together she's retired Air Force but uh I noticed that about 10 o'clock last night we're introductions the staff some County comparisons some payments that we've done property tax comparison and then
any questions at the end uh myself Jennifer uh she's been there 15 years now and the new hire replacing Bonnie is Kim Administrative Assistant uh October of 24 I believe was the
uh higher date some things we do besides counseling and I'm being an accountant we uh obtain military documents assist in enrolling VA Health Care uh compensation claims is mostly what we do that's about 80% that's uh trying to
link a injury uh called service connecting uh um their injury that they have now to Service uh meaning uh it could be three ways a primary meaning there's inservice documentation of that injury a
secondary condition means they developed a condition off of the primary that we service connected or presumptive usually each combat theater of war has presumptives that the VA has conceded uh for example Vietnam bets diabetes uh if
they have diabetes and they were boots on ground Vietnam those are presumptive it's hard it conceded uh Home Loans Financial assistant DVA benefits ultimate honors
burial uh widows uh uh pensions voke rehab uh appeals um employee assistance and then General benefits we we work a lot with uh these servic we provide in house we
have subject matter experts outside the State education North Dakota job service for helping vets with jobs so uh additional resources at our fingertips to help us uh basically solve each scenario that the vet brings us and each one's
different throughout the day so we do a lot One-Stop shop I call it if you're vet in Clay County uh we're the people you need to see if we can't handle it in house someone outside the house can handle it so ssap it's a state program uh they do
special needs grants uh now they're called veteran relief grants that's a once in a-lifetime Grant that helps the folks uh uh kind of income based uh lowincome uh that that those are for example I put a air conditioner and a
furnace in a vet's house I I've done a flooring last year we've done Windows uh it's it's they don't have the extra money to uh do these house projects we've done vehicles uh we we put a lot of effort and time it's it's
state money we like to use state grants before we try to explore our our own money so can I just really quickly just for the public listening uh you know it's really great to hear what we're doing to help vets but I think it's important to hear what he said is I put
a floor in we did this I mean these are our local office staff doing the work to help help the veterans so I just um you know when when we go to places and hear about how you meet people where they are
I mean that is the testimony to that continued service that you yourself also serve the the country so I really appreciate that and you know we take pride in that our our main goal is service you know we're a service industry and they they present the
problem we solve the problem we are problem solvers and we put it on us that we've done it we did this we did that our staff we work hard tireless throughout the day so uh Dental Grants subsistance Optical
grants so they have grants available this is just a little comparison of how much Clay County works the state have us has us at 3548 veterans in Clay County I don't know where they get the number I'm just going off their annual report I swear we're about
10,000 but uh uh but that's what they have that's what I'm going to report our ssap dollars for 24 was $74,800 in comparison uh Anoka six times
more people uh six times more veterans in their County and they did $57,000 so and then Dakota to make it realistic they're seven times more than us and they beat us by 13,000 so little
Old Clay County at 3548 is uh matching up with the big dollarss and the big cities so uh great work by our staff putting in Grants utilizing State funds uh to get these folks uh Dental Optical
and uh fix their house so uh 2024 retroactive payments total dollar amount issued to Clay County veterans in 24 1,810 12148 compared to 1,111 ,000 in 23 so we
did $700 more, of work uh in 24 which is retro and monthly payments retro meaning that uh the claims been going on so long we got them 50% which is for rough numbers a $1,000 that goes back a year
that's 12,000 that's a retro payment a lot of that includes I got a guy $147,000 but his went back to 1975 so that's a lot of money the goal always my goal is to get Clay County vets service connected compensation in efforts that
they spend their money hopefully in Clay County so in Morehead so that's always my intent does it happen no but uh it surely helps they say money doesn't fix everything and and it doesn't but it sure helps with some of our vets and not
only that getting them service connected and getting them Health Care is huge Health Care is huge to spend make sure they don't have to buy it privately uh total number of Clay County vets survivors spouses receiving monthly
payments from the be is 1558 so 1,558 vets in Clay County are receiving some sort of compensation uh from the ba here's your property tax I had it all the way back to 16 but we'll start with
2020 uh Clay County had 1133 uh disabled veterans on property tax exemption meaning uh in the state of Minnesota property tax exemption starts at 70% service connected you can go from zero to 100 70 is Minnesota 70 and higher you
get property tax meaning 150,000 off your market value or if you're 100 permanent total you get 300,000 off your market value so between 70 and 100 2020 we had 113 last year we we caped at 200
folks so U and the City of Morehead in 2020 had 186 uh they've shot up to 309 so 2020 we had 299 to 509 in
2024 receiving some kind of benefits so commissioner Mojo thank you Mr chair uh you know as we look to um how we're increasing that number is that could can we contri that to a better awareness are
we doing a better job of um educating folks that that exemption is out there um or is it has it been broadened in the legislature in the to encapsulate more people how do we yep uh in the state of Minnesota most are aware of of their
benefits it has a lot of do work inside each office okay because if they're at 10 they know they need to be at 70 not only is 70 is property tax it's a nursing home benefit uh for cares their expenses are paid in a in a contracted
VA home or a civilian that takes VA money so 70 is a a nice number this has to do a lot back to us following up I hate it is you know I I put it on us if they're at 50 and we want them at 70 you
know what else do you have you make them aware that we always tell vets if you get something new diagnosed let us know cuz you don't know if it's service connectable uh let us know can we secondary that off of primary so we are
always thinking to try to maximize their percentage most veterans just stop but once we get our hands on them what else can we do for you some don't make it to 70 and I think that's the important part is I mean we talk a lot about why having
local boots on the ground helping to do the work and so um if it's a tricky application process or if it's just um they just need a little extra help to do that I think it just speaks to volumes to why it's important to have um local
folks able to help out with that that very true uh Minnesota North Dakota very fortunate to have one in every County I hope they never go away with that uh bigger States we get calls weekly I call Kim the mafia now I'm glad I heard them because if they get to me I'm going to
take them but uh uh we have a lot of other states and big States they have to travel to the regional office or their VA to get help and they just don't do it y so we've we've serviced many outside of Clay
County in 2020 since I've been here so we we we do take pride on helping other people at the end of the day so uh legislation wise back to you there is a there is a bill into increase the 150 to 200 and the 300 to 400 because we have
not uh I don't know the Senate file number on that but we haven't increased in 12 years okay uh it's a big deal to us it's also a big deal of the the answer the question is who's going to pay for that that's always the question at the state level uh both Finance
committees have to go through that to see who's going to put that bill so Kur um commissioner ering has a question for you yeah just I want to I want to say something to validate what you're talking about you and your team I have a family member and you know who mhm
and lived in one of the biggest areas of or one of the most densely populated areas of the state and did not get a clear-cut assessment of what he was entitled to after being a platoon leader
in World War II and you got it for him you and your team and you didn't let up until you got what he deserved and what what he had coming and we're very grateful for that but you can't live in this town and you can't knock on doors when you're campaigning without hearing
about your people that's right and I know other folks that you have you have you have been Relentless in trying to explore every opportunity for them and I am really grateful not just because it was I had a
family member you you helped but because there are people in this community that are very cognizant of the fact that we have a better vsso then you're going to find just about anywhere else and they're going to get the benefits that they they worked so hard to be entitled to So when you say
that and we say people from other parts of the state I've had that experience with you and uh you're not stretching the truth a bit this is where a veteran can come and if they're entitled to benefits you and your team are going to find it for them and I'm grateful for
that and a good point the team I I definitely don't do it by myself you know I learn every day Jennifer mentored me still thinks she does today so we'll let we'll let that go but uh we got a great team second to none and you're
right someone comes through the door if they're a veteran in Clay County they shouldn't be homeless and they should have the most benefits that they can get so and we try every Avenue total forms completed this is off
our software 1854 those are total forms that we completed and uploaded into the I don't have a comparison for 23 uh supporting documents 1952 communication I do have a
comparison from 23 this year we did 30 3,891 Communications phone office visits facts anything to communicate with people veterans and outside organizations 23 we did 34 32 so running
kind of the same 3,000 mark on contacts so uh very good for our office any questions short and sweet uh main focus always is uh about the vet so
we uh don't have any questions but I I um you know the people around here know you for your um your humor uh you're our Dancing Chef at our County picnic yes uh on an awful lot of things but today we got to see the important
side of what you do and and how serious you take it yeah and I've had the opportunity to send a few people to you um and every one of them that I've done that to they've gotten back to me
and they've said thank you for sending me to Kurt because he's awesome yeah and and you really you know kind goes to what everybody else is saying here that you really you really work hard for these veterans and what they are entitled to and deserve right so thank
you for that you're welcome appreciate you sending them to me and that's a fact you wouldn't send them to me if I didn't do my job so appreciate that I do have one last thing uh I'll leave it with Jackie it's a documentary in May at the homes theater in Detroit
Lakes at 7 so it's a military and Veteran document documentary it's my debut movie star so you guys are all welcome to pick up a flyer so it's at the historic homes theater there'll be some bring some tissue I'm I'm sure I'm
crying on that thing actually I know I'm crying on that thing cuz it was in my house so but I'll leave them with uh Jackie and sure have that and welcome it's open to the public so well it's always good to get your updates thank you for yes yes appreciate and
always always continued support you guys for the last decade have always supported the veterans of Clay County and continue to so I can't ask for more that we will do thank you all right all right we'll have one more item before we take our
break and that is the request to enter contract s to provide semi-independent living [Music] skills good morning Quinn morning Mr chair
Commissioners I here to uh request approving a contract with sevita for semi-independent living skills like to provide a little bit of context first um semi-independent living skills are community- based support services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who require
assistance to live independently but do not require a higher level of care the goal of ss is to support individuals in achieving greater Independence self-sufficiency and social inclusion inclusion Excuse me while reducing Reliance on institutional or more
restrictive settings SS promotes skill development and Community integration so individuals can live successfully in their own homes or other community- based settings uh to qualify for sales they have to meet all of the following criteria be over 18 have a developmental disability or condition defined by law
and statute require support to function independently in the community not be at risk of placement in an intermediate Care Facility not be using Home and Community Based service waiver programs not be residing permanently in an institution an ICF or a nursing
facility sales providers assist with individuals with various aspects of daily life such as skills development like money management meal preparation grocery shopping social and Community integration such as developing relationships social skills using public transport portation Independent Living
support like obtaining and maintaining housing self- administering Med medications employment assistance and job coaching and skills training as well as decisionmaking and advocacy and helping the individuals make informed decisions about their own Daily Life currently we have six contracts that
provide or six contracted providers that perform sales that's Access Blue Sky connections CCI LSS and productive Alternatives uh we are looking to add cev uh it would provide clients another choice in providers and red reduce weight lless times for citizen accessing
sales with the other agency due to their limited staff capacity uh I have included a draft contract for your review uh I would look at getting signatures if approved right after uh board today uh sales is a
county administered support service which is funded through a state allocation it's an 85% state funded 15% County match our total allocation for the 2025 budget is $26,250 the 85% of that is
$221,100 County share at $39,375 per share has already been incorporated into the 2025 budget so I do not anticipate any Financial impact by adding another contracted provider I guess with that I would yield for any question so the amount of the amount of
this whole program it's it's it's got a ceiling on it correct and then you kind of divide that up based on these different entities correct yep yes commissioner bear what is the what is the wait time um I I'd have to have
Holly here to tell you specifically what it is I asked that question as well of just just concerns about the ability to provide it uh all of our contractor providers have staff uh it's just there's a lot of turnover with that with the staff so when somebody comes in the training period there ends up being a
little bit of a wait time so again hopes that sevita would help and assist minimize that weight right anything else anybody else I think I think it's great to be able to include one more provider to fill that Gap uh for sure so that I'm move to make
a motion to uh proove a contract with sub to provide semi-independent living skills second all right we have a motion by commissioner K krainov second by commissioner iringer any further discussion any further
discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign motion thank you Quinn can we really really really quickly I know this isn't on the agenda but last week I was asked to go to St Paul to be part of uh
press conference and then um subsequent conversations and testimony to talk a little bit about the cost cost shifts for your department in regards to three areas uh waved Services the Minnesota sex offender program and some mental health cost shifts uh there's a lot of
analysis if you will as to what exactly it would cost counties If This Were to completely go through so really appreciate Quinn and his staff for getting uh numbers together as quickly as possible on on on um our awareness I
guess uh it's looking like it will be approximately $3.2 million that are shifted to counties of mandated expenses from the governor's budget um that is about a
6.95% increase to what our Levy would be if it would have gone through this year uh as we all head down to St Paul today I think it's imperative that we continue to uh raise awareness to what that shift exactly does these are um these are
vital residents that are getting these services but really make making clear that this is just not a sustainable way to do good government and um so any information that your staff can continue uh to pull out of that to get to Steve and us would be really
really helpful I know that uh CC had a hearing U meeting with representative Keeler and two uh representative Hicks and Kieran I think were also in town and um just as we uncover what these look like need to be part of a solution and
raising that awareness yeah I I want to thank you for providing commissioner moo with that information and thanks to commissioner Mojo for for being down there and speaking on behalf of all the counties in regards to this and this goes back a little a little bit in time but I remember there was one point in
time when a lot of uh these services this goes back to when we were really in I think around after the 2008 in that area when there was significant um economic issues going on
and and ultimately passing everything on to the counties through property tax just is not sustainable and and unfortunately in some of those times even though they were mandated Services we had to develop waiting
lists and I I hope we don't go back to that and don't have to go back to that but we also need to send a message to who really is accountable for providing those services and it certainly was never the intent of property tax to pay for those
and when when commissioner Mojo talks about that being shifted to the county that's exactly what's happening and so asking people who were already having difficult times staying in their homes because of high property tax were even adding on more and I so I
hope we don't get to that but at some point in time we might have to start looking at that and and point fingers to where they should be pointed F and anyway that's my little narrative on this so commissioner abinger yeah just to jump on the boat this this isn't just a Clay County
problem as commissioner Mojo and and the other uh members of the of the County's commissions um stated in her press conference this affects the entire State and it's going to affect the level of of
care and the quality that we can provide our citizens and so this isn't cutting the state budget this is simply shifting it over to where there's not a reliable source of Revenue unless we tax people on their property tax and that word
needs to get out and it needs be viewed by the public and I'm certainly looking forward to the next couple of days where we we're going to be able to express it as an as a organized group with AMC to to the our state legislators hopefully
the message will resonate with the governor I appreciate that and thank you thank you for your advocacy at the state level too to get the word out I I greatly appreciate it very good all right we will take a f minute break right all right we are now uh back in
session our next um agenda item is an there's the annual update from our County attorney Brian Milton good morning Brian morning Mr chair thank you uh Commissioners thanks for having me uh I have uh Pam Foss here my uh criminal Chief as well as Katie
stock my civil Chief they're they're here for moral support for me or if there's more technical questions I guess so well the brains are the operation brains right as soon as you actually have any question I turn to them so uh thanks for having me here on the first day of spring I really appreciate that
so but uh anyway with that I uh regular an annual update and and giving you information uh oftentimes I'll give you kind of a snapshot of time and how some of our statistics have gone uh and even after last year uh looked at doing it uh a little bit different to try to give
you kind of a a bigger picture if you even saw in the star tribun recently they gave kind of a a large scale of update of uh statistics that we're seeing uh within Minnesota and the bigger cities uh and so I wanted to kind of uh give you a little bit more of that
uh and kind of give you a broader picture uh and then narrow down at the end um anyway our mission obviously is uh to promote Justice work on Public Safety uh work uh in regard to Effective Government um and and make sure that we're Prosecuting crime um and
representing uh Clay County and the different uh departments across the uh across the County government and we do that uh through uh work with assistant Clay County attorneys uh they are front and center uh for making charging decisions uh working to provide services
uh working with victims and going to court uh so again my office myself we conduct a review of criminal and civil statistics uh from 2000 through 2024 so kind of a 25 year look back uh trying to look at identifiable Trends uh and
identifying future areas of expected growth I think if you really look at it the issues of mental health chemical dependency and just obviously population growth would all seem to lend towards uh growth in both criminal and civil cases within the county uh our public uh
safety Focus uh strong POS prosecution uh this board's focus on supporting the uh the prosecutor's office supporting policing Services has been greatly appreciated uh but goes to the fact that we have a safe Community a strong Community obviously we work across uh
County um departments work with u Social Services work with Sheriff's Department police department other non-governmental uh organizations uh to reduce uh crime uh hold U hold criminals accountable um
through the system so if you just look at the population growth within Clay County uh over uh the last uh 22 years or so that was the latest uh statistics that were available uh our growth has been 28.5% from
51,000 uh plus up to 65,8 129 people uh I think it's important to look at Cass County as well just because we are a community and a lot of criminal activity or other activities that happen don't know that there's a river there we're constantly and we work very much with
our partners uh the gang uh strike task force our other drug task force all work together uh with Fargo PD uh C County uh Sheriff's Department uh and of course Clay County U Sheriff's Department the mor police department but if you look at
their growth uh very large growth 55.9% over that time period up to 19273 4 as comparison the US population growth was uh about 18.1% and Minnesota's growth uh population growth was 15.9% so we know
that we're doing well we've we've heard before and we talk about we're one of the fastest grown uh counties outside of the Metro uh and that is true but with that uh is both a good economic growth but obviously it brings certain things that uh we constantly have to deal with and be
ready for so when you look at the size of the Judiciary within Clay County uh uh Clay County maintained three judges in the county until 2006 that haded four a fourth judge so we have four judges within the county we also have a
Judicial referee uh that individual can take basically cases that are not criminal so any guardianship conservative ship um our commitment cases uh all types of those kind of things to allow for the other four judges to remain in court
longer so again it just impacts how much time we're in court uh typically you would maintain three to four assistant attorneys per each judge so when you look at that we're we're currently at 13 attorneys uh if you look at our growth from back in 2000 when I started in 1998
we were five person office uh we were low uh and we had a lot of a lot of overtime a lot of stress and we need to grow with that um which we did and it's been a good thing we're we're close to right sized right now we're probably a little bit low um uh but it we'll we'll
talk a little bit about growth here in the upcoming future um if you look at just nationally uh crime statistics uh the FBI have shown that U generally speaking last three years you've seen a dropping um of especially violent crime
and and some of those higher level crimes um somewhat to that prepandemic level uh generally speaking uh crime in the county uh has generally moved up uh in an upward uh pattern along with population growth uh when you see some
of these statistics coming up you'll see 2018 stands out as one particular that's when we uh dropped the city prosecution service contract they went to their own service they have three or four attorneys now uh doing their own work
and and and tackling the the things that they do and you'll see where some of those things dropped what you'll really notice is certain items that they do say misdemeanor DWI ours dropped greatly but other things uh increased during that time frame really because it shows we
had a backlog that we couldn't get to because we didn't have enough attorneys coming through that City attorney contract uh when those were when we shed those uh those jobs and everything else we were able to tackle some of the other things that we need to do 2020 being
that first primary covid year stands out too you'll see where some uh items definitely increased uh other things dropped uh again certain things like DWI where there weren't as many people out at bars you can see and and correlate that those uh pretty much stood stood
out as as a area that dropped so just uh jumping into some of Statistics that we have if you look at you know again our our community is a very safe Community our our murder rate is is pretty low we don't have that um say where you look at some cities that
have a lot of high gun crime or random uh murder crime that type of thing we don't I mean they majority known people relatives uh you see that 2020 really stands out you know a couple of those uh we had a a fairly significant pretty
awful murder but that help included several people that helped that person try to get away with the crimes so so that was four people all in one murder we had a different murder that had two people involved so uh so although that stands out uh um you know at least six
or seven kind of involved two different cases 2024 we did see an uptick uh and so I don't know if that's more of an anomaly or just uh you know what we're seeing but uh generally speaking across the country uh violent crime and
murders went down and you see where we did drop down but at least 2024 for stood out our criminal sex that number 10 that that's not say 10 murders right it includes murder attempted murder um but also aiding and abetting so I mean again just like that
other one 15 you might have some crimes that had a couple different ones that had people that assisted and and Aid in those murders correct yeah not all that's not 10 10 complete Mur I don't have that exact breakdown but there are definitely aiding within there or criminal sexual assaults again you can
kind of see that 20 8 where you had that jump up uh likely from uh backlogs being worked on uh 2020 um you saw a big jump in our criminal sexual assaults um whether that's really attributable to
attributable to covid I'm not sure you can say but you can see it's it's to a degree somewhat leveled out uh dropped a little bit in the last uh couple years our assault and robbery um cases as you can see we did have a
high uh water mark there 2020 uh we have seen drop in that I think nationally a lot of uh discussion where you see a lot of drop in robberies and thefts u a lot of things such as people not carrying cash as much anymore so people aren't robbing people because they don't have
money on them uh cell phones having more uh restrictions uh another reason that they say is probably a reason people aren't stealing as much cell phones and then cars having some security pieces put to them so some of those cars aren't and really on the as far as the
robberies go and some of that stuff that carjacking side of things we haven't really seen that phenomenon as much in Cass and Clay County where they saw that in the Twin Cities A lot of people uh smashing cars snatching stuff out or smashing cars and and robbing them of
their car that that that phenomenon really at least up to this point is not hit uh to us our domestic assault uh again the feling domestic assault um uh that's out there uh you can see our increases have kind
of gone along we didn't track that or it really didn't the felony domestic uh it actually was put in in 2001 I believe but some of those uh didn't get tracked for a long period of time um again you can see uh our jump after 2018 again
likely some backlog uh But there again one of the interesting phenomenons 2020 with covid we saw a drop in in that film domestic side of things and and again as you see we've seen some dropping down last couple years or or somewhat of
leveling out and then as I mentioned um after 2018 you saw a big drop in the misdemeanor domestic assaults within our office didn't mean that we cured it or it stopped it just means that those are being charged out mostly by City Morehead so you see that volume of cases
and and kind of a leveling out of where we have uh just not a lot a lot of misdemeanor domestics out in the county our burglary uh cases uh again a big jump in 2018 um somewhat a leveling out and then
and seeing some drop in the last couple years I do think some of our there could be a little bit of attribution of uh some of our case drop I mean I know nationally they've talked about it but we also know that Morehead has had a big drop in how many police officers they've had on the street they've been down
somewhere around 13 police officers for pretty much all last year so I think some of that uh drop could be attributable to them just not being out as much on the street they're starting to see some of those numbers and getting some of those people back up um again just like I talked with the robberies
our theft forgeries uh you can see where they've been climbing along with the population growth uh some drop over the last couple years and then I I think you look at like something like Crim damage of property I don't I don't know if you can Trend that I mean it looks like it's just kind of all over the board but I
would also just say it's kind of a you can look at that in say it is what it is which is kind of typically a crime of passion I mean we're a college town we'll have sometimes where some college kids they get drunk and they go right off a campus and Destroy eight cars and
we've got eight new cases uh and then another year we we're way down so I I think again just that can be that uh difference of different years and different people maybe having a lot more or a lot less so I I don't know that that's a good one you can Trend too much on but our drug cases I think are are
definitely worth uh looking at and seeing what we've had both we we break them out by both the city Morehead uh and the county I I think one of the things is interesting we had a law back in 2005 where we put the pseudo fedrin behind the counter uh at uh U Ates we
locked up um the an hydris ammonia back in 0405 out of all those cases probably 10 to 15 of those were manufactur cases people Manufacturing methampetamine in the county we were seeing that increasing every year and then after
2005 I don't think we've since 2005 the last 20 years had a manufacturer case I can't think of one and so you look at sometimes certain laws that really do help it changes it but I will just say as you look at that we don't have manufacturer but we have a lot of uh you
know whether it's methamphetamine other drugs uh fentanyl coming up from Mexico um you know us being a I29 and I94 intersection is a big reason we're you know a a big uh piece on the on the drug
uh trade area just because there's a lot of transportation that goes uh we see a lot of cases that come through Highway Patrol as well as our own uh drug uh folks working on the cases uh through City Morehead and the sheriff's department again uh you saw 2018 have a
big jump uh I think that again is attributable to uh some of that backlog that we were seeing and having difficulty getting rid of and then a drop uh in 2020 and then we've seen kind of that drop over the last couple years here and then with the counties uh
somewhat the same uh kind of Trends you can see a big jump in 18 um kind of just a leveling off in 2020 uh some drops in the last couple years there as we um have kind of leveled back out to what we saw pre
2018 I just wanted to point out and I'll talk a little bit later you know we are a big proponent of and a supporter and we do a lot of work with the drug court we'll talk about that in a minute but I think one of the main points we like to point out is there's a lot of good work that's done in drug court to get those
folks that you know need uh treatment and need help and don't need to go to prison but there's definitely some of those serious folks uh that we just don't want on the street so some of our biggest cases you know our this year alone we're up from about we had like 28 or 29 uh first degree a aggregated
aggravated first-degree drug cases uh we're up to 37 this year some big numbers 27 PBS of meth seized over 12,000 G um this year uh 6 and a half pounds of cocaine so so again we see methamphetamine cocaine but then also
fentol and I think uh uh I think all of us were at the intergovernmental conference that we just had and that discussion of uh xylazine that we're seeing that's just a higher level drug of fentanyl um that uh that doesn't
react the same way to the to the Naran that's previous it's a actually a it's a elephant tranquilizer but it's getting mixed into drugs uh and pretty serious it'll it'll kill people I know that Fargo had three overdose deaths uh in
the last month um pretty much a tribal xylazine so I think we're going to start seeing that more that's a trend that I expect we'll probably see you know coming in the community so we've seen our first case last year uh that had that in some of our our
fentanyl our DWI um again the the felony DWI was established 2001 uh and then 2004 that concentration for alcohol went from a 0.100 to 08 you can see where' 04 you really saw a jump in some of those
felony cases um again that's felony gross misdemeanor gross misdemeanors are done by the city of Morehead so you saw where a big drop uh after 2018 uh and then we're kind of at leveling off that uh what we see if you're basically most of those are really
felony DWIs that you're tracking either forign in 10 years or uh that higher alcohol concentration then misdemeanor DWI uh same thing uh that drop in 2018 a little bit more of a drop in
2020 our flings definitely continue to increase most of the way again along population we see that happening a lot uh we did have a big drop in 2023 three uh but back up kind of where we expect that level to be in in
2024 and our commitments uh you can just see continue to increase that's probably one of our biggest areas that continues to increase along with population growth uh along with just recognizing you know the issues that we have to treat mental illness um those numbers continue to go
up we had a drop off last year but I do expect those numbers will probably look to will probably bounce back be a higher number next year our juvenile delinquency cases um I don't know that this really is attributable to that backlog necessarily it could be a little bit but you can see where it really
jumped in in 18 uh it's kind of leveled off into that 289 per year amount of cases um you know we refer about 150 per year to restorative justice so that's kind of that number I expect will probably level off to a large degree and
then our child in need of protection or service cases um you know have stayed pretty steady over the last five years years in that 70 range so I think um kind of my main point to maybe want to put this together I mean we I think we're a a county
that's that's smart with our growth expect and plan for growth we don't just react to it uh we currently have the four judges seated the one judicial referee uh I expect it likely we would see an expansion at some point um to a
fifth judge maybe over the next three to five years and six judges uh within 10 to 15 years I would say I I think that Klay County set up very well for judicial expansion uh here within the Klay County Justice Center with the potential for two separate courtrooms to exist within here in the third floor
with really not much El setup uh or or additional cost so I think we're we're well set for that U the county attorney's office itself it's physical location uh we're well set up for um probably a likely 10 years of growth I I know I just took uh commissioner beay
through there you know we have an area that's uh you know we move some things around within the um the Justice Center and have uh the victim services on a different floor and they have room uh potentially grow but we have room for uh potentially uh you know additional
attorneys and and two or three additional legal assistance um I expect the attorney's office will likely need uh two additional attorneys over the next three to five years one in criminal one in civil um and somewhere you know in the next 10 to 15 years probably
another two Beyond that so for attorneys within that time frame I think probably the biggest thing uh to bring up and discuss is just the maintaining a strong Workforce is really of primary importance ensuring Market level wages are paid reasonable insurance and
employee friendly work environment um I I would say that you know I think we have a good office we've had people that have even left and come back I've had people that have left and said boy I wish your office was down here in the Twin Cities with us um but we have seen
a a a pretty good amount of folks leaving over the last several years I currently have five uh attorneys that are one year or less of experience um and so the last two people I've had leave uh have left because of wages
because of cost and so when we look at uh where Fargo is uh or or Cass County uh State Attorney's office or Becker County uh our pay is is definitely lower than some of those so that's some of the things that I uh would expect to look at
uh and talk about in our next upcoming budget so probably the main thing I'd want to point out from all this uh growth in crime I expect will continue will likely rise alongside growth in population uh drug issues chemical dependency problems mental health issues
will all continue to rise and be Co co-mingled with other crimes that we expect to see uh I do think that Clay County is well positioned uh for continued housing of criminals with the Clay County Detention Center that we put in back in 2018 uh serve the citizens
well well past I I said 25 years but even well past that uh it has the ability to expand even with an additional pod um depending on how uh things go or what the board sees in the future uh additional growth of that can even
occur uh growth in commitments we expect will continue uh as well as dealing with other mental health aspects chemical dependency issues uh and require renewed uh Focus um we have position positioned oursel well uh with the state-ofthe-art withdrawal management detox treatment
facility I think that is going to serve the community extremely well over the next 25 years um I do think that one other area adult mental health treatment within Clay County uh will continue to rise I think at some point uh discussion
and need for uh intensive res residential treatment services facility uh would be needed or be something and I would just say you know back uh when Ron and I uh one point Ronda Porter and I were talking about what was a major need
within the county was that uh a prtf or an Earth's facility and of course the answer was it's both but if you look at you know we had to make where we focus our attention at and and definitely need and you can see where and I'll I'll bring it up here in just a second our uh
our need for prtf uh is without question um but I think the other component a mental heal component at some point Point uh later in the future that Earth's facility will be something that we should be looking at but um county attorney's office we definitely uh have a strong focus and and emphasis on the
specialty courts uh the drug court and Veterans Court continue to serve folks well I didn't go into too much of their statistics because I know uh we regularly get a update brief from the court itself but we definitely have a lot of involvement in that we have our
Domestic Violence Court which is an accountability Court to uh assistant tracking and and working to rehabilitate offenders and then the new DWI court is just starting uh we've just kicked that off um so I don't even have any numbers for that I don't know if we've even
enrolled any particular people but we have started that uh process and definitely appreciate the board's support of that I I think it needs investment and support from the county and from the judicial system our growth in juvenile cases I I think I mean you could see where we're
kind of stabilized across the board uh you know through investment schooling extracurricular activities juveniles to gather um I think our male and female Clips program is without question one of the best Helping Hands to help kids that
are coming out of the system so they don't have recidivism that they get on the right uh platform uh so that is a terrific program uh through Clay County use of restorative justice uh directly in the in the schools has been a huge uh
help I think we're just seeing a lot of payoff with having that directly there and getting those kids treated immediately so we're just not seeing them you know with recidivism and then back in the courts and then juvenal mental health issues will continue to be an issue for the county uh the plan
investment in a juvenile prtf is is very much warranted and strongly encouraged so appreciate the board's work on all that uh as we continue to work to to try to get that within the county and we know just from all of our discussions the the importance that is across the
entire Northwest uh area if not across the whole state to to help serve kids with mental health issues uh I think our uh Social Service issues increase in ships cases will continue uh making social serves as one of the largest departments and greatest
amount of potential growth uh likely we'll see those cases grow uh within the county attorney's office to have to serve those uh as new families move into the county uh and that's why I think whatever in investment Improvement we make towards the family service center over the or the campus however that
develops over the next 5 to 10 years is obviously important and just working uh as a board for Clay County assistance and homelessness food security family response and stabilization will all help in keeping our crime numbers lower so I appreciate your work there uh our victim
Services continues to work uh tirelessly to help serve victims we we have you know approximately a thousand victims per year that we're working with and and over two to 3,000 contacts with with folks each year um and that continues to
increase um in 2023 we had 152 cases turned over and it was approximately that same amount in 2024 I didn't have the exact numbers for that but I think that's a a huge area uh of growth um for
the future and just finally the the area I want to talk about is technology it obviously plays a a very important role I work with Rory a lot on on things uh but our one of our biggest things that we see now is all of the uh law
enforcement departments that we work with all have body cam now uh in the past there were some that did some that didn't they all do now uh and that takes up a lot of space that's a uh constant it thing where we're fighting where we have things stored we're maxing out on
storage we have to uh try to delete things and manage things uh but I think that's going to be a future issue U I've been working with u it as well as people in my office Consulting with other County Attorneys Office some of the things they're doing to help manage um
uh that amount of uh stuff uh for cloud storage and video storage and that will be a primary concern uh for the future uh we do also utilize Zoom uh that's helped kind of stabilize how much space we need or I think would have grown
quicker and gotten a new judge quicker but because we're using Zoom to do certain amount of things we don't have as much in person but we're going back to more person inperson stuff you know as we go so I think there's a lot more that we'll see or that future growth of actual bricks and
Mort so I I think just uh some of the things that we look at for future growth uh staying AB breast of of the law of changes in the law uh training uh appreciate our training budget that we have to be able to train train new attorneys to keep them current you know
I think some of the things we'll look at there's a there's a mental health court that St Louis County does as a specialty court that might be something worth exploring and and seeing what they do um Sterns hennipin uh and Ramsey County all have uh facility service animals
currently uh to help with victim needs and help with court testimony that's an area that we're exploring and looking at uh the trial advocacy program like again just part of the training uh there's a trial advocacy we need to just keep expanding and working on that uh Pam has
been integral in in developing that and that curriculum and training uh young attorneys so uh and so there's probably some other things too that could be worked on pre-trial practice that kind of thing and then expansion potential expansion of restorative justice programs I think as the board knows we
applied for up to $500,000 of uh RJ grant money I know commissioner ebinger was at a a meeting that had to try to kind of bring in some of the community we're still waiting to see if some of that is but I think probably our our biggest piece of that would be is if we could have an RJ person dedicated to
Morhead schools and RJ person dedicated to out count schools I think would really pay off a lot of benefit right now it's a single person covering everything so that's some of the work or expansion I hope that expect we'll see here in the near future um with that uh
if you have any questions that's uh really the completion of my uh part I just want to thank everybody and thank the board uh for its support and support uh regarding Public Safety one of the things that U Brian mentioned early in his report was you
know I don't know if you caught that he talked about a a future judges chamber on the third floor and um the need for that and of course um we have a couple of places that might need to be have some shifting done and one of the things
that Joel Olsson has done and we've we've done some had some preliminary discussions through our building committee uh about this actual boardroom someday probably needing to be converted to another judges
chamber and so that we have started the discussion about where would that go and we're looking at the potential for um an addition uh expansion of our government center where a future board meeting nit could be um certainly that's a a little
time out we're kind of um looking at when our most recent Capital Improvement Bond expires and then we'll be incorporating some of those projected plans into that so I think the time frame that he talked about at 3 to five
years is certainly one that's um of significance that we need to be preparing for I know commissioner be got his first opportunity in the building committee to hear some of these and there's there's an awful lot of stuff in in the plans that's going to need to be
done in the next 3 to 5 to 10 years and and we're certainly planning for that from a financial standpoint to keep the tax burden low at the same point in time as as um providing the needs that we have and I think the goal of this building for a
long time has been to be a complete Justice Center and that would include um modifying this third floor to meet those needs so we continue to plan for that through our building committee I you know haven't had a lot of chance we
haven't really talked about that part of it with the rest of the board but I thought today was a good opportunity to throw that out there for the first time to let you know that we are preparing commissioner AB yeah Brian
um having seen what we see with law enforcement and the positions there and the salaries going up in order to retain people uh how and I think all of us received uh some information from one of
your former attorneys about how we're losing a Competitive Edge on salaries uh has that uh you you specifically cited Becker County but are we losing people and is uh is part of that the
salary increases that that the public defenders have gotten or I know that wasn't factored into the calcul calculation of what our uh our attorneys are paid because it's a different group but where do we stand on that yeah uh thank you uh Mr chair
commissioner Amer I think that when you look at that salary piece it's happening I I appreciate the work the board has done and the market uh study that we had previously but uh the change in salary for attorneys um you seen some change
within law enforcement that some of those have been going up and had some increases uh that's true to U but what we've seen is both uh the public defender had a a large jump I mean some uh attorneys with that 68y year uh amount of time within the public
defender uh space were getting up to $40,000 pay increase um you know so it's scaled you know within that but you've seen a lot of different counties that are reacting to that and and yes not just say Cass County that that's uh has
a higher amount or you know has reacted they we're having a very difficult time attracting anybody to fill open positions but throughout the state you're seeing definitely some U increases that are moving I think the the reaction to to hold and keep uh Good
attorneys um we want to be able to do that we want to be able to train our folks and that's kind of one of the unfortunate things I've seen a lot of folks that we had very good people we train them up for that one to two or maybe three years where they're really at that point of knowing their job well
and then they're jumping uh to another county attorney's uh spot POS you know closer to the Twin Cities uh but but across the state you're seeing it there is a jump so I I think that we're going to have to definitely take a good look at that uh that we can make sure that we stay very
competitive and so that is probably going to be one of my main focuses on this next budget right any other questions thank you Brian nope Steve if I could just comment to to the board I think that one of the things that that
we've talked about is is a good working relationship we have very talented people Katie and Pam uh leading the group and but one of the things that I greatly appreciate Brian for is his willingness to collaborate uh you know as elected officials uh as an elected
official uh Brian could choose to do some things and not do things and uh what he is is excellent team member uh and all he's parts of many of our committees uh whether whether it's him or his staff are reviewing documents or providing this board ongoing feedback uh
and just to share as I have in other way is that doesn't happen in every County and so I thank Brian and his team for for their great work thank you Comm M thank you Mr chair I was going to piggyback off that as well I think for the newer members on the board Brian and his office spent a
substantial amount of time in regards to applying for those early grants that we were uh successful with with the withdrawal man management component it it is not something that other Counties have in regards to that and it's really helpful to have Buy in from your
department and um it just speaks to how we were trying to triage all of the the issues that we are seeing in our community to make sure that um we're able to meet folks where where they're at and two in regards to that Z's
facility if you if that's the correct um abbreviation uh a reminder that we did plan for an ability to have a mental health Wing component of that withdrawal Management Facility uh understanding that we're trying to prioritize and
figure out how we can build what makes the most sense but as we have those discussions Statewide to also remind our colleagues that we are trying to mitigate all of those issues and become a regional Hub if you will as we've seen
cost savings as well for hosting something like that in our region thank you right thank you thank you all appreciate it all right next we have a closed session Brian do you want to Steve do you want to explain what we're going
into Clos session for Mr chair I would say we're going in close session to discuss some litigation uh issues that I'd want to bring to the board and and discuss with the board I think that's all we would need to discuss at this time Mr chair I'll make a motion to go into close session
session session regarding pending litigation per statute 13d d05 subdivision 3B second we have a motion by commissioner Mojo second by commissioner abary all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same motion
carried we are now in close session all right we are now back in session and our next item is our committee reports and I'm going to start today with commissioner Kraven Hof thank you Mr chair
um beginning last Tuesday on the 18th uh we had our monthly adult mental health meeting uh there was pre uh presentation by Ken leard from our Social Services office and she went through the uh Beal
the Becker clay aale Ren adult mental health initiative and it's a 2 million uh twoyear $2 million Grant that's brought to B she did break down um a nice breakdown of the funding that of that grant that
comes to Clay County um so she did a breakdown of that uh outside of that we did our agency reports there were um uh reports from about six of the providers that one as part of that meeting to
share with the others following um excuse me then on the 19th I had the finance committee for the historical and cultur Society did a deep dive in that um that budget again things were good for 24
we're in good shape for starting out 25 uh starting to look at our um our um Within reserves what's set aside for Capital and with that discussions are starting what our next Capital type
project might be um on Thursday uh the 20th um that morning morning there was a meeting of the uh suicide substance substance use prevention
committee Coalition anyway we uh as part of that um I think there were 50 plus members on that uh we had a great I mean really wonderful presentation from um regarding sources
of strength and it was a student presentation out of the morid high school um I there were six students there that were resenting this is a nationwide program that's been going on for decades um and help with mental
illness which uh can lead toward suicide um the kids talked about the eight protective factors that they work with and this is uh the idea of sour sources of strength is having a uh like a health
teacher start the group and then it's a peer supported group uh where uh PE kids in high school me helping in one instance that was a young man who was seven years old so he was in grade school and just bringing him uh help and
confidence and and putting in the right in the right direction and I'll just give a stat that was put down here this program stud shows has um they have statistic data showing has reduced um
suicides attempts by 29% so very very effective um after that I had a h meeting um revenues are building uh the money that uh we were part of giving H to do Rehab on the buildings they taking
place and with that more units have opened up and and uh they're continuing to get qualified people into the building so um the deficits on some of the buildings are coming back nicely um and rehab and and repairs
continue um probably the biggest thing and another part of the discussion was what fed Federal funding may look like um with uh things going on and um but for
now Doge I guess I'll just talk about that a little bit there's been layoffs on the federal level of of staff and so some of the money this is both uh HRA and also in housing supports um for
caplp um there's money that's been it's in the pot that needs to get delivered and uh at this point they haven't received both have um liquidity to keep um things in operation but at some point uh we'll be needing um that additional
uh funding to keep our programs going uh it did work out coincidentally um on March uh 10th through the 14th I will be in Washington DC uh as part of a group going with cap LP found out that D is
going to be gone and and um um the nation Organization for housing is going to be at the same time so on the 10th 11th I plan on joining Dar uh for housing and then um uh Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday I'll be along with cap LP group Mr Mojo as a oh yeah thank you uh I think as part of that um I was able to attend Washington DC as part of what he's talking about with that uh lobbying effort and I think it's important that we have a motion from this board to
approve out ofate travel for you during that time time so I would offer a motion to approve that I will also note that costs and per DM are paid for by capb I will second we have a motion in a second for out of state travel any further
discussion thank you KY seeing none all in favor signifi by saying I iose the same motion all right all right thank you and then to finish up then cap P was that night our annual board or monthly board meeting uh the main thing um it
was businesses usual there wasn't a lot in depth for approval just some out of state tribal requests for some conferences in the area of child care we had reassignments to some Comm committee assignments and um yeah that's all I'll
mention on that Jenny was there maybe she has something more and that's my reporting all right thank you commission moel thank you Mr chair last week I attended a county-owned property meeting we reissued some um some space needs and
conversations that have been a prior um in the past couple months in regards to leading up to that we're going to maintain a quarterly presence on this committee and then try to have some sort of official uh documentation uh to look back on I attended the February Planning
Commission that evening a variety of uh hearings a couple that we did take action and pass um one specifically that will come to the County Board for approval it was a unanimous recommendation we did have Board
elections uh Joel hilderbrand will be serving as chair and council member stien from Dorth will be Vice chair for the upcoming year then we did talk about our uh ordinance update the next day I attended the
legislative dialogue press conference in St Paul uh the related conversations that we have in regards to that shift in the governor's budget is pretty substantial for counties so I appreciate the invitation from senator rasmason for attending that was able to gather uh six
other Commissioners from all corners of the state administrators as well uh there were several hearings on that that we did attend uh you know as we look back at the conversation that we had earlier these are substantial shifts that will really bankrupt in essence
several counties I know that um God's Country Traverse County as we talk about uh boy when you're looking at uh increasing shifts of cost for over $1,000 per resident that gets um I mean I can't even go into how imperative it is that we continue to dialogue um how
that that looks um certainly there's been a lot of feedback that I've had from uh the community on this uh at some point maybe it looks at eligibility um you know I know we're U mandated in terms of the timelines to see people like you had initi or talked about so I
I just we have to get creative in figuring out how we sty with this cost shift would be I uh had great conversations with representative Keeler and Senator Johnson on our other shared initiatives I had a meeting with Metro
Cog the next day uh really um a long long meeting covered a lot of ground there's some uh the federal uh new changes uh are causing a lot of these committees to just restructure a little bit uh what projects go forward we did
uh prioritize some of the projects we followed the recommendation of the transportation technical committees and um will'll work with Min mad and North Dakota do on those I attended caplp that evening it was uh covered well by
commissioner cbof I had a variety of legislative strategic planning meetings not only with the chamber but the flood mitigation strategy meeting with uh the city of Morehead working to make sure that we have documents for uh DNR completed for the has mitigation funding
component continuing the dialogue that we have statewide um for the capital investment requests yesterday I attended the Leland Mental Health Center annual meeting I do have a copy of their financial report uh for folks um they are gave a pretty good a
10e synopsis of where they were 10 years ago where they are now uh really are continuing to critically meet the needs of our communities uh last year there was a um 7.4% margin of income or um coming in
and I think it's important to note that not only our counties but uh this organization particularly is under um I things look good right now but when you have openings in um scheduling that really changes that so they're dialing in how to uh work with appointments and
have as the least amount of gaps in scheduling as possible while still maintaining a a quick um access numbers uh they are also very concerned on legislations in regards to me uh ma and
what is um uh reimbursed expenses uh and we are continuing to um track what those cost shifts could be to lmhc and it could be um significant so um if anyone wants to
see that you can we had uh the annual board or the regular board of directors meeting after that we had board uh elections everything will stay the same for next year our new um County Social Service
director rotation will be the Deb shrom from otter tale and did talk a lot about um we will likely be um discontinuing a lease in Glenwood and um purchasing that
building and then did talk about uh needing to phase out the um site visits in Parker Prairie but everything in Clay County in the school districts uh the service level will continue to be high and uh then yesterday I had another
um meeting in regards to prtf strategizing last week I'm really excited to note that we had uh our Juvenile Detention uh non-secure bill was dropped we do have great support uh in the House and Senate on that and
then yesterday our um startup Grant funds for the prtf also drop so as we go to St Paul today we have three Senate and House file bills that will um add to our new uh briefing document to continue to advocate for those needs
sorry that my report thank you commissioner bar on last Tuesday I also had uh the county Olden lands committee any already reported on that I have nothing to add and then on Wednesday I met with Kathy McCay and commissioner
ebinger on giving me a rundown on the partner for health that we met on Friday so we had partner for health on Friday where it turn we talked about funding and right now Federal funding covers about 32.5% of the grants and state
funding provide Prov produces about 67.5% so if if Doge comes comes in or the federal government stops providing that we'd have there' be about a third of that that wouldn't be covered and then it looks like otter tale and wilin are going ahead and
leaving that group uh that's all I have Dave is the chair so if he has anything to add he can and then yesterday I had a West Central water district meeting where we discussed moving forward with that
project and Norman last week we provided the Monies to help move that project forward Norman County also last week at their commission meeting approved buying in with us so now we're just waiting for PK and hopefully they will do it next
next when next Tuesday I believe is on their agenda March Yeah March 4th yeah that is all I have for committee assignments thank you commissioner aringer hey on uh the 19th
uh met with commissioner bear Kathy McCay Steve Lori Johnson just basically giving him an overview of the state mandated services for public health and uh the dissolution of the current uh Public
Health Team uh or partnership on the 20th uh virtually attended the Clay County suicide and substance Coalition meeting which uh Comm Mr kravinoff has already covered but I do want to uh recognize
the students from Morehead that spoke on that there's some really compelling stories uh they've really got a sport system started out there that's working out great with the uh
um SOS source of strength yes and on the 21st we had the meeting with partnership for Health Community Health Board our quarterly meeting uh we
covered a lot of the financial updates from Brandon Nelson with uh Public Health he did an excellent job of showing us what we're contending with there is some funding that's got to be spent by June they're going to have a
financial Retreat to sit uh sit back and plan on how those funds are going to be expended uh had a discuss discussion on statutory Authority and responsibilities under Minnesota
statute um and we had a uh Statewide Health Improvement partnership to ship we had an update on their programs for healthy food and active living and we did discuss the dissolution of the partnership the otter
taale County attorney has looked at things we will continue with Becker County we will hold the partnership uh under the original joint Powers agreement they're going to have to have to write one up to meet their needs we'll
probably revise and ask Mr Melton to give a review on on changes to our our uh jpa and that completes my report I don't I'm sor what
I oh there was just a question if we had to have board action board action with them leaving the partnership for health no they've they've done it under the agreement they have filed we're not doing anything neither's Becker County basically we continue to to remain a partnership for
health otter tale and um wilin will will have to go through the work with the state and form their establish their own part partnership does that complete yeah that completes report all right so I have to
go back um back to February 11th for my report and that on February 11th we had the diversion Authority planning committee meeting and at that meeting we had a couple of updates one was regarding the funding a funding policy update and then we also got an update on
the P3 technical dispute review board and as you probably read in the in the media that that that board has decided decided to dissolve under its current and so I it's remains to be seen uh how
disputes will be handled moving forward uh and then we did receive an an executive director update from um Jason Benson his first update to the planning committee and the intention there I think was going over he's going to be going over Consulting fees and
discussions regarding about the potential for what what additional consult Consulting will need to be done in the future as this project moves forward on February 12th we had the budget and finance committee meeting for
the Dispatch Center uh the most of the meeting was in regards to the U budget review for 2025 and that all seems to be in order there was a need for some battery
replacements uh that are critical uh critical need and so there was um a request on that and and what we did is we basically authorized Amanda to use a current line
item to go ahead and because it's time sensitive and in the need for those to use a current light item to buy buy those batteries and then I at today's meeting um this afternoon's meeting the
full board will um review that and you know as long as it as long as you can stay within that budgeted line item there probably would not need to be any further action but in the event that that line fills up then it was it's
something that was not budgeted so um it end up needing to be done so action will happen on that say February 13th I did attend the Lakes Country service Cooperative meeting and
and in um Fergus Falls and you know I think they're they continue to be looking for a site in Morehead U for additional schooling I've reported on that before um there's they're I think they're working quite a bit with Brandon
lunic from the from the school district in trying to figure out what site would be best for that and then I yesterday I did attend the West Central re Regional water board meeting that uh commissioner be reported on I
um um there there still apparently the there's anou with um Marshall P County that at at some point they have at this point they have not been able to come to an agreement regarding a boundary issue so that's
that's more of an issue between PK County and Marshall pulk uh we did have we we have in our p in our packet for the first time a a bylaw proposal and I I did ask that um
they step and Lucas forward that to you Steve to and I one of the things that I want to do is to make sure that our County attorney and Lori review those bylaws and I think my biggest concern is
is moving forward what Authority uh they might have in taxing and their ability to um have implications on our our bonding abilities within Clay County so and I I
might have you know as Brian reviews it maybe if you want to talk with Ezra and I too we might be able to just share the concerns that we'd have that that we're not giving up certain abilities and
authorities um and that that completes my report Steve thank you Mr chair last uh Tuesday participated in the county or own lands meeting that's been well addressed that afternoon I participated
in the regional administrator manager meeting uh we talked a great deal about the the budget discussions with the governor that we've had uh today uh the 19th participated in resource recovery warranty issue uh discussion um also
participated in the chb update discussion that commissioner e commissioner beay spoke on on Thursday and Friday I was able to participate at the AMC Futures uh conference uh we heard from uh commissioner Tiki Brown uh from the new newly formulated department
of children's Youth and families uh they were set up last year they spent much of the last year being stood up they have 600 employees they're hoping to have 900 by uh by July again they were they took over some of the roles of
DHS uh uh we uh we had a legislative update from Mr uh hilgart uh in regards to the legislative session uh it'll be more on that this week uh at the end of the evening uh we received a a presentation from Senator Carla Nelson
from Rochester uh and she's on taxes capital investment transportation and jobs uh we heard about uh legislative update from her perspective and also her leader Journey also was able to uh give her a prtf pitch at the end of the evening um
surprisingly she had already seen our map uh and some of our documentation so that was uh that was fun she said she's looking forward to hearing more about that hopefully in capital Investments um the following day we heard from Carl Crawford from St Louis County in regards
to equity inclusion in the programs that he's run over the years uh on that afternoon I spoke with several of you on the way home from the Twin Cities uh on the 24th participated in the water district uh meeting that's been well
covered uh yesterday also had a department head meeting uh we did work uh as commissioner Mojo talked about we're working on getting uh the DNR flood mitigation Grant application uh completed I worked with Eric dods on that yesterday and hope to have
something completed by the end of this week um did hand out in regards to our our prtf I did have Jackie did update our document going from a prtf with a heading for the nonar juvenile facility
also she was able to coordinate the the new drawings of the facility uh and also the map that we've handed out previously on a single page uh where we've the letters of resolutions of support and so I appreciate her her efforts that we'll have access to this week um just a few
other different things uh Minnesota D is put out a pre-qualification uh for uh for the federal Broadband Equity access and deployment uh have heard from Red River Communications already that they're going to be looking to get pre-qualified uh to address any areas in Clay County
that are unserved or underserved uh in their area um and that concludes my report Brian Darren most everything has been covered that I have attended did as well the
county own lands committee um did sit in on the house Workforce and labor committee meeting um which deed presented about the paid leave and I think it was yesterday they finally settled on 88% as a tax starting in April I mean
starting in January of 2026 um the also had a meeting with MCC uh m m andc on the HR payroll User Group um we were talking about the ukg uh contracts that'll that'll be going
forward for the next couple years and had a meeting on Friday as well with the uh Clay County um ukg rep that we're for our um Pro Talent implementation hopefully we'll have that done by the end of March
and sat in with Brian and Steve on some of the door issues as well and um Steve Brian on the uh County looking at reviewing some of the county codes so that's it thank you Jen does that 88
is that on on an entire is there a ceiling on that or is it on um the ceiling is I can't remember exactly I think it's like one one one what is it 1.25% for 2026 they're starting out if
you remember it was 7 something and now they're going to 088 as guess starting point is that 088 on an employees full annual salary it is um the county has to pay at least 50% of
that tax so it would be 044 for the county the issue is that the rest of it has to be negotiated with the unions so they could negotiate that the county pays for all of it pays for some of it
but in the statute it says that the county has to pay at least 50% so that would be a 0.44% on the county and0 44% on the employees starting in January 1st of
2026 the deed the deed um presentation was interesting to say the least um I think they said they have 60 employees already hired and one of the legislators asked what the target date or the target number was and it's 400 so they have 60
of 400 hired so far um to run this program so uh it's going to be interesting come January 1st when this goes into effect
thank covers everything all right weed e Part: 2
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e good morning everybody it's 8:30 we'll call this morning's meeting of the Clay County Board of Commissioners to order for Tuesday February 25th our first item is the approval of the
agenda second move okay we have a motion and a second any further discussion further discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign motion carried citizens to be
heard I see no citizens in the audience do we have any online nothing Mr chair move on approval of payment of bills and vouchers whom to pay the bills second motion by commissioner karnov second by commissioner
bear any further discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign motion carried and next we have the approval of minutes from February 25th along with the work group session
minutes from February 2 or February 4th fourth excuse me move for approval of both thank you I will second okay we have a motion by commissioner evinger and second by commissioner bear to approve both sets of minutes any further
discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign motion carried all right next we will move into our 835 item and that's the request approval to hire for open
positions in public health and withdrawal management detox facility morning Kathy good morning Mr chair and Commissioners uh these positions for public health and withdrawal management
um the two nurse positions were in our when we were um gradually filling positions in preparation for the uh new fac facility so we could be uh staffed for double the capacity um their
positions that one is a for a full-time LPN um and our staffing um level for lpn's I I don't think you had it in your information sheet because it's not on mine but the Staffing is for 13
full-time LPN so I think I missed the 13 there um and Staffing for the RNs we have four full-time and four variable hours so we're not not doing as well with recruitment of RNs it's still a difficult challenge to to recruit our ANS so um we would like approval to
hire um and and these are budgeted so they've been in my 2025 request as well as budgeted so the one um full-time LPN position and for two full-time RN positions um if I also um requested if
we're not able to recruit um the ra ends um after significant amount of time if we could fill and open our end position with an LPN it would still be helpful to have a nurse we need to have a nurse on every shift um the RN's
oversee the licensed practical nurse practice so um we have an RN supervisor and we have two RN leads so if we're just unable to get an RN it would be nice the LPN are paid you know on a different grade lower grade so if we
arable to recruit that RN if you did that if it came to that where you would do that um does how would that work with still having the need for an
RN we we could fill as long as we have an RN which I think we'll have with our variable hour our leads um um on the on the shifts each shift or available by phone so if an LPN needs to check with
them about a specific um withdrawal medication or if we need to send someone in we'd still have an RN available by phone but yeah ideally we're hoping to get RNs we're we're hoping that's going to be the plan but we don't want to leave something open for six months and
when we could have an LPN coverage so if you did that then it would stay that way until maybe through attrition you would go back and try an RN again yes yes Mr chair that's correct and then we have the um one FTE administrative support Troy and I were planning to share a
person um I don't know how workable that'll be but that was what we budgeted for for 25 so one F administrative support spend you know two or three days in each of our um areas um we don't I don't really have an administrative
support person at this time so um that was also again in our request and budgeted any questions I'm just curious about um the number of people do you have over there presently I'm just kind of curious
on the count how many people are over there roughly sorry Mr chair and commissioner krainov I don't have the exact count we do have we do have 13 um well we'll have 13 LPNs with the higher yeah um and then we have um a number of
um detox technicians as well um and I don't know the number of that and then the RN level is the we have four full-time and four variable hour so so uh are you like half capacity over there right now or for staff we're we're
yes we're more than half capacity we're able to we're you know we're serving up to 23 at times so we have enough capacity because we have variable hour staff as well so we are still able to
meet that capacity level so it's been it's been of course it fluctuates but we still are able to have then open the two 16 beds on each side just out of curiosity do you have an easier time um getting nurses on a variable hour basis versus fulltime we
do I figured that absolutely yes y commissioner I have one question so so being fully staffed would have four fulltime and four variables hour for RNs right that we with with two more RNs
we'd like six oh you so fully staffed would be six full time okay that's what I just want to clarify thank you any other questions commissioner Mo thank you not necessarily a question in regards to this but I'm really curious
to hear how it's going over there I'm not sure if this is necessarily the appropriate time but um just wanting to maybe have some sort sort of an agenda item at some point to talk a little bit about how maybe we've seen efficiencies or expansion of services to the clients
based on the new facility I for one have been really curious to know kind of what our our daily numbers have been as well sure yeah when Troy gets back from his much needed time away I will um we'll make sure we um provide an update on
that all of the information the data and the and the work that's going on yeah all right so we have a a looking for a motion to approve the open positions for public health and withdrawal management detox facility including one full-time administrative support employee and one
full-time LPN and two full-time RNs I will make that motion thank you commissioner Bearer and we have a second by commissioner karabanov any further discussion any further discussion seeing n all in favor signify
by saying I oppose the same sign thank you thank you Kathy all right next we have a presentation on the C County Community Land Trust c c clay yes I'm sorry thank you commission for heing us
today we typically come out uh once a year or so and just going of give a little update on on our progress and um for those of you that might not be aware of the C Clay Community Land Trust I'll give you a little bit of a background there is some information within your packets as well for you to review at your leisure
um as well as another entity that we're looking to start um or exploring to start that I will uh talk about later but just to give you a little background quick on the land trust in 2015 there was a Workforce study completed that identified three major barriers to
retaining and attracting a skilled Workforce which included housing affordable retainable housing transportation and uh quality affordable child care in 2018 FM area foundation uh decided to
explore the creation of a land trust and thus uh created the C Clay Community Land Trust in 2020 they hired me as their first employee and director and since then we have spun off from the FM area foundation and we're a standalone uh nonprofit that specializes in
developing and retaining attainable Workforce housing uh throughout Cass and Cass County in North Dakota Clay County of Minnesota uh specifically the numbers that you have in your packet are related to Clay County just so you're aware and some of the things um I will talk a little bit about both sides of the river
but mainly Clay County here today we are um an entity that utilizes private and public resources uh generally a lot of uh state grants for Minnesota Housing Finance Agency in in fact over the last three or four years
here we have actually uh secured just over $6 million to uh produce 53 uh units of affordable or attainable uh long-term housing what we do is we invest those dollars into properties uh to bring down the purchase price so that
way somebody or a household that the 80% area median income within our area here can purchase a home give you a little bit of perspective for a family of four um the the area median income in our area is about
89,4 uh on the Minnesota side they would say that it's just about 990,000 so pretty close but $90,000 in in what we do is then we invest that money into the house and then through a shared Equity program that we utilize so when through our investment the families
of the household does not have to pay us back in but in return they are going to give up a portion of their Equity that they gain in the house the appreciated value of the house uh to to pass along to the next home buyer so by doing this model when we invest into a property
those homes go into the land trust and then stay forever affordable for the next generation of home buyers if we look um with that $6 million so far um we have uh completed 10 projects
uh excuse me we have seven homeowners right now two are in dillworth and five of them are in Morehead uh but as I look into the 2025 um year here we are going to be starting or will be closing on three more properties uh here by mid April so
um on the Minnesota side bringing us up to a total of 10 but then our build plan in our um acquisition rehab which I'll talk a little bit about our activities in a second we're looking to add another uh four houses uh newly constructed a matter of fact we have two that are on
the market right now there're two six-bedroom homes over in the Johnson Farm area in Morehead uh that are really Geared for multi-generational living or larger family living uh and then we're going to we're actually removing two blighted properties one in dillworth one in Morehead to then put up brand new
housing uh units as well as we're um looking defined current housing that's on the market that we're going to acquire and then rehab and then put it back on the market below uh the the Mark or the appraised price so again that way a household can afford U
buying we do three major activities new construction in Greenfield um so brand new Lots uh we do those we also do uh acquisition rehab so finding existing housing stock we do uh we do believe
very firmly in the IDE aidea of infill and also restoring our existing housing stock and protecting it so we do invest in those homes typically they're the ones that sit in the market that we've all seen um that no one ever buys and so uh because they've got a lot of
foundation issues or what whatever else and so we go in and clean them up if they can be saved we save them and then turn around and sell them to uh to an income qualified buyer the last program we have is actually called a home buyer initiated program or hip what that
program is is we have a set of money or pool of money that we utilize to offer uh home buyers a a subsidy or an investment if you will uh into a property to bridge the gap between what they can afford for a house and what they can uh and what the actual purchase
price of the house is give you a little bit more perspective a typical Land Trust uh homeowner uh qualifies for mortgage between 175,000 and 225 to 230 depending on the interest rates when we first started the uh Investments we were
putting into properties were about 50,000 uh that was also a time when interest rates were at 3% and so was a little bit easier but now our average investment has climbed over the last couple years to to 90,000 uh per per family uh
typical inside your packet there's a uh on the last page of uh this one I believe it's the last page there's just some Clay County Housing stats and kind of where we've been going and and what's going on on for the last four or five years 2001 the average sales price of a
house was 280,000 uh in 2024 the average sales price in Clay County is 314,000 just about 314,000 so um so obviously a huge difference in in pricing which certainly has priced out a majority of our uh
constituents and people we work with metrocog completed a study back in 2023 that stated that less than 50% of our residents within the C and Clay Counties have the funds available or the ability to actually purchase the average
priced House of 274,000 that was the average we went with back in 2023 again the average now is 313,000 so more and more people every year becoming priced out of the of the housing market and being able to call this place home in addition to our building
activities that I just described with the uh uh four new uh construction as well as the uh as well as the 10 acquisition rehabs we're also looking to place another 10 uh or so uh homeowners within Clay County as part of our home
buyer initiated program as well couple of those are some of the deals that we're closing here by mid by mid April so um one other reason why I wanted to come just kind of give you a brief update of where we're at what we're doing um but one other thing I wanted to uh just share with you all is
the uh idea that we're exploring to create a land bank uh and what a land bank does is it acquires property through a variety of ways whether it's purchase or donation tax forfeiture whatever bled properties uh and they turn around uh clean up the
site if it's brown field any kind of contamination clean it up clean up any kind of tital issues or any of those types of things and then safeguards the the property for the community benefit down the road so whatever the community decides that is the benefit for that
parcel of land that's what the lamb bank would look to sell it to an organization that fulfills that uh that call from the community it varies a little bit from the land trust because the land trust specifically works or more typically works with single family housing the land that the
land trust acquires is then uh safeguarded typically for single family housing development projects uh down the road or when the community sees fit where a land bank can be for housing it could be for commercial it could be Parks it could be anything uh really whatever the community and the community
leaders decide they would like to have on that parcel of land so the idea is for the land bank to to hold on to that land to make sure that we have good sensible growth as we continue to move forward uh as well as being partners with not only the Cy uh but also with the cities as
well I come here today to really ask for for a few things um Believe It or Not Financial is obviously one of them but it's not my main my main ask today uh what I really am looking for is for us
to find more ways to partner we all talk about affordable housing being a major issue within our community we are one solution that not only is to help today's uh residents but next Generation residents as well and for us to collaborate more with Clay County and
certainly our city leaders throughout uh Clay County to identify those properties BL of properties that we can help take down and rebuild to help us find those vacant lots that need to be developed um to help find those those households that might be struggling and need a little help to get back on track those are all
things we can do and help um but we want to be part of that solution and be Forefront uh on your mind when we come across those issues throughout Clay County so that that that's my first ask I guess I really have is as we think about rural uh Clay County as well how can the land trust uh be of service and
help I forgot to mention one of our rehabs that we have actually is in Barnesville so we're we're we're moving out um I will admit for our first four or five years we're in office of two recently three now um so I was being a little selfish with our time and kind of keeping it close to Morehead dillworth
um just because of travel time and things like that but as we continue to expand we are getting into the Barnesville we're looking to expand to Holly in a few other uh areas as well in Klay County so uh that that that's the first uh as can I can I ask you a question
regarding that so you mentioned um the blighted properties and you're you're trying to establish Lish this bank to that would maybe kind of foresee or oversee all of that so part
of if I understand it correctly part of uh blighted properties when it comes to um well I think for us it it's the municipalities are the ones who start that but when we get involved
if if there is tax forfeiture involved and then part of what one of the requirements that we have if it doesn't go to a regular auction it has to be for a public purpose and I'm just wondering would
your bank be considered a public purpose yes because what we would be putting back on there would be defined by the public of what to put there the citizens so I would classify it as yes being for for public good okay for public use now if if you're
specifically talking about a part if that's the if that's what we had to put there if that's um public use then that's what we'd have to put there you know then we'd have to work with developers or find the developers that would put a Parker whatever that public use definition would mean for each
property may maybe I could have rephrased that I think it needs to be a public entity public entity okay yeah so land bank can sell U property to for-profit nonprofit whoever right it could be like I said it again it really comes back to whatever the community would decide they want to have there
whether that's single family housing multi family housing Park commercial use whatever okay okay okay the the trick really would be for the L Bank to really um work with communities boards uh elected officials to determine what
needs to go there and then help work with those um with those entities to make sure that what they have envisioned for that parcel fits a much larger plan and we would help to facilitate uh meeting that plan thank you mhm the bank is concept is new to me
um so in in your Discovery as you're putting this together if have you already kind of identified potential places here's a great example of one I know it's not on on the Morehead side but a great example would be the
Mid-American steel um site in Fargo right where you where a land bank could purchase that be gifted whatever uh have it clean it up work to get it all cleaned up clean up all the title issues and then work with elected officials to determine what goes there next and then
to and then to select who that developer is to build whatever has been determined to go there so that that's a great that that's a great uh example certainly there's lots of vacant land but everybody knows that one's very contaminated so that's why I use that one as the example and then do you have a
um uh I'm familiar with your you know regular residential so when you're doing that do you have a um uh direct Pro program you work with uh Minnesota Housing Finance yes yep a
majority of our funding uh for the on the Minnesota side comes from Minnesota Housing Finance Agency so not only have we been able to uh be awarded just over $6 million from them we also um through our programs can work with their firsttime home buyer programs down
payment assistant programs and those as well so so there's other have they identified you as for certain block of money or you're just part of the competitive ho um in acquiring the funds as a pathway yeah yes correct yes so so
Minnesota housing uh sees us as a pathway to get more people into housing uh what they really like about the land trust uh model is the idea that it stays uh forever attainable for load of uh moderate inome households so their investment continues to grow as uh as the house
appreciates and the reason the bank is kind of interesting me and one of the things we talk about in our economic development is is U just more housing needed right and I I just I always think of Prime with what you're doing private
ownership but yet is there a way to create um more room for multifam there is um if we were to do that we're into the ownership side so if we did multif family we would see that
more as a row home or potential condos um which is something we have been looking at uh we're not 100% ready to do that as part of another collaboration uh we have we're working with Kay County Housing Authority in the city of Morehead to transition 17 of the
Maple Court units from low income renter or tenant occupied into owner occupied uh so that's going to be our first kind of test uh into that market for an HOA and kind of a condo association and so we're using that as kind of our springboard um to see how we could uh
build more density um and still offer some equity and some return on on their purchase okay thank you yep great you can continue yeah oh sure now I forgot where I'm at my notes I see how this goes I see how uh
re really um one other thing that's in your packet is uh I had our realtor pull a list of all the houses that are between zero technically 55,000 and 275,000 there's 53 homes in all of Clay
County that meet that requirement uh of those 53 20 of them are already pending inspection or pending uh an actual sale two of them are mobile homes and two of them are condos so when you look at that um or yeah 50 I think it's 53 or 58 no don't have it right in front of me yeah
it's 58 so there's actually 32 homes that are priced all of Clay County that are priced uh within a somewhat of a range uh for a typical CLT buyer in a lot of cases that's still in the higher end a majority of those are um certainly towards that
275,000 uh compared to the 230,000 which is kind of our number to to begin talking with our families so um certainly it's a need and if you look at uh the housing stats from 2021 that are included in your packet from this is all from uh the FM and rter Association but
if you look at those stats from 2021 to 2024 um our housing numbers and sales have been kind of Dipping some of that has to do with interest rates and a few things it's not just uh the housing crisis but that certainly does add to it and so um certainly housing throughout
Clay County is is kind of kind of teetering a little bit and again we're we're just here to to help try to get more more people in the home ownership at all levels with that I'll take any other questions that you might have um as well
or any other things you are dying to know about the land trust questions Paul Paul asked the ones I was gonna ask I would just want to point out Trenton's done a really nice job of uh continually engaging with with the
county uh I have a a close friend who has a child that's a young professional uh here in Morehead that otherwise didn't want to pay rent and otherwise wasn't probably in a situation to which uh they would have been able to buy a house and they were able to take advantage of this uh this um Land Trust
opportunity the other thing that I would note that very pleased to see is uh four or five years ago when Trenton first came on board uh as he mentioned earlier a lot of the the work that was being done was in the North Dakota side and I I think uh this board kind of challenged him a little bit to to look on the
Minnesota side and I think that it's uh one of the things that they've been uh been making a focus on each of our conversations about getting getting projects done here in the on the in Clay County and so we appreciate that thank you thank you Steve one thing I a couple things I did forget to mention that I
just briefly want to say when you think of of a lot of times when people think of low to moderate income households they don't always assume Workforce uh housing or they don't assume people that are in the workforce we we're uh we're a step we're a step up from Habitat for
Humanity and between conventional home ownership and what I mean by that is uh our homeowners are teachers are um nurses uh they are construction workers in the military they're you they're people that are on the front lines doing
a lot of the work throughout our community um in order to qualify for our program you have to be able to get a conventional mortgage uh so that really um is is a defining moment between like a habitat and us in the sense that uh
all of our people habitats are too but ours are ours are in the workforce and more more in professional jobs and need the help to get into housing so that's uh that that's one thing and then the other thing I just I I want to come back to if you ever want
to go see what $224 $25,000 buys nowadays let me know i' be more than been happy to bring you into some of the stuff that we've bought that we know we're going to have to tear down uh commissioner K you probably know this as well but I I've been in um a lot of
homes that are at $225,000 that you either have to tear it all the way down to the studs and start over or knock it down and and that's $225,000 it for our average professional family that's that that's a tough Market
to be in right now and as those numbers are going to continue to increase need and in the need for an organization like ours is only going to grow if you want to come see that we have some great blighted properties if you ever want to come see him please make sure you're up toate in your tetanus shot but um but it's uh yeah
we're we're doing a lot of different things I just have one more question so you you had just mentioned about um the these applicants needing to be able to obtain a commercial or a a conventional conventional loan how does that work
work when um part of what you do you require part of that asset to remain I I guess how does the bank deal with that when it seems to me that they wouldn't necessarily be getting the
full backing of the property yeah do you follow my question yes I I I think I do and I will uh try to answer the best I can we end up writing What's called the lease hold mortgage so it's a little bit of a different mortgage um we actually have uh five preferred lenders we work with that are willing to write those
mortgages uh so that that helps with that in the ground lease that we enter into with all of our um with all of our homeowners and then there's some Riders and stuff to do with some uh Fanny and Freddy uh mortgage Riders but uh that's
when and if we ever had a homeowner that becomes delinquent or maybe uh foreclosure uh the land trust has the right of first refusal to purchase that home back and that's typically what we what we would do um if we have the cash available either that or sell it to
another income qualified family as soon as possible reason being is we don't want the banks to hang on to it any longer um but if it did get all the way to a foreclosure um we're part of that process as well so um and making sure that the bank gets made whole as well good thank
you commissioner Mojo thank you just maybe more of an informational item for me uh do the residents of the home pay the taxes or does the Land Trust pay the taxes residents of the home pay okay so a couple years ago we dealt with maybe a clerical issue or a couple of the
properties had shown up in the publication at the end of the year because we're property tax delinquent is there a mechanism in which the land trust is notified prior to that sort of publication or how do we mitigate that
yes uh actually those properties were held by us at that time when they were being delinquent um and that's because we were working through primarily one of them was a lot that we had on romkey Park that we were working through a deal that took longer than we expected and so
we we're all up to date now but that was that was that um since then um we as a nonprofit for any land that we have uh in development is is actually um property tax free or exempt I guess so uh so that that has alleviated that
issue in the case where we do have uh we are notified when people become uh delinquent on their taxes uh property taxes as well so then we would start to work with them to figure out a plan to get them back on track and making sure that they don't lose the home or if they
you know job change or something has happened within their family life event get out of that home as soon as possible before um recks creates havoc on their uh credit and those things so thank you so that's one other thing to
note um Minnesota uh state of Minnesota has passed a property tax um change for land Tru so all Land Trust homeowners are actually taxed underneath the 4D uh property tax rate which is at 75 uh% um I know it's a little bit lower now for
multif family but but for land trust they're uh property taxed at 75 which um certainly helps them to get into into home ownership and maintain it thank you so for families you for families that might want to know more information or
reach out to you how how do you how do people contact you and and are you do you collaborate like with the Klay County H yeah yeah we we collaborate with as many people as as possible we we truly believe um you know Community is part of
our name uh and we truly believe that in order for us to make an impact within our community we need everybody at the table um to help us do that so we do partner with Klay County HRA we uh we also do with cap LP Beyond shelter habitats uh other other organizations as
well anybody that that is serving a group of people that could potentially get into Home Ownership we're we're partnering with or ideas on how we can expand we're partnering with as I mentioned before we're partnering with Klay County HRA for the M uh as well in the city of Morehead so
so we'll have a few of those homeowners here in the next few months as well uh transitioning um and I forgot the first part of the question now I think you oh Holly Contex the the best part of it I forgot uh you can find
us online certainly at cclay ct.org you can always give us a phone call at 71-54 828 uh that information should be in your packet as well but uh you can always email us as well but um yeah you can email us at hello cclay ct.org as
well typically we find our homeowners through those partner Avenues um or our buyers through those partner Avenues as well as uh we list all of our houses through the MLS so we find a lot of people that way as well good anything
else just thank you for all you do for the real estate industry and for building our community thank you let us know how we can be part of the solution thanks for the update thank you thank you come mhm good morning morning good morning hi
can I sit yes you certainly can have have a seat we have with us fiai this morning and is's going to give us an update on the mor cultural Mall seam amedi as well yeah and seam yes good good
morning uh good morning thank you for having us uh me and siama Medi um we are doing a lot of groundwork and uh very excited to report back to you and kind of uh tell you our journey and where we
are with the cultural mall and see where we can partner and get the County's assistance um I will start with kind of giving you a background of uh this work we started two years
ago and uh we first you you know looked at uh our community we have done an study uh of Morhead community and surrounding area if this project is viable or if the community need it we
have done a lot of interview met with a lot of different leaders and uh the result was um it was received well and the community wanted to see this project to come in downtown so what we also have done is uh collaborated
with the um yamam Center to kind of um showcase the entrepreneurs who will be interested in the cultural mall so we do something that's called cultural popups
every month uh where everybody comes together from different culture uh the new Americans uh the indigenous Community uh we have three different organizations who are uh collaborating
um immigrant Development Center IND indigenous Association and uh Morhead um inclusive Morhead so those three organization have decided to come together to Showcase and kind of you
know uh make uh test the water see uh if these entrepreneurs are interested so we opened up to the community and it was well received and we have done three popups this far and we like to welcome
you to our next popup it's uh March 11 uh if you have time from 5: to 7: please come support our entrepreneurs uh Morhead is growing FIA where is that located uh it's in yamam Center March
11th from what uh from 5 to 7 thank you um so you will see a lot of entrepreneurs who are more Harian uh people who do handcraft um you know different uh we had bakeries we had so many good stuff
you will enjoy please take the time to come um Morhead is growing uh it's the fastest growing um Community outside Twin City metro uh with 56 language spoken in our schools and more than 10%
households speak language other than English our community culture um our culture is very rich uh is one of our greatest asset however we currently lack
um dedicated spaces to celebrate share preserve and a diverse culture and traditional that makes Morhead unique um the cultural Mall will fill this
critical Gap by creating a vibrant H uh for cultural exchange traditional art and Heritage preservation this space will future local artists uh cultural performance cooking demonstration and
education programs share our community diverse and traditional for a future generation so we are uh going to the um to give a chance to our community but also the Next Generation to celebrate
and see see uh there are older people who came to this uh Community we are still keeping so what you will see within the cultural mall it's uh bakeries food from different areas and we are working with uh those um
entrepreneurs and we also applied a grand through de that collaborates with M State um and also um Prairie oh yeah cap caplp caplp and
mate to train entrepreneurers so we we have secured a grant that will train and make them uh ready with their certificate um so we have done a lot of ground work we are many and mighty
organization we are underfunded but we are very hopeful and very uh uh uh you know on time and trying to push making sure our community have a chance in our area we have built a lot of relationship
seam will approach you she is our organizer on the ground to meet everybody and we are making sure our voice comes to you so thank you for having us this morning I sent some materials to show you uh you know the
draft of the architectural draft and also uh the C cost of the project is 7 million the good stuff we have done is we secured bulk of that money almost 3 million uh the the money to buy the building the square American Square
building um we secured that money and we are raising other money working with OCS uh which is uh Department of Health and Human Services Federal but we also don't know uh with all the Hoops that we are
jumping through that if this year we will submit an application we will wait to hear from them so that we will work with the county uh to get a a support uh because it's a Health and Human Service uh
funding that will come from Washington DC and that application opens up in June so I will be informing and be in contact to let you know to give us a a support uh to to be able to apply uh for that
kind of and then we also introduced a bill through the state uh SF 907 um that's 4 million that will complete our budget so um partners of um greater good they are based in and
Washington DC gave us a loan to buy the building and then now we are going uh to look other funding through Department Health and Human Service that will bring it to us to 3 million now we are seeking
4 million through the state and so we have done a great work uh cam was with me uh the mayor was with us the chamber was with us uh we had Community Support we presented all the letters of support
from from all the entities that are in Morhead businesses uh nonprofits government yeah thank to administrator for the letter of support thank you so much uh from the county
Support also we presented they said we were the first group who had so much support uh so we are praying and working so hard um in the house side we are having hiccups but we are working so hard to get in there uh so thank you so
much for having me I know uh I think it was a couple of years ago that commissioner Mojo and I had the opportunity to to First sit down with you in the mayor's office and Morhead regarding this and and a very very interesting and exciting uh opportunity
I know um the cities has similar things that are very successful uh Winnipeg is just an amazing area for cultural activities like this one of the things that I I and I know commissioner M will probably want to come too but the the outline that you have here when you have
small businesses that go in and they're they're going to go in there and maybe be able to Showcase their um what they like to do maybe it's I almost look at this as a an incubator type of a deal where people
can go in there and get a start there get name recognition and knowledge of their product and maybe then be able to move out and expand their business into the community is that is that a pretty accurate absolutely it's a place to grow
entrepreneurs to uh you know give them knowledge space to start affordable uh you know if we do what we are doing right now and raise this money we will be able to rent the space in affordable
cost um rather than the regular cost uh in the other area and then we will have a g you know a you know cap three years or four years for you to be in there after that you have to present to the
board to tell them that why you should stay um so or by or by then maybe they have the ability to move out onto their own yes so it will be a very great asset for our downtown it will make our downtown a vibrant place a place you
want to go smelling good food and a lot of stuff we are working so hard and that building it will look so good we we will pick up the building itself we will have mezanine up uh we will create a wedding places I am working with Kevin Day in
day out to show him my vision so uh we will get there for now we only secure the building we don't have the money to do the ration but we are working so hard all right commission moo thank you maybe just uh a followup to the work
that you're doing at the capital thanks for all of us had to Pivot a little bit after last session and I know that uh before there was a different building and I think you've pivoted and I'm really excited about the proposal before us uh the Immigrant Development Center
is seeking uh Legacy funds I know that uh before we were all kind of maybe seeking capital investment was able to listen in on the hearing last week Senator kuc and the others that testified did a really great job of advocating for that component and I also
would say as people who need to continually seek um creative ways to fund the projects that we want you've done a really great job of finding outside Partners to help reduce the amount from the state that you're asking so uh continue to um have support from
me in this I think it's a great opportunity to not only um uh show how diverse our citizens are but also be an incubator for emerging businesses I just really think this is is a really great
proposal that um you know I I know in conversations with you FIA no one is more passionate than you but uh really excited to um have this in Morehead I think it's wonderful commissioner bear so you You'
secured the building correct so you bought and then is it just food going to be sold in this or is it all goods and wees uh it will be foods gift shops handmade stuff so you will have an idea if you come the popups you will have an
idea of what businesses will be there uh so you know handmade jewelies a taor a you know small gift shop that you know caters to minority Community or you know
it's Unique to the other community for fun of it to buy one piece and you know so and then it will be food and then it will be music and you know uh we will have you know uh some community members
singing and that's what we did last uh popup we had a an artist come uh and this popup we are planning to have another artist come so uh we are just planning to have real fun and and and
very vibrant place um are you are you confident that the parking would be sufficient I was talking to Kevin he said the parkings uh he said you know the railroad has extra parkings so we can we
need to start negotiation or talking to them or maybe leasing the parking from them uh we are not there yet so when we get there we will work with them yeah I I I just compared to where your previous uh consideration was it seems to me
there was considerably more parking there and I just want to make make sure that it it the the draw that I potentially see from this can be significant and I don't know that everybody who would be coming there will be riding public transportation to get
there and um you know the the bus comes to the downtown area and so with the new Americans they also uh you know they they uh ride together you know two three people will come together that will save
us parking lot but we will work with our neighbors with the railroad to kind of secure more parkings um FIA if you can work with the railroad you are far more powerful than I thought
but I agree I um I think it's part of the emerging designs and I I think there's some more parking that will be designed into the other components of the downtown uh development to I just want to find a place that I can get some baklava like that's all I
want globet yes got a source for that you have a source yes I do commiss kbov yeah just uh uh congratulations on getting the place um uh I have a question on your popups
are are you doing that monthly and is it always a same date of the of the month they are monthly as of now and they have been the second Tuesday of the month to complement the historical society's open
Museum yeah on Tuesdays and that's when the yumc center is open till 8 okay just a good compliment okay just F the public so yeah and it hopefully it'll lead into the farmers market and grow that in Morehead happens on Tuesday
starting in June great all right thank you any other questions all right well hopefully you'll keep us updated on the progress yes um I'm thankful you guys wanted to hear from me yeah I was like Yay let's
go I would like to spend more time and have coffee with you guys I apologize for my uh shortcoming but soon as everything comes down I would like to get to know each one of you and as you um talk about that funding application
that comes in June make sure that you are in contact with us and we can certainly provide uh new letters of support for them that from from the county as well so thank you so much all right thank you thank you all right thank you Highway Department is here yes good
morning give us another million dollars this morning no just fining some projects out oh boy okay all right Justin you have several items for us this morning yeah so the first item I have is requesting approval of the final
contract voucher for three Bridge replacement projects sap 14598 078 sap1 14610 034 and sap 14637
004 so who Excavating LLC was the general contractor on this one I thought they turned out really well um one of them was on County Road 115 one on Casa 10 and one on Casa 37 so the sap 14598
078 the final amount to be approved would be $179,400 sap 14610 034 final amount to be approved would be 467 $467,900 37004 final amount 29
29655 any questions for me all right we will take these individually for motions to follow along with mot requirements I'm sure so I'll make a motion to approve the final contract for um sap is uh
01458 or 59807 the amount of $179,400 14610 d34 in the final amount of 467 9552 I'll second motion by commissioner
Mojo second by commissioner bear any further discussion any further discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign motion carried all right Mr chair I'll make the motion to approve sap 04-
637-0000 4 in the amount of $296,500 by commissioner bear second by commissioner evinger any further discussion discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I I oppose the same sign motion carried all right next
item yes so the second item I have is requesting approval to advertise for three Bridge replacement projects tied into one contract the sap 14598 d07 n this one is on County Road 51 just south of col stock that's currently closed
because it's heavily restricted and the we can't even drive over it with a plow truck so we're really excited to get that one done the second one is sap1 14599 105 this one is in Goose Prairie Township that's this one's kind of been hanging out there for a little while so
we're excited to get that one done and then sap1 14599 d114 is an Elton Township just south of Downer and I will say I have talked to both Township sh and they approved of the projects and their share so these are all Township Bridges two of
them two of the 598 079 is on County Road 51 right by the Comstock Trap Club Mr chair I'll make a motion to approve the advertising of the Three Bridges as proposed with the I also I don't think it made it in your packet
but um I am proposing a letting date of March 25th I'll modify my motion to include that date I I will second that motion all right we have a motion by commissioner MOS second by commissioner bear any further discussion just just
one question have you notified the townships lately that you're going to put those out for bid um right after this meeting I will I have a question just curious about the time frame um it would be this summer
sometime so we usually keep our contracts pretty open they're box culs so they usually take about a week to install once we get them um usually we Center our completion dates around beat Harvest so it doesn't screw anything up
there okay thank you all right so we have we haven't voted on that we we haven't voted we have a motion in a second huh we have a motion in a second yeah that's right now okay all right any further discussion further discussion seeing
none all in favor signify by saying I iOS the same motion carried thank you all right oh there he is okay all right morning good morning
morning this should be pay-per-view this should be it should be hi all right we have with us this morning our veteran service offic Kurt can good
morning good morning Mr chair board uh vsso 2024 I uh we'll start uh we figure this out we have a little agenda you can see most of this is Air Force planes because Kim put this together she's
retired Air Force but uh I noticed that about 10 o'clock last night we're g introductions the staff some County comparisons some payments that we've done property tax comparison and then any questions at the
end uh myself Jennifer uh she's been there 15 years now and the new hire replacing Bonnie is Kim Administrative Assistant uh October of 24 I believe was the uh date some things we do besides
counseling and being an accountant we uh obtain military documents assisted enrolling VA Health Care uh compensation claims is mostly what we do that's about 80% that's uh trying to link a injury uh
called service connecting uh um their injury that they have now to Service uh meaning uh it could be three ways a primary meaning there's inservice documentation of that injury a secondary condition means they devel
veloped a condition off of the primary that we service connected or presumptive usually each combat theater of war has presumptives that the VA has conceded uh for example Vietnam bets diabetes uh if
they have diabetes and they were boots on ground Vietnam those a presumptive it's already conceded uh Home Loans uh Financial assistant DVA benefits ultimate honors burial
uh widows uh uh pensions voke rehab uh appeals um employee assistance and then General benefits we we work a lot with uh these service we provide in house we
have subject matter experts outside the State education North Dakota job service for helping vets with jobs so uh additional resources at our fingertips to help us uh basically solve each scenario that the vet brings us and each
one's different throughout the day so we do a lot One-Stop shop I call it if you're vet in Clay County uh we're the people you need to see if we can't handle it in house someone outside a house can handle it
so ssap it's a state program uh they do special needs grants uh now they're called veteran relief grants that's a once in a-lifetime Grant that helps the folks uh uh kind of income based uh low income uh that that those are for example I put a
air conditioner and a furnace in a vet's house I I've done a flooring last year we've done Windows uh it's it's they don't have the extra money to uh do these house projects we've done vehicles uh we we put a lot of effort
and time it's it's state money we like to use state grants before we try to explore our our own money so can I just really quickly just for the public listening uh you know it's really great to hear what we're doing to help vets but I think it's important to hear what
he said is I put a floor in we did this I mean these are our local office staff doing the work to help the veterans so I just um you know when when we go to places and hear about how you meet
people where they are I mean that is the testimony to that continued service that you yourself also serve the the country so I really appreciate that and you know we take pride in that our main goal is service you know we're a service industry and they they present the
problem we solve the problem we are problem solvers and we put it on us that we've done it we did this we did that our staff we work hard tireless throughout the day so uh Dental Grants subsistance Optical
grants so they have grants available this is just a little comparison of how much Clay County works the state have has us at 3548 veterans in Clay County I don't know where they get the number I'm just going off their annual report I swear we're about
10,000 but uh uh but that's what they have that's what I'm going to report uh R ssap dollars for 24 was $74,800 in comparison uh Anoka six times more
people uh six times more veterans in their County and they did $57,000 so and then Dakota to make it realistic they're seven times more than us and they beat us by 13,000 so little
Old Clay County at 3548 is uh matching up with the big dollars and the big cities so uh great work by our staff putting in Grants utilizing State funds uh to get these these folks uh Dental Optical and uh fix
their house so uh 2024 retroactive payments total dollar amount issued to Klay County veterans in 24 1,810 12,48 compared to 1,1 111,000 in23 so we
did $700 more, of work uh in 24 which is retro and monthly payments retro meaning that uh the claims been going on so long we got them 50% which is a rough numbers a $1,000 that goes back a year that's
12,000 that's a retro payment a lot of that includes I got a guy $147,000 but his went back to 1975 so that's a lot of money the goal always my goal is to get Clay County vets service connected compensation in efforts that
they spend their money hopefully in Clay County so in Morehead so that's always my intent does it happen no but uh it surely helps they say money doesn't fix everything and and it doesn't but it sure helps with some of our vets and not only that getting
them service connected and getting them healthare is huge Health Care is huge to spend make sure they don't have to buy it privately uh total number of Clay County vets survivors uh spouses receiving monthly payments from the be is5 58 so
1,558 vets in Clay County are receiving some sort of compensation uh from the VA here's your property tax I had it all the way back to 16 but we'll start with 2020 uh Clay County had 113 uh disabled
veterans on property tax exemption meaning uh in the state of Minnesota property tax exemption starts at 70% service connected you can go from from 0 to 100 70 is Minnesota 70 and higher you get property tax meaning 150,000 off
your market value or if you're 100 permanent total you get 300,000 off your market value so between 70 and 100 2020 we had 113 last year we we caps at 200 folks so and the City of Morehead in
2020 had 186 uh they've shot up to 309 so 2020 we had 299 to 509 in 2024 receiving some kind of benefits so
commissioner Mojo thank you Mr chair uh you know as we look to um how we're increasing that number is that could can we contribute that to a better awareness are we doing a better job of um educating folks that that exemption is
out there um or is it um has it been broadened in the legislature in the to encapsulate more people how do we yep uh in the state of Minnesota most are aware of of their benefits it has a lot of do work inside each office okay uh because
if they're at 10 they know they need to be at 70 not only is 70 is property tax it's a nursing home benefit uh for cares their expenses are paid in a in a contracted VA home or a civilian that takes VA money so 70 is a a nice number
this has to do a lot back to us following up I hate it is you know I I put it on us if they're at 50 and we want them at 70 you know what else do you have you make them aware that we always tell vets if you get something
new diagnosed let us know because you don't know if it's service connectable uh let us know can we secondary that off of primary so we are always thinking to try to Max maximize their percentage most veterans just stop but once we get our hands on them what
else can we do for you don't make it to 70 and I think that's the important part is I mean we talk a lot about why having local boots on the ground helping to do the work and so um if it's a tricky application process or if it's just um
they just need a little extra help to do that I think it just speaks to volumes to why it's important to have um local folks able to help out with that that very true uh Minnesota North Dakota very fortunate to have one in every County I hope they never go away with that uh
bigger States we get calls weekly I call Kim the mafia now I'm glad I hired them because if they get to me I'm going to take them but uh uh we have a lot of other states and big States they have to travel to the regional office or their VA to get help
and they just don't do it y so we've we've serviced many outside of Clay County in 2020 since I've been here so we we we do take pride on helping other people at the end of the day so uh legislation wise back to you there is a
there is a bill in to increase the 150 to 200 and the 300 to 400 because we have not uh I don't know the Senate file number on that but we haven't increased in 12 years okay uh it's a big deal to us it's also a big deal of the the
answer the question is who's going to pay for that that's always the question at the state level uh both Finance committees have to go through that to see who's going to putot that bill so see Kurt um commissioner e has a question for you yeah just I want to I want to say
something to validate what you're talking about you and your team I have a family member and you know who and lived in one of the biggest areas of or one of the most densely populated areas of this state and did not get a
clear-cut assessment of what he was entitled to after being a platoon leader in World War II and you got it for him you and your team and you didn't let up until you got what he deserved and what what he had coming and we're very
grateful for that but you can't live in this town and you can't knock on doors when you're campaigning without hearing about your people that's right and I know other folks that you have you have you have been Relentless in trying to explore every
opportunity for them and I am really grateful not just because it was I had a family member you you helped but because there are people in this community that are very cognizant of the fact that we have a better vsso then you're going to find just
about anywhere else and they're going to get the benefits that they they worked so hard to be entitled to So when you say that and when we say people from parts of the state I've had that experience with you and uh you're not stretching the truth a bit this is where
veteran can come and if they're entitled to benefits you and your team are going to find it for them and I'm grateful for that and uh a good point the team I I definitely don't do it by myself you know I learn every day Jennifer mentored
me still think she does today so we'll let we'll let that go but uh we got a great team second to none and you're right someone comes through the door if they're a veteran in Clay County they shouldn't be homeless and
they should have the most benefits that they can get so and we try every Avenue total forms completed this is off our software uh 1854 those are total forms that we completed and upload it into the uh I
don't have a comparison for 23 uh supporting doc doents 1952 communication I do have a comparison from 23 this year we did 30 3,891 Communications phone office visits facts anything to communicate with
people veterans and outside organizations 23 we did 34 32 so running kind of the same 3,000 mark on uh contacts so uh very good for our office
any questions short and sweet uh main focus always is uh about the vet so we uh don't have any questions but I I um you know the people around here know you for your U your
humor uh you're our Dancing Chef at our County picnic yes uh on an awful lot of things but today we got to see the important side of what you do and and how serious you take it yeah and I've had the opportunity to send a few people to
you um and every one of them that I've done that to they've gotten back to me and they've said thank you for sending me to Kurt because he's awesome yeah and and you really you know it kind of goes to what everybody else is saying here that you really you really work hard for
these veterans and what they are entitled to and deserve right so thank you for that you're welcome appreciate you sending them to me and that's a fact you wouldn't send them to me if I didn't do my job so I appreciate that I do have one last thing uh I'll leave it with
Jackie it's a documentary in May at the homes theater in Detroit Lakes at 7 so it's a military and Veteran documentary it's my debut uh movie star so you guys are all welcome to pick up a flyer so it's at the
historic homes theater there'll be some bring some tissue I'm sure I'm crying on that thing actually I know I'm crying on that thing because it was in my house so but I'll leave them with uh Jackie and you sure have that
and welcome it's open to the public so well it's always good to get your updates thank you for yes yes appreciate and always always continue support you guys for the last decade have always supported the veterans of Clay County and continue to so I can't ask for more
that we will do thank you all right all right we'll have one more item before we take our break and it is the request to enter a contract with sevita to provide semi-independent living
skills good morning Quinn morning Mr Mr chair Commissioners I here to uh request approving a contract with sevita for semi-independent living skills like to provide a little bit of context first um semi-independent living skills are
community- based support services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who require assistance to live independently but do not require a higher level of care the goal of Sals is to support individuals in achieving greater Independence self-sufficiency and social inclusion
inclusion excuse me while reducing Reliance on institutional or more restrictive settings Sals promotes skill development and Community integration so individuals can live successfully in their own homes or other community- based settings uh to qualify for sales they have to meet all of the following
criteria be over 18 have a developmental disability or condition defined by law and statute require support to function independently in the community not be at risk of placement in an intermediate Care Facility not be using Home and Community Based service waiver programs
not be residing permanently in an institution an ICF or a nursing facility Sals providers assist with individuals with various aspects of daily life such as skills development like money management meal preparation grocery shopping social and Community integration such as developing
relationships social skills using public transportation Independent Living support like obtaining and maintaining housing self- administering Med medications employment assistance in job coaching and skills training TR as well as decision- making and advocacy and helping the individuals make informed
decisions about their own Daily Life currently we have six contracts that provide or six contracted providers that perform sales that's Access Blue Sky connections CCRI LSS and productive Alternatives uh we are looking to add cev uh it would provide clients another
choice in providers and red reduce weight lless times for citizen accessing Sals with the other agency due to their limited staff capacity uh I have included a draft contract for your review uh I would look at getting signatures if approved right after uh
board today uh sales is a county administered support service which is funded through a state allocation it's an 85% state funded 15% County match our total allocation for the 2025 budget is
$26,250 the 85% of that is 221,50 Per County share at $39,375 budget so I do not anticipate any Financial impact by adding another contracted provider I guess with that I would yield for any questions so the amount of the amount of the whole
program it's it's it's got a ceiling on it correct and then you kind of divide that up based on these different entities correct y yes commissioner bear what is the what is the weit time um I I'd have to have Holly here to tell you
specifically what it is I asked that question as well of just just concerns about the ability to provide it uh all of our contractor providers have staff uh it's just there's a lot of turnover with that with the staff so when somebody comes in then the training period there ends up being a little bit
of a wait time so again hopes that sevita would help and assist minimize that weit time right anything else anybody else I think I think it's great to be able to include one more provider to fill that Gap uh for sure so that I'll move to
make a motion to uh prove a contract with s to provide semi-independent living skills second all right we have a motion by commissioner K krainov second by commissioner iringer any further discussion any further
discussion seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign motion thank you Quin can we really really really quickly I know this isn't on the agenda but last week I was asked to go to St Paul to be part of uh press
conference and then um subsequent conversations and testimony to talk talk a little bit about the cost cost shifts for your department in regards to three areas uh waivered Services the Minesota sex offender program and some mental health cost shifts uh there's a lot of
analysis if you will as to what exactly it would cost counties If This Were to completely go through so really appreciate Quinn and his staff for getting uh numbers together as quickly as possible on on on um our awareness I
guess uh it's looking like it will be approximately $3.2 million that are shifted to counties of mandated expenses from the governor's budget um that is about a
6.95% increase to what our Levy would be if it would have gone through this year uh as we all head down to St Paul today I think it's imperative that we continue to uh raise awareness to what that shift exactly does these are um these are
vital residents that are getting these services but really make making clear that this is just not a sustainable way to do good government and um so any information that you're staff can continue uh to pull out of that to get to Steve and us would be really really
helpful I know that uh CC had a hearing U meeting with representative Keeler and two uh representative Hicks and Kieran I think were also in town and um just as we uncover what these look like need to be part of a solution and raising that
awareness yeah I I want to thank you for providing commissioner Mo with that information and thanks to commissioner Mojo for for being down there and speaking on behalf of all the counties in regards to this and this goes back a little bit in time but I remember there was one point in time when a lot of uh
these services this goes back to when we were really in I think around after the 2008 in that area when there was significant um economic issues going on and and ultimately passing everything on
to the counties through property tax just is not sustainable and and unfortunately in some of those times even though they were mandated Services we had to develop waiting lists and I I hope we don't go back to
that and don't have to go back to that but we also need to send a message to who really is accountable for providing those services and it certainly was never the intent of property tax to pay for those and when when commissioner Mojo talks
about that being shifted to the county that's exactly what's happening and so we're asking people who are already having difficult times staying in their homes because of high property tax we're even adding on more and I so I hope we don't get to to
that but at some point in time we might have to start looking at that and and point fingers to where they should be pointed so and anyway that's my little narrative on this so commissioner eringer yeah just to jump on the boat this this isn't just a Clay County
problem as commissioner mooso and and the other uh members of the of the County's commissions um stated in their press conference this affects the entire state and it's going to affect the level of of
care and the quality that we can provide our citizens and so this isn't cutting the state budget this is simply shifting it over to where there's not a reliable source of Revenue unless we tax people on their property tax and that word
needs to get out and it needs to be viewed by the public and I'm certainly looking forward to the next couple of days where we're going to be able to express it as an as a organized group with AMC say to to the our state legislators hopefully the message will
resonate with the governor I appreciate that and thank you thank you for your advocacy at the state level too to get the word out I I greatly appreciate it very good all right we will take a five minute break e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e are we the video's on right all right we are now uh back in session our next um agenda item is an there's the annual
update from our County attorney Brian Milton good morning Brian morning Mr chair thank you uh Commissioners thanks for having me I have uh Pam Foss here my uh criminal Chief as well as Katie stock my civil Chief they're they're here for moral support for me or if there's more
technical questions I guess so so the brains are the operation brains right as soon as you actually have any question I'll turn to them so uh thanks for having me here on the first day of spring I really appreciate that so but uh anyway with that uh I uh regular an
annual update and and giving you information uh often times I'll give you kind of a snapshot of time and how some of our statistics have gone uh and even after last year uh looked at doing it uh a little bit different to try to give you kind of a a bigger picture uh if you
even saw in the Star Tribune recently they gave kind of a a large scale update of uh statistics that we're seeing uh within Minnesota and the bigger cities uh and so I want to kind of uh give you a little bit more of that uh and kind of give you a broader picture uh and then
narrow down at the end um anyway our mission obviously is uh to promote Justice work on Public Safety uh work uh in regard to Effective Government um and and make sure that we're Prosecuting crime um and representing uh Clay County
and the different uh departments across the uh across the County government and we do that uh through uh work with assistant Clay County attorneys uh they our front and center uh for making charging decisions uh working to provide services uh working with victims and
going to court uh so again uh my office myself we conduct a review of criminal and civil statistics uh from 2000 through 2024 so kind of a 25 year look back uh trying to look at identifiable Trends uh and
identifying future areas of expected growth I think if you really look at it the issues of mental health chemical dependency and just obviously population growth what all seem to lend towards uh growth in both criminal and civil cases within the county uh our public uh
safety Focus uh strong Pro prosecution uh this board's focus on supporting the uh the prosecutor's office supporting policing Services has been greatly appreciated uh but goes to the fact that we have a safe community and a strong Community obviously we work across uh
County um departments work with u Social Services work with Sheriff's Department police department other non-governmental uh organizations uh to reduce uh crime uh and hold U hold criminals accountable
um through the system so if you just look at the population growth within Clay County uh over uh the last uh 22 years or so that was the latest uh statistics that were available uh our growth has been 28.5% from
51,000 uh plus up to 6 5,929 people uh I think it's important to look at Cass County as well just because we are a community and a lot of criminal activity or other activities that happen don't know that there's a river there we're constantly and we work
very much with our partners uh the gang uh strike task force or other drug task force all work together uh with Fargo PD uh Cass County uh Sheriff's Department uh and of course Cay County uh Sheriff's Department the mor Police Department but
if you look at their growth uh very large growth 55.9% over that time period up to 19273 for as comparison the US population growth was uh about 18.1% and Minnesota's growth uh
population growth was 15.9% so we know that we're doing well we've we've heard before and we talk about we're one of the fastest growing uh counties outside of the Metro uh and that is true but with that uh is both a good econom iic growth but obviously it brings certain
things that we constantly have to deal with and be ready for so when you look at the size of the Judiciary within Clay County uh uh Clay County maintained three judges in the county until 2006 that haded four a fourth judge so we
have four judges within the county we also have a Judicial referee uh that individual can take basically cases that are not criminal so any guardianship conservative ship um our commitment case es uh all types of those kind of things
to allow for the other four judges to remain in court longer so again it just impacts how much time we're in court uh typically you would maintain three to four assistant attorneys per each judge so when you look at that we're we're currently at 13 attorneys uh if you look
at our growth from back in 2000 when I started in 1998 we were a five person office uh we were low uh and we had a lot of a lot of overtime a lot of stress and we need to grow with that um which we did and it's been a good thing we're
we're close to right sized right now we're probably a little bit low um uh but it we'll we'll talk a little bit about growth here in the upcoming future um if you look at just nationally uh crime statistics uh the FBI have shown that U generally speaking the last three
years you've seen a dropping um of especially violent crime and and some of those higher level crimes um somewhat to that that pre-pandemic level uh generally speaking uh crime in the county uh has generally moved up uh an
upward uh pattern along with population growth uh when you see some of these statistics coming up you'll see 2018 stands out as one particular that's when we uh dropped the city prosecution service contract they went to their own
service they have three or four attorneys now uh doing their own work and and and tackling the the things that they do and you'll see where some of those things dropped what you'll really notice is certain items that they do say misdemeanor DWIs ours dropped greatly
but other things uh increased during that time frame really because it shows we had a backlog that we couldn't get to because we didn't have enough attorneys coming through that City attorney contract uh when those were when we shed those uh those jobs and everything else
we were able to tackle some of the other things that we needed to do 2020 being that first primary Co year stands out too you'll see where some uh items definitely increased other things dropped uh again certain things like DWI where there weren't as many people out
at bars you can see and and correlate that those uh pretty much stood stood out as as a area that dropped so just uh jumping into some of Statistics that we have if you look at you know again our our community is a very safe Community our our murder rate
is is pretty low we don't have that um say where you look at some cities that have a lot of high gun crime or random uh murder crime that type of thing we don't I mean they majority known people relatives uh you see that 2020 really
stands out you know a couple of those uh we had a a fairly significant uh pretty awful murder but that help included several people that helped that person try to get away with the crime so so that was four people all in one murder we had a different murder that had two
people involved so uh so although that stands out U um you know at least six or seven kind of involved two different cases 2024 we did see an uptick uh and so I don't know if that's more of an anomaly or just uh you know what we're
seeing but uh generally speaking across the country uh violent crime and murders went down and you see where we did drop down but at least 2024 stood out our criminal sex that number 10 that that's not say
10 Mur it includes murder attempted murder um but also aiding and abetting so I mean again just like that other one 15 you might have some crimes that had a couple different ones that had people that assisted and and Aid in those murders correct yeah not all that's not 10 10 complete Mur I don't have that
exact breakdown but there are definitely aiding within there or criminal sexual assaults again you can kind of see that 2018 where you had that jump up uh likely from uh backlogs being worked on uh
2020 um you saw a big jump in our criminal sexual assaults um whether that's really attributable to attributable to covid I'm not sure you can say but you can see it's it's to a degrees somewhat leveled out uh dropped a little bit in the last uh couple years
our assault and robbery um cases as you can see we did have a high uh Watermark there 2020 uh we have seen drop in that I think nationally a lot of uh discussion where you see a lot of drop in robberies and thefts u a lot of things such as
people not carrying cash as much anymore so people aren't robbing people because they don't have money on them uh cell phones having more uh restrictions uh another reason that they say is probably a reason people aren't stealing as much cell phones and then cars having some
security pieces put to them so some of those cars aren't and really on the as far as the robberies go and some of that stuff that carjacking side of things we haven't really seen phenomenon as much in Cass and Clay County where they sell that in the Twin Cities A lot of people
uh smashing cars snatching stuff out or smashing cars and and robbing them with their car that didn't that phenomenon really at least up to this point is not hit uh to us our domestic assault uh again the feling domestic assault um uh
that's out there uh you can see our increases have kind of gone along we didn't track that or it really didn't the felony domestic it actually was put in in 2001 I believe but some of those uh didn't get tracked
for a long period of time um again you can see uh our jump after 2018 again likely some backlog uh But there again one of the interesting phenomenons 2020 with covid we saw a drop in in that
felony domestic side of things and and again as you see we've seen some dropping down last couple years or or some of leveling out and then as I mentioned um after 2018 you saw a big drop in the misdemeanor domestic assaults within our office didn't mean
that we cured it or it stopped it just means that those are being charged out mostly by City Morehead so you see that volume of cases and and kind of a leveling out of where we have uh just not a lot a lot of misdemeanor domestics out in the county our burglary uh cases
uh again a big jump in 2018 um um somewhat of leveling out and then and seeing some drop in the last couple years I do think some of our there could be a little bit of attribution of uh some of our case drop I mean I know nationally they've talked
about it but we also know that Morehead has had a big drop in how many police officers they've had on the street they've been down somewhere around 13 police officers for pretty much all last year so I think some of that uh drop could be attributable to them just not being out as much on the street they're
starting to see some of those numbers and getting some of those people back up um again just like I talked with the robberies our theft forgeries uh you can see where they been climbing along with population growth uh some drop over the last couple years and then I I think you look at like something like Crim damage
of property I don't I don't know if you can Trend that I mean it looks like it's just kind of all over the board but I would also just say that's kind of a you could look at that and say it is what it is which is kind of typically a crime of passion I mean we're a college town we'll have sometimes where some college
kids they get drunk and they go right off a campus and Destroy eight cars and we've got eight new cases uh and then another year we we're way down so I I think again just that can be that uh difference of different years and different people maybe having a lot more
or a lot less so I I I don't know that that's a good one you can Trend too much on but our drug cases I think are are definitely worth uh looking at and seeing what we've had both we we break them out by both the city Morehead uh and then the county I I think one of the things is interesting we had a a law
back in 2005 where we put the pseudo fedrin behind the counter uh at uh U at pharmacies we locked up um the an hydros ammonia back in 0405 out of all those cases probably 10 to 15 of those were manufacturer cases
people manufacturing methamphetamine in the county we were seeing that increasing every year and then after 2005 I don't think we've since 2005 the last 20 years had a manufactured case I can't think of one and so you look at sometimes certain laws that really do
help it changes it but I will just say as you look at that we don't have manufacturer but we have a lot of uh you know whether it's methamphetamine other drugs uh fentol coming up from Mexico um you know us being a I29 and I94
intersection is a big reason we you know a a big uh piece on the on the drug uh trade area just because there's a lot of transportation that goes we see a lot of cases that come through Highway Patrol as well as our own uh drug uh
folks working on the cases uh through City Morehead and the sheriff's department again uh you saw 2018 have a big jump uh I think that again is attributable to uh some of that backlog that we were seeing and having difficulty getting rid of and then a
drop uh in 2020 and then we've seen kind of that drop over the last couple years years here and then with the counties uh somewhat the same uh kind of Trends you can see a big jump in 18 um kind of just a leveling off in 2020 uh some drops in
the last couple years there as we um have kind of leveled back out to what we saw pre 20108 I just wanted to point out and I'll talk a little bit later you know we are a big proponent of and a supporter and we do a lot of work with the drug court talk about that in a minute but I
think one of the main points we like to point out is there's a lot of good work that's done in drug court to get those folks that you know need uh treatment and need help and don't need to go to prison but there's definitely some of those serious folks uh that we just don't want on the street so some of our
biggest cases you know our this year alone we're up from about we had like 28 or 29 uh first degree a aggregated aggravated first-degree drug cases uh we're up to 37 this year some big numbers 27 PBS of meth seized over
12,000 gram um this year uh 6 and 12 pounds of cocaine so so again we see methan phetamine cocaine but then also Fentanyl and I think uh I think all of us were at the intergovernmental conference that we just had and that
discussion of uh xylazine that we're seeing that's just a higher level drug of fentanyl um that uh that doesn't react the same way to the to the Naran that's previous it's a actually it's a elephant tranquilizer but it's
getting mixed into drugs uh and pretty serious it'll it'll kill people I know that Fargo had three overdose deaths uh in the last month um pretty much a tributal xylazine so I think we're going to start seeing that more that's a trend that I expect we'll probably see you know coming in the community so we've
seen our first case last year uh that had that in some of our uh our fentanyl our DWI um again the the felony DWI was established 2001 uh and then 2004 that concentration for alcohol went
from a 0.1 to 08 and you can see where' 04 you really saw a jump in some of those felony cases um again that's Finly gross misdemeanor gross misdemeanors are done by the city of Morehead so you saw where a big drop uh after 2018 uh and then we're kind of at
leveling off that U what we see if basically most of those are really felony DW I that you're tracking either four in in 10 years or that higher alcohol concentration then misdemeanor DWI uh same thing uh that drop in 2018 a little
bit more of a drop in 2020 our flings definitely continue to increase most of the way again along population we see that happening a lot uh we did have a big drop in 2023 uh but back up kind of where we expect that level to be in in 2024
and our commitments uh you can just see continue to increase that's probably one of our biggest areas that continues to increase along with population growth uh along with just recognizing you know the issues that we have to treat mental illness um those numbers continue to go up we had a drop off last year but I do
expect those numbers will probably look to will probably bounce back be a higher number next year our juvenile delinquency cases um I don't know that this really is attributable to that backlog necessarily it could could be a little bit but you can see where it really jumped in in 18 uh it's kind of
leveled off into that 289 per year amount of cases um you know we refer about 150 per year to restorative justice so that's kind of that number I expect will probably level off to a large degree and then our child in need of protection or service cases um you
know have stayed pretty steady over the last five years in that 70 range so I think um kind of my main point to me want to put this together I mean we I think we're a a county that's that's smart with our growth expect and
plan for growth we don't just react to it uh we currently have the four judges seated the one judicial referee uh I expect it likely we would see an expansion at some point um to a fifth judge maybe over the next three to five years and six judges uh within 10 to 15
years I would say I I think that Clay County is set up very well for judicial expansion uh here within the clay County Justice Center uh with the potential for two separate courtrooms to exist within here in the third floor with really not much El setup uh or or additional cost
so I think we're we're well set for that U the county attorney's office itself it's physical location uh we're well set up for um probably a likely 10 years of growth I I know I just took uh commissioner beay through there you know we have an area that's uh you know we move some things around within the um
the Justice Center and have uh the victim services on a different floor and they have room uh potentially grow but we have room for uh potentially uh you know additional attorneys and and two or three additional legal assistants um I expect the attorney's office will likely
need uh two additional attorneys over the next three to five years one in criminal one in civil um and somewhere you know in the next 10 to 15 years probably another two beyond that so four attorneys within that time frame I think probably the biggest thing uh to bring
up and discuss is just the maintaining a strong Workforce is really of primary importance ensuring Market level wages are paid reasonable insurance and employee friendly work environment um I I would say that you know I think we have a good office we've had people that
have even left and come back I've had people that have left and said boy I wish your office was down here in the Twin Cities with us um but we have seen uh a a pretty good amount of folks leaving over the last several years I currently have five uh attorneys that
are one year or less of experience um and so the last two people I've had leave uh have left because of wages because of cost and so when we look at uh where Fargo is uh or or Cass County uh States attorney's office or Becker
County uh our pay is is definitely lower than some of those so that's some of the things that I uh would expect to look at uh and talk about in our next upcoming budget so probably the main thing I'd want to point out from all all this uh growth in crime I expect will continue
will likely rise alongside growth in population uh drug issues chemical dependency problems mental health issues will all continue to rise and be Co co-mingled with other crimes that we expect to see uh I do think that Klay county is well positioned uh for
continued housing of criminals with the Klay County Detention Center that we put in back in 2018 uh serve the citizens well well past I I said 25 years but even well past that uh it has the ability to expand even with an additional pod um depending on how uh
things go or what the board sees in the future uh additional growth of that can even occur uh growth in commitments we expect will continue uh as well as dealing with other mental health aspects chemical dependency issues uh and require renewed
uh Focus um we have positioned oursel well uh with the state-ofthe-art withdrawal management detox treatment facility I think that is going to serve the community extremely well over the next 25 years um I do think that one other area adult mental health treatment
within Clay County uh will continue to rise I think at some point uh discussion and need for uh intensive res residential treatment services facility uh would be needed or be something and I would just say you know back uh when Ron
and I one point Ronda Porter and I were talking about what was a major need within the county was that u a prtf or an Earth's facility and of course the answer was it's both but if you look at you know we had to make where we focus our attention at and and definitely need
and you can see where and I'll I'll bring it up here in just a second our uh our need for prtf uh is without question um but I think the other component a mental health component at some point uh later in the future that Earth's facility will be something that we
should be looking at but um County attorne office we definitely uh have a strong focus and and emphasis on the specialty courts uh the drug court and Veterans Court continue to serve folks well I didn't go into too much of their statistics because I know uh we
regularly get a update brief from the court itself but we definitely have a lot of involvement in that we have our Domestic Violence Court which is an accountability Court to uh assistant tracking and and working to rehabilitate offenders and then the new DWI court is
just starting uh we' just kicked that off um so I don't even have any numbers for that I don't know if we've even enrolled any particular people but we have started that uh process and definitely appreciate the board's support of that I I think it needs investment and support from the county
and from the judicial system our growth in juvenile cases I I think I mean you could see where we're kind of stabilized across the board uh you know through investment schooling extracurricular activities uh juveniles to gather um I think our male and female
Clips program is without question one of the best Helping Hands to help kids that are coming out of the system so they don't have recidivism that they get on the right uh platform uh so that is a terrific program uh through Clay County
use of restorative justice uh directly in the in the schools has been a huge uh help I think we're just seeing a lot of payoff with having that directly there and getting those kids treated immediately medely so we're just not seeing them you know with recidivism and
then back in the courts and then juvenal mental health issues will continue to be an issue for the county uh the plan investment in a juvenile prtf is is very much warranted and strongly encouraged so appreciate the board's work on all that uh as we continue to work to to try to get that within the county and we
know just from all of our discussions the the importance that is across the entire Northwest uh area if not across the whole state to to help serve kids with mental health issues uh I think our uh Social Service
issues increase in ships cases will continue uh making Social Services one of the largest departments and greatest amount of potential growth uh likely we'll see those cases grow uh within the county attorney's office to have to serve those uh as new families move into
the county uh and that's why I think whatever investment Improvement we make towards the family service center over the or the campus however that develops over the next 5 to 10 years is obviously important and just working uh as a board for Clay County assistance and
homelessness food security family response and stabilization will all help in keeping our crime numbers lower so I appreciate your work there uh our victim Services continues to work uh tirelessly to help serve victims we we have you know approximately a thousand victims
per year that we're working with and and over two to 3,000 contacts with with folks each year um and that to increase um in 2023 we had 152 cases turned over and it was approximately that same
amount in 2024 I didn't have the exact numbers for that but I think that's a a huge area uh of growth um for the future and just finally the the area I want to talk about is technology it obviously
plays a very important role I work with Rory a lot on on things uh but our one of our biggest things that we see now is all of the uh law enforcement departments that we work with all have body cam now uh in the past there were some that did some that didn't they all
do now uh and that takes up a lot of space that's a uh constant it thing where we're fighting where we have things stored we're maxing out on storage we have to uh try to delete things and manage things uh but I think
that's going to be a future issue U I've been working with u it as well as people in my office Consulting with other County Attorneys Office some of the things they're doing to help manage um uh that amount of uh stuff uh for cloud
storage and video storage and that will be a primary concern uh for the future uh we do also utilize Zoom uh that's helped kind of stabilize how much space we need or I think we would have grown quicker and gotten a new judge quicker but because we're using Zoom to do
certain amount of things we don't have as much in person but we're going back to more person inperson stuff you know as we go so I think there's a lot more that we'll see or that future growth of actual bricks and mortar so I I think just uh some of the
things that we look at for future growth uh staying AB breast of of the law of changes in the law uh training uh appreciate our training budget that we have to be able to train uh new attorneys to keep them current you know I think some of the things we'll look at there's a there's a mental health court
that St Louis County does as a specialty court that might be something worth exploring and and seeing what they do um Sterns hennipen uh and Ramsey County all have uh facility service animals currently uh to help with victim needs and help with court testimony that's an
area that we're exploring and looking at uh the trial advocacy program like again just part of the training uh there's a trial advocacy we need to just keep expanding and working on that uh Pam has been integral and in developing that and that curriculum and training uh young
attorneys so uh and so there's probably some other things too that could be worked on pre-trial practice that kind of thing and then expansion potential expansion of restorative justice programs I think as the board knows we applied for up to $500,000 of uh RJ
grant money I know commissioner ebinger was at a a meeting that we had to try to kind of bring in some of the community we're still waiting to see if some of that is but I think probably our our biggest piece of that would is if we could have an RJ person dedicated to Morhead schools and an RJ person
dedicated to out count schools I think would really pay off a lot of benefit right now it's a single person covering everything so that's some of the work or expansion I hope that expect we'll see here in the near future um with that uh if you have any questions that's uh
really the completion of my uh part I just want to thank everybody and thank the board uh for its support and support uh regarding Public Safety one of the things that uh Brian mentioned early in his report was you know I don't know if you caught that he talked about a a future judges chamber
on the third floor and um the need for that and of course um we have a couple of places that might need to be have some shifting done and one of the things that Joel Olson has done and we've we've done some had some preliminary
discussions through our building committee uh about this actual boardroom uh someday probably needing to be converted to another judges chamber and so that we have started the discussion about where would that go and
we're looking at the potential for um an addition uh expansion of our government center where a future board meeting nit could be um certainly that's a a little timeout we're kind of um looking at when
our most recent Capital Improvement Bond expires and then we'll be incorporating some of those projected plans into that so I think the time frame that he talked about at 3 to five years is certainly one that's um of significance that we
need to be preparing for I know commissioner bear got his first uh opportunity in the building committee to hear some of these and there's there's an awful lot of stuff in in the plans that's going to need to be done in the next 3 to 5 to 10 years and and we're certainly planning for that from a finan
Cal standpoint to keep the tax burden low at the same point in time as as um providing the needs that we have and I think the goal of this building for a long time has been to be a complete Justice Center and that would include um
modifying this third floor to meet those needs so we continue to plan for that through our building committee I you know haven't had a lot of chance we haven't really talked about that part of it with the rest of the the board but I thought today was a good opportunity to
throw that out there for the first time to let you know that we are preparing commissioner abor yeah Brian um having seen what we see with law enforcement and the positions there and the salaries going up in order to retain
people uh how and I think all of us received uh some information from one of your former attorneys about how we're losing a Competitive Edge on salaries uh has that uh you you
specifically cited by Becker County but are we losing people and is uh is part of that the salary increases that that the public defenders have gotten or I know that wasn't factored into
the calculation of what our um our attorneys are paid because it's a different group but where do we stand on that yeah uh thank you Mr chair commissioner Iger I think that when you look at that salary piece it's happening I I appreciate the work the board has
done in the market uh study that we had previously but uh the change in salary for attorneys um you've seen some change within law enforcement that some of those have been going up and had some increases uh that's true too U but what
we've seen is both uh the public defender had a a large jump I mean some attorneys with that 68y year uh amount of time within the public defender uh space we're getting up to a $440,000 pay
increase um you know so it's scaled you know within that but you've seen a lot of different counties that are reacting to that and and yes not just say Cass County that that's uh has a higher amount or Becker you know has reacted they were having a very difficult time
attracting anybody to fill open positions but throughout the state you're seeing definitely some U increases that are moving I think the the reaction to to hold and keep uh Good attorneys um we want to be able to do that we want to be able to train our
folks and that's kind of one of the unfortunate things I've seen a lot of folks that we had very good people we trained them up for that one to two or maybe three years where they're really at that point of knowing their job well and then they're jumping uh to another county attorney's uh spot
POS you know closer to the Twin Cities uh but but across the state you're seeing it there is a jump so I I think that we're going to have to definitely take a good look at that uh that we can make sure that we stay very competitive and so that is probably going to be one of my main focuses on
this next budget right any other questions thank you Brian no Steve if I could just comment to to the board I think that one of the things that that we've talked about is is a good working relationship we have very talented
people Katie and Pam leading the group and but one of the things that I greatly appreciate Brian for is is willingness to collaborate uh you know as elected officials uh as an elected official uh Brian could choose to do some things and
not do things and uh what he is is excellent team member uh and all he's parts of many of our committees whether it's him or his staff are reviewing documents or providing this board ongoing feedback uh and just to share as I have in other wayes that doesn't happen in every County and so I thank
Brian and his team for for their great work thank you commission Mel thank you Mr chair I was going to piggy back off that as well I think for the newer members on the board Brian and his office SP a substantial amount of time in regards to applying for those early
grants that we were uh successful with with the withdrawal management component it it is not something that other Counties have in regards to that and it's really helpful to have Buy in from your department and um it just speaks to
how we were trying to triage all of the the issues that we are seeing in our community to make sure that um we're able to meet folks where where they're at and two in regards to that Earth's facility if you if that's the correct um
abbreviation uh a reminder that we did plan for an ability to have a mental health Wing component of that withdrawal Management Facility uh understanding that we're trying to prioritize and figure out how we can build what makes the most sense but as we have those
discussions Statewide to also remind our colleagues that we are trying to mitigate all of those issues and become a regional Hub if you will as we've seen cost savings as well for hosting something like that in our
region thank you right thank you thank you all app all right next we have a Clos session Brian do you want or Steve do you want to explain what we're going into Clos session for Mr chair I would say we're going to
close session to discuss some litigation uh issues that I'd want to bring to the board and and discuss with the board I think that's all we would need to discuss at this time Mr chair I'll make a motion to go into Clos session session regarding pending litigation per statute 13d
d05 subdivision 3 B second we have a motion by commissioner moo second by commissioner AB all in favor signify by saying I I oppos the same motion carried we are now in close session e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e all right we are now back in session and our next item is our committee
reports and I'm going to start today with commissioner krabbenhoft thank you Mr chair um beginning last Tuesday on the 18th uh we had our monthly adult mental health meeting uh there was pre uh presentation
by CH Le fired from our Social Services office and she went through the uh B the Becker clay aale Ren adult mental health initiative and it's a two million uh twoyear 2 million Grant that's
brought to Bal she did break down um a nice breakdown of the funding that of that grant that comes to Clay County um so she did a breakdown of that uh outside of that we did our agency reports there were um uh reports from
about six of the providers that one as part of that meeting to share with the others following um excuse me then on the 19th I had the finance committee for the historical and Cultural Society did a deep dive in that
um that budget again things were good for 24 and we're in good shape for starting out 25 uh starting to look at our um our um within our reserves what's set aside for Capital and with that
discussions are starting what our next Capital type project might be um on Thursday uh the 20th um that morning morning there was a meeting of the uh suicide
substance substance use prevention committee uh call anyway with uh as part of that um I think there were 50 plus members on that uh we had a great I mean really
wonderful presentation from um regarding sources of strength and it was a student presentation out of the morid high school um and there were six students there that we resenting this is a
nationwide program that's been going on for decades uh and help with mental illness which can lead toward suicide um the kids talked about the eight protective factors that they work with and this is uh the idea of sour
sources of strength is having a uh like a health teacher start the group and then it's a peer supported group uh where uh PE kids in high school me helping in one instance it was a young man who was 7 years old so he was in
grade school and just bringing him uh help and confidence and and putting him right in the right direction and I'll just give a stat that was put down here this program said he shows has um they have statistic data showing has reduced
um suicides attempts by 29% so very very effective um after that I had a HRA meeting um revenues are building uh the money that uh we were part of giving H to do Rehab
on the buildings they taking place and with that more units have opened up and and uh they're continuing to get qualified people into the building so um the deficits on some of the buildings are coming back nicely um and rehab and and repairs
continue um probably the biggest thing and another part of the discussion was what fed Federal funding may look like um with uh things going on and um uh but for now uh Doge I guess I'll just talk
about that a little bit there's been layoffs on the federal level of of staff and so some of the money this is both uh HRA and also in housing supports um for cap LP um there's money that's been it's
in the that needs to get delivered and at this point they haven't received both have um liquidity to keep um things in operation but at some point uh we'll be needing um that additional uh funding to keep our
programs going uh it did work out coincidentally um on March uh 10th through uh the 14th I will be in Washington DC as part of a group going with c cap LP found out that Dar is
going to be gone and and U um the National Organization for housing is going to be at the same time so on the 10th 11th I plan on joining Dar uh for housing and then um uh Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday I'll be along with cap LP group Mr Mojo as a oh yeah thank you uh I think as part of that um I was able to attend Washington DC as part of what he's talking about with that uh lobbying effort and I think it's important that we have a motion from this board to
approve out ofate travel for you during that time so I would offer a motion to approve that I will also note the costs and per DM are paid for by cap lb I will second we have a motion in a second for out ofate travel any further
discussion thank you keny seeing none all in favor signify by saying I I I oppose the same motion all right all right thank you and then to finish up then cap he was at night our manual our monthly board meeting uh the main thing
um it was businesses usual there wasn't a lot in depth for approval just some out of state tribal requests for some conferences in the area of child care we had reassignments to some committee
assignments and um yeah that's all I'll mention on that Jenny was there maybe she has something more and that's my reporting all right thank you commissioner Mel thank you Mr chair last week I attended a county-owned property meeting we reissued some um some space
needs and conversations that have been a prior um in the past couple months in regards to leading up to that we're going to maintain a quarterly presence on this committee and then try to have some sort of official uh documentation uh to look back on I attended the
February Planning Commission that evening a variety of uh hearings a couple that we did take action and pass um one specifically that will come to the county board for approval it was a unanimous recommendation we did have
Board elections uh Joel hilderbrand will be serving as chair and council member stien from Dorth will be Vice chair for the upcoming year then we did talk about our uh ordinance update the next day I attended the
legislative dialogue press conference in St Paul uh the related conf conversations that we have in regards to that shift in the governor's budget is pretty substantial for counties so I appreciate the invitation from senator rasmon for attending that was able to gather uh six other Commissioners from
all corners of the state administrators as well uh there were several hearings on that that we did attend uh you know as we look back at the conversation that we had earlier these are substantial shifts that will really bankrupt in essence several counties I know that um
God's country trying County as we talk about uh boy when you're looking at uh increasing shifts of costs for over $1,000 per resident that gets um I mean I can't even go into how imperative it is that we continue to dialogue um how
that that looks um certainly there's been a lot of feedback that I've had from uh the community on this uh at some point maybe it looks at eligibility um you know I know we're U mandated in terms of the timelines to see people like you had initi talked about so I I
just we have to get creative in figuring out how we sty what this cost shift would be I uh had great conversations with representative Keeler and Senator Johnson on our other shared initiatives
I had a meeting with Metro Cog the next day uh really um a long long meeting covered a lot of ground there's some uh the federal uh new changes uh are causing a lot of these committees to just restructure a little bit uh what
projects go forward we did uh prioritize some of the projects we followed the recommendation of the transportation technical committees and um we'll work with Min um mad and North Dakota do on those I attended caplp that evening it
was uh covered well by commissioner kraban I had a variety of legislative strategic planning meetings not only with the chamber but the flood mitigation strategy meeting with uh the city of Morehead working to make sure that we have documents for uh DNR
completed for the has mitigation funding component continuing the dialogue that we have statewide um for the capital investment requests yesterday I attended the Lakeland Mental Health Center annual meeting I do have a copy of their financial report uh for
folks um they are gave a pretty good a 10e synopsis of where they were 10 years ago where they are now uh really are continuing to critically meet the needs of our communities uh last year there was a um
7.4% margin of income or um coming in and I think it's important to note that not only our counties but uh this organization particularly is under um things look good right now but when you have openings in um scheduling that
really changes that so they're dialing in how to uh work with appointments have as the least amount of gaps in scheduling as possible while still maintaining a a quick um access numbers uh they are also very concerned on
legislations in regards to me uh ma and what is um uh reimbursed expenses uh and we are continuing to um track what those cost shifts could be to lmhc and it
could be um significant so so um if anyone wants to see that you can we had uh the annual board or the regular Board of director's meeting after that we had board uh elections everything will stay the same for next
year our new um County Social Service director rotation will be the Deb shrom from otter tale and did talk a lot about um we will likely be um discontinuing a
lease in Glennwood and um purchasing that building and then did talk about uh needing to phase out the um site visits in Parker's Prairie but everything in Clay County in the school districts uh
the service level will continue to be high and uh then yesterday I had another um meeting in regards to prtf strategizing last week I'm really excited to note that we had uh our Juvenile Detention uh non-secure bill
was dropped we do have great support uh in the House and Senate on that and then yesterday our um startup Grant funds for the prtf also dropped so as we go to St Paul today we have three Senate and House file bills that will um add to our
new uh briefing document to continue to advocate for those needs sorry was thank you commissioner bar on last Tuesday I also had uh the county Olden lands committee Jenny already
reported on that I have nothing to add and then on Wednesday I met with Kathy McCay and commissioner eer on giving me a rundown on the partner for health that we met on Friday so we had partner for health on Friday where it turn we talked
about funding and right now Federal funding covers about 32.5% of the grants and state funding provide Prov produces about 67.5% so if if Doge comes in or the federal government stops providing that we'd have there' be a about a third of
that wouldn't be covered and then it looks like otter tale and wilin are going ahead and leaving that group uh that's all I have Dave is the chair so if he has anything to add he can and then
yesterday I had a West Central water district meeting where we discussed moving forward with that project and Norman last week we provided the Monies to help move that project forward Norman
County also last week at their commission meeting approved buying in with us so now we're just waiting for pul and hopefully they will do it next next W next Tuesday I believe is on their agenda March Yeah March 4th
yeah that is all I have for committee assignments thank you commissioner aringer hey on uh the 19th uh met with commissioner Bearer Kathy McCay Steve Lori Johnson just basically
giving him an overview of the state mandated services for public health and uh the dissolution of the current uh Public Health Team uh or partnership on the 20th uh virtually
attended the Kay County suicide and substance Coalition meeting which commissioner kravinoff has already covered but I do want to uh recognize the students from Morehead that spoke on that there were some really compelling
stories uh they've really got a sport system started out there that's working out great with the uh um SOS sources of strength yes
and on the 21st we had the meeting with partnership for Health Community Health Board our quarterly meeting uh we covered a lot of the financial updates from Brandon Nelson with uh Public Health he did an excellent job of
showing us what we're contending with there is some funding that's got to be spent by June they're going to have a financial Retreat to sit uh sit back and plan on how those funds are going to be expended uh had a discuss discussion on
statutory Authority and responsibilities under Minnesota statute um and we had a uh Statewide Health Improvement partnership the ship we had an update on their programs for healthy food and active
living and we did discuss the dissolution of the partnership the audit T County attorney has looked at things we will continue with Becker County we will hold the partnership uh under the original joint Powers agreement they're
going to have to have to write one up to meet their needs we'll probably revise and ask Mr Melton to give a review on on changes to our our uh jpa and that completes my report yeah I
don't I'm sorry what I oh there was just a question if we had to have board action board action with them leaving the partnership for Heth no they've they've done it under the agreement they have filed we're not doing anything neither's Becker County
basically we continue to to remain a partnership for health otter tale and um wilin will will have to go through the work with the state and their establish their own
partnership does that complete yeah that completes report all right so I have to go back um back to February 11th for my report and that on February 11th we had the diversion Authority planning committee meeting and at that meeting we had a couple of updates one was
regarding the funding a funding policy update and then we also got an update on the P3 technical dispute review board and as you probably read in the in the media that that board has decided decided to dissolve under its current
and so I it's remains to be seen uh how disputes will be handled moving forward and then we did receive an an executive director update from um Jason Benson his first update to the planning committee and the intention there I
think was going over he's going to be going over Consulting fees and discussions regarding about the potential for uh what what additional consult Consulting will need to be done in the future as this project moves
forward on February 12th we had the budget and finance committee meeting for the Dispatch Center uh the most of the meeting was in regards to the uh budget review for 2025 and that all seems to be in
order there was a a need for some battery Replacements uh that are critical uh critical need and so there was um a request on that and and what we did is
we basically authorized Amanda to use a current line item to go ahead and because it's time sensitive and in the need for those to use a current light item to buy buy those batteries and then I at today's meeting um this afternoon's
meeting the full board will um review that and you know as long as it as long as it can stay within that budgeted line item there probably would not need to be any further action but in the event that that line fills up then it was it's
something that was not budgeted so um it end up needing to be done so action will happen on that February 13th I did attend the Lakes Country service Cooperative meeting in
in Fergus Falls and you know I think they're they continue to be looking for a site in Morehead U for additional schooling I've reported on that before um there's they're I think they're working quite a bit with Brandon
lunic from the from the school district in trying to figure out what site would be best for that and then I yesterday I did attend the West Central Regional water board meeting that uh commissioner be reported on I
um there there's still apparently the there's anou with um Marshall pole County that at at some point they at this point they have not been able to come to an agreement regarding a boundary issue so that's
that's more of an issue between P County and Marshall pul uh we did have we we have in our p in our packet for the first time a a bylaw proposal and I I did ask that um
the Stevens and Lucas forward that to you Steve to and I one of the things that I want to do is to make sure that our County attorney and Lori review those bylaws and I think my biggest concern is is moving forward what
Authority um they might have in taxing and their ability to um have implications on our our bonding abilities within Clay County so and I I might you know as Brian reviews it maybe
if you want to talk with Ezra and I too we might be able to just share the concerns that we'd have that that we're not giving up certain um abilities and authorities um and
that that completes my report Steve thank you Mr chair last uh Tuesday participated in the county Ard own lands meeting that's been well addressed uh that afternoon I participated in the regional administrator manager meeting uh we talked a great deal about the the budget
discussions with the governor that we've had uh today uh the 19th participated in and resource recovery warranty issue uh uh discussion uh also participated in the chb update discussion that commissioner Amber commissioner bear
spoke on on Thursday and Friday I was able to participate at the AMC Futures uh conference uh we heard from uh commissioner Tiki Brown uh from the new newly formulated department of children's Youth and families uh they were set up last year they spent much of
the last year being stood up they have 600 employees they're hoping to have 900 by uh by July again they were they took over some of the roles of DHS uh uh we uh we had a legislative
update from Mr hilgart uh in regards to the legislative session uh it'll be more on that this week uh at the end of the evening uh we received a a presentation from Senator Carla Nelson from Rochester uh and she's on taxes capital
investment transportation and jobs uh we heard about uh legislative update from her perspective and also her leadership Journey also was able to uh give her our prtf uh pitch at the end of the evening uh surprisingly she had already seen our map uh and some of our documentation so
that was uh that was fun she said she's looking forward to hearing more about that hopefully in capital Investments um the following day we heard from Carl Crawford from St Louis County in regards to equity inclusion in the programs that
he's run over the years uh on that afternoon I spoke with several of you on the way home from the Twin Cities uh on the 24th participated in the water district uh meeting that's been well covered uh yesterday also had a department head meeting uh we did work
uh as commissioner Mojo talked about we're working on getting the DNR flood mitigation Grant application uh completed I worked with Eric dods on that yesterday and hoped to have something completed by the end of this week um did hand out in regards to our
our prtf I did uh have Jackie did update our document going from a prtf with a heading for the nonar juvenile facility also she was able to coordinate the the new drawings of the facility uh and also the map that we've handed out previously
on a single page uh where we've the letters of resolutions of support and so I appreciate her her efforts that we'll have access to this week um just a few other different things Minnesota deed has put out a pre-qualification uh for
for the federal Broadband Equity access and deployment uh have heard from Red River Communications already that they're going to be looking to get pre-qualified uh to address any areas in Clay County that are unserved or underserved uh in their area um and that
concludes my report Brian okay d most everything has been covered that I have attended as well the county own lands committee um did sit in on the house Workforce and labor committee
meeting um which deed presented about the paid leave and I think it was yesterday they finally settled on 88% as a tax starting in April I mean starting in January of 2026
um the also had a meeting with MCC uh M MNC on the HR payroll User Group um we were talking about the ukg uh contracts that'll that'll be going forward for the next couple years and had a meeting on
Friday as well with the uh Clay County um ukg rep that we're for our um Pro Talent implementation hopefully we'll have that done by the end of March and uh sat in with Brian and Steve on some
of the door issues as well and um Steve and Brian on the uh County looking at reviewing some of the county codes so that's it thank you Darren ises that 088 is that on on an entire is there a
ceiling on that or is it on um the ceiling is I can't remember exactly I think it's like one one one what is it 1.25% for 2026 they're starting out if you remember it was 7 something and now
they're going to 088 gu starting point is at 088 on an employees full annual salary it is um the county has to pay at least 50% of that tax so it would be 044 for the
county the issue is that the rest of it has to be negotiated with the unions so they could negotiate that the county pays for all of it pays for some of it but in the statute it says that the county has to pay at least
50% so that would be a 0 44% on the county and 0 44% on the employees starting in January 1st of 2026 the deed the deed um presentation was interesting to say the least um I think they said
they have 60 employees already hired and one of the legislators asked what the target date or the target number was and it's 400 so they have 60 of 400 hired so far um to run this program so uh it's
going to be interesting come January 1st when this goes into effect you covers everything all right we are for