indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay the first item on our agenda is a public hearing regarding revisions to the Mstead County Subservice Sewage Treatment Systems Ordinance yeah good evening Mr chair members of the board dave Dunn Homemstead County Housing and Planning Director and I'll be introducing Don Vancou who will be walking through uh the proposed changes tonight that we'll be talking about
good evening i'm Don Vancou County Planning Department so we have the slides thank you so we're proposing a couple changes in the septic system ordinance updated version um can you go to the next slide please two changes to the ordinance are being proposed next so the first change is the ordinance to give a little history on the ordinance it was adopted around
1962 in 1998 1988 the county proposed or introduced the septic design rules requiring a licensed professional engineering geology soil science or hydro geologist be able to design septics that's when that part went into the ordinance just for some history in 2015 we adopted a higher septic system design qualifications and we added the advanced SSTS designers license in addition to those other rules meaning you could design with the advanced
license or with the other categories but you still had to have the state designer license uh we've been notified by the state that we are no longer consistent with the state requirements so that's why we're proposing the new this one of the changes that we wrote tonight next slide so this is what we're proposing to remove we're proposing to remove this whole section um there is another section the ordinance that describes the state rules and the licensing
criteria and this is only in the amendments to the adopted standard section so it's not required to be there at all anymore there's another paragraph couple pages up that refer to it so this is the state rules in the licensing criteria the local unit of government is not authorized to require additional local licenses local registrations local certificates or other similar professional credentials to perform SSTS work so that's the state background why we can't have that in our ordinance
so the next addition change we're proposing is uh within city limits all applicants for an SSTS located within city limits must secure any required approvals for a new or replacement SSTS from the city or township is what we're removing prior to securing a permit from the department townships do not have jurisdiction within the city limits so therefore we're removing that section those are the only two changes that we're proposing at this time and is that the last slide okay thank you we have any questions any questions
okay we'll open the public hearing then thank you would anybody like to speak for or against these changes to the ordinance second time would anybody like to speak for or against changes to your or this ordinance it's your last chance you want to speak for or against the changes to this ordinance anybody online is there anybody online move to close the public hearing second okay the public hearing oh all in favor say I i public hearing is closed comments motions
mr chair I would move to approve the proposed ordinance change second okay all in favor say I i opposed carries thank you okay next up consent agenda approve the Homestead County Board minutes from April 1st approve gambling permits for Viola Gopher account approve the advancement of the 2026 state aid construction funds approve joint powers agreement with the Minnesota Department of
Transportation award contract for Mick or Oxbow Park campground project review and approve final 2025 federal priorities for county transfer excess municipal funds mr chair I would uh I would move to uh table item G transfer excess municipal funds and replace it with a with a substitute resolution uh pertaining to uh the approval of a grant renewal to Mstead County for fraud prevention
uh investigation services okay can I get a second to that okay all in favor say I mr sh just to explain maybe for the public this since uh we added this to the agenda this is this is simply a grant request for $163,000 per year for for two years to fund two fraud investigators within our housing and human services family support and assistance division okay all right uh all in favor of the change say I i okay now I need a motion to approve it as changed
motion to approve the consent agenda as amended okay we have a motion to second all in favor say I i i carries all right now we uh we are up to the discussion decision which is to fill the vacancy in the office of Mstead County attorney by appointment chairman Ty and commissioners my name is Travis Granse i'm the Mstead County Administrator uh back on January the 30th uh Mark Olstrom submitted a letter um announcing his intent to retire at
the end of March and this board made a decision to move forward with an appointment process to select the next county attorney that'll be seated until January of 2027 with an election occurring next November or November of 2026 then to fill that seat on a more permanent basis uh you directed staff then to move forward with uh um recruiting candidates and you all uh then conducted some interviews with those candidates and so we're here tonight
uh for you to make a decision in regards to how you'd like to move forward okay all right so I'm looking for a motion to fill this position chair I would I would move the appointment of Mr michael Walters as Mstead County Attorney second okay we have a motion to second any discussion hearing none all in favor say I i opposed carries congratulations [Applause]
Michael if you'd like to say something you can thank you um I don't have too much to say other than to say thank you thank you for the uh faith the trust that you're placing in me um working for this office representing the people of Mstead County is one of the great privileges of my life and uh I thank you for your trust and I feel it's my duty and my
mission to repay that trust throughout my career thank you thank you [Applause] the swear Travis what is the swearing in it's the 21st april 21st 21st okay all right all right so now I need a motion to go into recess for close session regarding the foretica foods property solicitation
move to recess to uh discuss Senica food property second all in favor say I mr chair we'd ask again as we usually do just can you read the parcel numbers just so the parcels have been identified that the board we got a motion to second to to go into close section session to discuss the possible sale of property tax ID number 64.11.11.079469 all in favor say I i carries
you got five minute bathroom break i promised i just move to Got to go through our reports greg's got a PowerPoint he wants Oh that's right thank you it's not going to be that exciting okay we are resuming our our county board meeting next on the agenda board and committee reports
we'll start with Greg oh well thank you very much um uh in front of you I think that you have the PowerPoint and they're bringing the PowerPoint up right now and and I've titled this House File 2725 but there is a Senate file companion that goes with this but it's it's the same thing uh just a few comments about this before we look at the uh the slides on here is that the state of
Minnesota did start on a plan for aging five years ago in 2020 and it was called the 2030 plan nothing has been done on the 2030 plan so we're going to get to 2030 without ever having even acted on anything that was uh uh out of the legislature uh five years ago and I think that the board knows that I've been talking about this issue for quite a while quite a while uh and I've been aging all those years while I've been talking about it we noticed yes I I suppose and uh our
esteemed chair just had a birthday so he's a lot older as well uh but the idea of course is is that the entire state of Minnesota is aging and that uh this is a result of a group of very committed uh people to establishing something for the state of Minnesota that would have a strategic plan and so the last 17 months I have attended uh a task force established by the state legislature to
look at this and out of this task force uh came the proposal that you see in house file 2725 so you can go to the next slide there and I'll just say why I believe that this is important if you can skip to the next slide yep that's the one all right so first of all all 87 counties are aging and I want you to know that every person in every county is aging at the same rate uh
so that there are anybody is not left out of this uh the population pyramid over the last few years has become inverted so those of you who are older will remember the population period pyramid looked like this where all the baby boomers were at the bottom and there were very few people at the top but over the next few years that becomes inverted all right so that we are soon to have more people
65 years or older are surpassing all the school age kids so while the county in the past has been putting all their efforts into children it's very likely that the counties will have mandates in the future to look at people that are 65 years of age and older and currently the state does not have a strategic plan for that and that's one of the reasons why you need a subc cabinet on healthy aging uh seniors contribute 154 billion dollars to the state GDP so uh there's another reason to take
care of them uh and they make up a significant portion of the workforce they still do you can look down the table here and see some of us uh over 65 that are still contributing and um they're the largest volunteer group in not only in our state but other states if you can go to the next one and so basically what uh state of Minnesota as well as other states need to do is rethink about the culture of aging uh the population will age till the end of the century now many people
think that well it's the baby boomers but that's not true the millennials are even larger than the um baby boomers so about the time that the end of the baby boom is there the millennials come in and the aging population continues then till the end of the century uh and the demographic reality calls for rethinking all right the next slide please yeah so the coordination of the state
efforts uh are going to have to be to coordinate everything that currently is siloed as in the state department has little uh departments dealing with this issue and this issue and this issue but aging combines all of them and it's very unlikely that they can do it as long as those services remain siloed so and you know I also did a study here on Homestead County and I talked to health
housing and human resources and this came out from our own staff that these would be the things that they would need if they had enough money and if they had a state plan and if they had the staff to do that so it's um because the county carries these things out the state needs the same thing health care housing workforce transportation and public health all of those things affect the aging population and uh lastly uh one of the big differences on the the um subc cabinet
is is that it it gives that group of people in that subc cabinet access to the governor which uh the aging population or those that represent the aging population uh doesn't have so thank you very much i appreciate your attention and now now you know and of course um this has been introduced but it hasn't been passed and we won't know till the end of the legislation if it actually survives
thank you greg Dave do you have a report uh thank you just a couple of things uh Commissioner Wright and I have been assigned to uh what we call the inner Minnesota county uh association uh and we're board members and uh last Friday we we met in uh in St paul and uh I think some of this is in the newspaper but the legislative targets this year relative to in particular from
the standpoint of county services in the health area and human services area have really uh been cut in other words uh the legislature proposes to pass on to counties obligations that they here to for otherwise funded and if you just look at at at the health budget in in the upcoming bienium which is 26 and 27 it's being uh proposed cut of $50 million which uh of course spread across the state
but still is a lot of money and likewise in the human services area it's being the proposed cut is uh is $300 million uh which is significant and will certainly affect counties across the state and and then if you pass that on to the next bianium and there's always we call them tails uh the uh the health budget proposed passing on if you will is up to $175 million on the health side but a billion dollars on the human services side and that's that is very very profound so from
the standpoint of counties going forward this is something that uh is not good news and we need to pay attention to it we're going to have to address thank you Dave so no report okay Brian no report bob no report okay all right um well before we close I get a couple things one I just want to take a minute to remember if you've been if you've served in elected office long enough you you've probably seen Jeff Broberg come in front of us and on March 29th Jeff announced
that he had pancreatic cancer and oh no yeah and he died uh on Sunday gosh really and so I think it's I think it's fine for us just to remember that you know Jeff was always very knowledgeable there's really nobody more knowledgeable about hydro geology in southeast Minnesota than Jeff Broberg and he spent his whole career working to protect the environment at the same time uh being common sense about allowing progress to happen um he started the Minnesota well owners organization
that's advocated for for clean water that's kind of worked hand inand with some of the work that we've done to to protect the groundwater so um I just want to take a public moment to recognize that uh Jeff is no longer with us so okay all right um I hope this doesn't sound crass but on my quote it's from Will Rogers and he says "The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." So but that'll entertain a motion to
journ i thank you one day it does okay