I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and do the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call. All the commissioners are present today. Our first item is to approve the agenda. Any changes or There are no changes. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as presented. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Any staff updates? I I sent the the board some updates on some items that we've been working
on this week. I didn't know if there's anything you guys wanted to touch on. Otherwise, I do not have anything else to cover for you today. I hear nothing. I know that we are okay. Interviewing, we do have an opening in the maintenance department. Interviews are taking place right now. K. It's not impact. There's one going on right now and then one, I think, at 09:00. K. Anything for a master date? Nope. Other than what I sent you guys yesterday. Public form? No one signed up. No one's here. No one signed up. Okay. We'll move on to our, action discussion item today, which is to approve a correction of state assessed property values.
I'll call up in Musa to kinda get approval of where we're at. Is this one of your guys'? It's mine. Thank you. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. So every year, the state of Minnesota handles the valuation and assessment on public utilities and railroads. The values are updated periodically throughout the year. We use the preliminary values in July to submit our fall PRISM to the state and then, the final values are set in October. Unfortunately,
last year, the October final values were missed being entered into the system. So we set our assessment based on our July preliminary values from the state. This resulted in an over evaluation of the utilities and railroads of $8,856,700 with approximately $206,800 in taxes That, spread over seven school districts, eight cities, and 16 townships
I've been in contact with the DOR on the assessors division and also on the auditor division, so I've had some guidance on how to send through this correction. They advised me not to redo everything and completely recalculate taxes as a whole to just send these through as individual abatements. And then the companies who pretty much it's all the railroad companies, which we have two of them. And then it was, I believe, five utility companies.
I contacted them to hold off on paying their taxes until these abatements went through. So once we get this calculation, and the abatement signed, which hopefully will be by next Wednesday, we can get the new statements all sent out and the correction made. And then because of the due date of when these were sent, state statute does say we have to extend the tax due date by twenty days. So depending on what date we actually postmark, it'll be twenty days past that date is when their taxes will be due for
these. Just the affected ones, not everybody's? Correct. So twenty days doesn't seem like a long time with how slow the mail is. Right. No. No. I meant They may not even receive it by '28 in twenty days. Then what? So three of the companies are already aware. Okay. They've emailed me back when I informed them. Okay. The other two companies did not. I just just to, you know, I just know how slow the mail is. And that is also, the decision that you guys can make with if you want us to send this
a rush mail or a certified mail or regular? So if they do pay the incorrect, they're gonna be overpaying. Yes. And then we will have to issue a refund. So that it's not gonna or can it be credited to what's due in the fall? We do a refund. I don't remember the logic behind the not crediting for it, but we're basically required to do a refund. How many of them are affected, roughly? How many How many of these are parcels? Yeah. Parcels. It is 79 parcels total. Not a huge deal. I just if they overpay and get a refund, no big deal. Right. We've also known because they have one statement already.
So what you're sending would be the correct decision. So, yeah, not a huge deal. You know if you've been talking to them or they responded email they're aware that things aren't quite right. And Northern States was actually one of them that did not respond to me but they called yesterday so it's just down to one company then that hasn't responded. And we've also notified all the cities and townships and schools as well? Yes. I sent out, a correspondence with everyone that it affected. I only heard back from, one school district which was, Charlene Cleckner. Long Beach, I'm gonna ask you a dumb question,
but, you said there were seven school districts, so private school districts get, that'd be fun? We have some overlap with some schools in Winona County. Some schools I think in Goodhue County is one of these as well. So it's not just in Wabasha County because some of our residents also go to schools. Just public schools. That's what I thought. But she said school districts and I thought we only have three public schools in Washington. Okay. So how can this be prevented for future? So we set up a triple check-in our office now.
Also, the final values, historically they always got sent to the auditor, which I find strange when the assessors are the ones that put them in. But when I was talking to the DOR assessment side, a lot of assessors are requesting, that we also receive a certified copy of that and not just the auditors, so I also requested for that, the final, to be sent to our office. And the huge difference in the value, happened because of a tax court settlement. Correct? Correct. Between July and October?
Yep. So not necessarily tax court. Because of it being state assessed, the state handles any of seals. Okay. Like how we handle the local boards and the county boards. Any of the utilities and railroads, they appeal at a state level. Okay. So the state approved, them appeal an appeal they provide. Okay. And that was between the July and October date? Yes. This extra money now comes out of, General Thargis preserves? They have not collected any of these funds. So, theoretically, they're not returning anything to us, but they could have done budgeting assuming they're budgeting.
Us. What about our budget? Where are we going to proceed to get these these funds? We were calling budget is not going to get them. Right? We were expecting to balance our budget based on what we're gonna take in a taxes. We did not balance our budget this last year. We're 944,000 short. Right. So now we're 1,100,000? No. No. It'd be Oh, whatever it is. That's the total spread out over all the taxing districts in the county. 72,000 more. Correct. Okay. Correct. Yep. 72,000 more. I tried to get the closest. These are still estimates, until we get in the system and get the exact,
I did estimate high. So We'll probably have to cover the state's 51,000. They'll see that, and they'll just pass that on to us too. I'm just kidding. Just talk to your daughter. There you are. Your boy. My boy. Well, I mean, unfortunately, the error happened, but I moved to approve the correction of the state assessed property values. I second that. Okay. We have a motion and a second to approve the correction of the state to assess property values. Any further questions questions or discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed?
Motion carries. Next we have commissioner reports. You wanna start, Donnie? I don't think I have anything from the last Thank you. That's shocking. That is shocking. Ben? Yeah. We got a list together. Oh, I can't. I gotta go back. Can I take back over? You you take back. Commissioner, Powers and I attended the the joint Powers board meeting in Olmsted County on the sixteenth. And, essentially For Lake Denbrough? Yep. For Lake Denbrough. So every once in a while every couple years, they try to send a drone up when the water when they draw down when
they draw the water down. So they can look and see kinda where areas of the lake are starting to fill in. They didn't know if they were gonna do that this year or not. The other thing, they're more concerned about who gets to hunt on their dredge spoil property. I I mean, they're going through more effort and expense for one person who might go out there and try to shoot a bird flying over the top of it. So I I don't even know why they bother, but they're putting fences up and creating a little parking lot for it. Oh, it's it's unbelievable. They'll put a fence up the width of a car so people can walk around
it. I but it's their money. And then the other thing too is is so the sheriff's department was there, and they're going to likely put in a new, siren for the their new park. Were they gonna put in two, I thought? Two. They wanted to try two, and then, they're hoping that Waukesha County will put in the third one down by the Ponderosa. And it's not much. It's only be, like, $250,000 or something. It's some goddamn. I I just kept my mouth shut to we're not.
You put in at their new park at the Yeah. And then file site? Nope. At There were no sound studies. Sound studies. Where the old, Fisherman's Inn was. Yeah. Oh. Like, the park or whatever they call it. Then they're gonna put one down farther, and then they wanted Wabashack County to put in a third one down on the other end so it would cover that. I said, well, we already have code red. Well, that wouldn't cover the people that are out on the lake. And I'm thinking to myself, if it's storming, what the hell are you doing out on the lake? What does the sidewalk have to do with Siren. Siren. Oh,
I thought I heard sidewalk. Yeah. No. No. Siren. And I'm thinking, why do they need sidewalk? And it was it was very it was very expensive. And I even think Olmsted's gonna probably hold off because even spend her time thought that it was, their budget with the push through the state being pushed back down, it'd be quite a bit. Are they looking at grants? There are currently grants that are able to cover about 75% of siren costs, also to do the sound analysis because those are usually 20 to $30,000. They are a lot of funds. They already did their,
their, study, but I don't know about that. There are tons of grants for science. And, of course, they wanna do, you know, the powerless, you know, battery operated and Solar. I think some of them are solar. Yeah. They are. Yeah. Some of them were. Yeah. Even though they might get stuck with the build on you when it comes to you in thirty years, we will It's true. It wasn't real accurate anyway because the sound carries further than that showed on that map I thought. Yeah. I mean, you're bouncing it off of water. It's It's gonna go all the way through the lake. Through the valley there. But, anyways,
I think that was about the gist of it. I don't know if there's anything else. You can add it in your report down there if you have it. That's alright. Is that all you have there? That's all I get. Well, no. Oh, jeez. Because, Here we go. Yeah. It is. Okay. You sure? I'm pretty sure. Oh, he'll try me again. So so I had Three Rivers on the, I don't know, sixteenth maybe. Discuss the paid family medical leave issues that are coming up. Some of the newer programs that we, support for older adults are doing. The these they started the pilot program last year,
kind of, of home assistance, going in, helping with laundry and different things. That's hopefully gonna be rolled out into Wabasha County in coming here. Melchester, lost their Meals on Wheels a couple years ago, and it started again, April fourteenth of this year. So Melchester is now covered with kneels on wheels. They have they been notified of any cuts to either the head start program or the energy assistance program? We had a lot of funding discussion too. Head Start lost, I don't remember, a dozen employees or whatever out of the Chicago office,
I think it was, where Okay. Southeast, where they go for their support. That's the regional one. Funding has been frozen at the federal level, but So they don't know for sure. Yeah. That was a lot of the discussion around funding, state and federal. So that was about all there. Wednesday, I was at the public, strategic planning session, which I'm not a very good strategic planner, but I sat through it. One thing that came up, especially since COVID, was public perceptions. People the public was told,
you know, the warnings and the got it in this, got it in this, got it in this. And it left kind of a sour taste in the public towards public health. Some good interaction with public health staff. And then yesterday, I had soil and water. I completed a rain barrel project here in Wabasha area. Tree sales pickup is today, I believe. We appreciated the letter of support for the soil health program that the board sent out. Was well received in the legislature. Of course,
we all know what's going on there with funding, so who knows? Trying to working on a well ID project, just trying to identify all the wells. And, just meetings with, the well mitigation. That was meetings with the Department of Health regarding the MPCA and MDH. MPCA nitrate nitrate reduction strategies were looked at and adjusted and a lot of stuff beyond above my head. The Department of Health had federal funding cut as well. A 20 people laid off as well as $220,000,000
federal money coming to the state. And, there is a small program for from MDA for well construction or rehab for water systems, reverse osmosis stuff. So couldn't figure out why it came from Department of Ag versus Department of Health, but that's where So they're aware of the nitrate problem. Did anybody ever come up with a solution how to get rid of the nitrate problem in the in the ground water? Not really. I mean Just just in the water itself other than filtering or whatever through your
own well that You know, soil health initiative with more cover crops and stuff will hopefully reduce the leaching and The nitrates are there, they're forever, pretty much. Pretty much. That's all I Stop putting all the chemicals on the yards in town. That would help. That's a lot of it. I mean, people don't realize Mhmm. On a per acre basis. City city areas probably apply three times more than what what Just on the line. I do have,
one meeting I forgot. Why don't you wait until after commissioner power? So I had a meeting on the twenty first, and that was on the fifteenth. And, one of the credit unions is getting a mobile banking bus, and they wanted to rent the space to put the bus in the Selco building, but then our car would have to sit out front. And so we said no. But that was about the extent of it. Those cars can't sit outside, can they? What? They only have one. They don't have a garage in here? Yeah. They have a pretty decent sized garage,
but their their car wouldn't fit in that thing. Well, I Mike, I do have one more. Do you have one more? Yeah. I am done, though, now. Can you tape your mouth shut? You sure can. Commissioner Key and I also attended the labor management. Oh, wait. I got one more. I'm just kidding. Then I'll let her pull the items out. Really? Yep. You interrupted. You let her take it. You guys get a brief, but I don't have any meetings while I'm telling them I'm meeting. That's pretty much Springer. Shockey of this many. We'll see if you have as many as I do. Well, I'll give you one for for a while.
Quality, not quantity. Yeah. The twenty first, we had a our our quarterly, Iowa Valley Mental Health where we went over, the annual audit and the report. If anybody wants to look at it, I don't know. Maybe if you wanted to share it with mister Dahlstrom, that'd be great. In a presentation, they've been talking about rebranding for a couple years. But how do you you know, there's Hiawatha Ed District. There's there's a couple different Hiawatha's out throughout. Hiawatha Transit? Yeah. Well, they're trying to figure out how to rebrand but keep mental health in there.
So, you know, when you Google things that if you're googling mental health or whatever so I don't know. They're looking at possibly rebranding, but I think that's a long way down the road and, you know Do they think all these other ones are conflicting with it? I don't know. Why do you want to rebrand? I thought you were done. I'm sure glad you brought all that good information back. But anyways, the other thing we talked about that night was Eric's, review and his operating salary and we're gonna give him a 4% raise for starting
in July. And then the other meeting I had just this past Wednesday was, solid waste planning. So what they're trying to do down in La Crosse is they have a contract with Xcel Energy till 02/1930, and, you know, and they'll probably start negotiating with Xcel, in a couple years. But they're just trying to do some preplanning that if ExCel doesn't renew it for another ten or fifteen years, what are they gonna do with their airspace? It's gonna be limited blah blah blah. And they do not have any room for expansion.
If Excel extends it out another ten years, they'll have room for for solid waste for another twenty years. But if they don't, they're just looking at future things. Well, is there a reason they wouldn't Excel wouldn't? Well, they have two other waste energy plants. The one's in, I believe, Monticello and one's in Red Wing. Right? Yep. And they're doing contract negotiations with them currently because those contracts come up. They didn't really say. I mean, it's a it's a good thing. I don't know.
The one thing I I do they were asking about is they're kinda tight lipped on what, per ton rates are nearby. I heard, Lake or not Lake City, but Eau Claire, Seven mile. Apparently, it's just a huge, rubbish or a dump that they've increased their rates big time. So I don't know. Excel may wanna go somewhere. Okay. Yeah. So, anyway, that's all I got. Donnie, got anything else you need to share? No. I'm good. Too much. Too many sweet roles. I only had the one meeting with Donnie. He covered it a couple of times,
so I guess I ended the Quality. The labor management committee meeting that I'll report on. The county I have my secretary with me, but she didn't take the notes. Yeah. It was so cute. His granddaughter was there. Oh. Everybody went around the table to introduce themselves, and she was sitting next to the last person, and the last person got done. And she says, I'm Evelyn. She wasn't she wasn't quite that bright. Well, she wasn't that loud, but she said, Evelyn, I'm Evelyn. It was cute. The county is going to be doing a request for proposal for,
dental insurance. HR thinks that we can get, more insurance for less money than what we're paying now. And then some upcoming trainings, there's gonna be a training for PERA, cybersecurity, employee right to know, harassment, and then, a session on the HSA and how that works and financial wellness. And they, are still working on providing an active shooter training. They're going to do it on the day of a county board meeting. And I also have the HRA meeting. We approved our recommendation of two applications to fund from the Waukesha County Housing Trust
Fund, and that, I believe, is coming to the county board on May 6. The first ones. Right. The final application was also submitted for the Plainview Small Cities Development Program. So we should hear about that, what is April? Later this summer. I also attended with Sean, AMC hosted training, titled negotiation for county leaders. We did that Wednesday and Thursday this week. And it was tailored to improve, one's ability to engage in difficult conversations, build support and trust amongst those sitting around the table.
And then, another part was how to formulate and present yes offers. The, AMC is gonna be sending out the presentation, so I'll have Michael forward that all to you if you're interested in reviewing it. The instructor was really great. It was very interactive. We did a lot of role playing, so that was fun. That's all I had. Was it well attended by other county commissioners? It was, there was there was it was limited. I think there was 24 of us. Mhmm. There was a limited number of people that could attend. So If in the future you guys want to attend I know I sent it
out kinda last minute to some of you guys, but in the future if you wanna attend, it's it's really well put on. So about four years ago, they had the same one, and they actually brought in the head of Mossad from Israel's intelligence agency who did the training for the negotiation. Super important. It's a little expensive, no doubt, but, it's it's well worth it. It's a great training. Oh, and, Matt from from AMC said they hope to to provide this on a regular basis. They've had problems in the past. They've had to cancel two or three times. But they're hoping to make it a regular scheduled event.
There was there was four people from the sheriff's office from, what company was that? Aiken. Okay. But they have their own HRA person in the sheriff's office. They have, like, a hundred and I don't remember how many employees. H would you say HRA? They have their own HR person. Oh, okay. Sheriff's department. Oh, okay. Yeah. There was a mix of county administrators and commissioners. So The HR, I think, is a push right now from the sheriff's, association. They're trying to get some legislation to allow HR or sheriff's office to have their
own HR. There's a lot of pushback on it just because there's concern that maybe not everything's gonna be followed up on. There's been a history of that. I'm not saying in Waukesha County, but in general. So there is, I'll be interested to see where that goes. Well, I I guess I can understand, because I I can't remember how many total employees the county had. They're so the reason why they that sheriff's department got their own is because that well, the overall HR county person couldn't handle all. Right. Well, they have in as much in their sheriff's firms as we have in the entire
county. Exactly. Yeah. And they might be they might be placing the cities in the county too. Yeah. Yeah. You know? There's also the reservation of the nation. Yeah. He said that there are a lot of their territory is reservation. So the real reason why I think a lot of sheriffs want it is there's what's called the Brady Giglio Act. So anytime a deputy gets disciplined or a law enforcement official gets disciplined, that has to be disclosed to, say, they're involved in a traffic stop or DWI, they have to disclose that disciplinary history to the defense attorney and that becomes a thing in court.
So there are a lot of sheriffs, in my opinion, and I could be wrong, that are really hesitant on going through HR processes because they think that it's gonna hurt their staff in the long run. So there's pushback from the depth of No. There's no. Sheriffs want this. There's pushback from like I don't know if AMC said anything. There's been pushback from AMC, county administrators, HR professionals because we're not sure why they're actually interested in doing this. I haven't really explained that. Any board concern? I have one question about,
Michael's update. He talks in here about the asphalt prices, and you're talking about the $600,000 more Mhmm. That we pay. Are we the only county that's gets one bid? Or No. Actually, in Southeastern Minnesota, there's a lot of counties. Winona County, even Olmsted County, Dodge County, MnDOT when they're doing projects down in Southeastern Minnesota. Basically, the only county that I'm really aware of that gets Goodhue County also typically gets a single asphalt bid. Basically, other than, Freeborn County and a handful of others, we're all getting only one bid. And it used to be that the premium was,
like, 10%. Like, with, you know, Freeborn County is paying $50 per ton, we would be paying, like, $60 per ton or maybe a little bit more. It's really gapped. This year, if you remember in our last day, I wanna say it was $90 a ton. 90. In Freeborn County, it's $60 a ton. And the only only thing we can come up with is because of competition. They have multiple bidders. So we are this isn't the first time we've had the conversation internally. Probably about a decade ago, we discussed, do we wanna open up our own asphalt plant, with some of our regional partners? It's not as easy as it sounds.
The asphalt plans, whether you have a portable one or a permanent one, are millions of dollars, require staff, etcetera. And then if we go ahead and, you know, there is interest in doing this, does it drop the price down so much that it's no longer cost efficient for us to do it? So we're kind of in that rock in a tough spot. We wanna have a discussion because we actually want this information to get out to MAPI construction, if they're our one asphalt provider, just to try to put pressure on them, let them know that we are considering doing this. Is it gonna happen? I don't know. Probably not. Most counties when we discussed this in the past don't like getting involved in private
enterprise like, you know, taking on private businesses. But now seeing that it's costing us a lot of money. Not a couple bucks. That's a It's a hundred thousand is what we estimate. We're a small county, so Goodyear is probably paying more than that. In MnDOT, when we've discussed this with MnDOT, they're not interested in going this route. They don't wanna partner. They say we have a competitive bid process. If we only get one bid, that's just the way it is, which kinda sucks because that'd be our biggest one. But it could be beneficial not just for the county, but for our cities that are doing work in here.
Obviously, townships even too. I mean, I think it's worth exploring. I mean, I was weird. I don't wanna compete with private business either but That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. Is there a lot of vendors in the area that provide us? So this is a lot like broadband. Are there contractors that could come down here and make this? Absolutely. I think there are a lot of handshake agreements. This is our area. And they you know, Matthew's not stay at Matthew's not going up to say Goodhue County or over to Freeborn. They're staying pretty much in the Southeastern Minnesota. So I I think And this is true also for Western Wisconsin.
Western Wisconsin, also typically only gets one bit. In fact, in Western Wisconsin, they used to have these regional plants, but governor Scott Walker, about a decade ago, made it illegal for those plants to operate outside of their own outside of their county lines, which pretty much shut them all down because Could we bid projects together in another county for for scale? I don't know that. I I don't know. I mean, it's that So if you had five or six counties and all got together, you'd think something would happen. That, I think, is what we would like to see. I I just don't know if us bidding with Freeborn County is gonna help because
then if the the Freeborn County guys bidding the transportation cost to get it over in here would be It would probably still be cheaper, though. But I mean, like, in this area, if Wabasha, Winona Yeah. We're not probably all the same. We're probably all in the same company. We do. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. About $600 a truckload difference if they're 20 yard trucks. Wow. It's in groupings. It's 600 for every truck, and the truck doesn't go very far when you put them blacktop down there. I think we should switch concrete. You get all that sand down here, you gotta get rid of it somehow. Absolutely. You could put gravel roads. Just the nearest grid.
No. It's something we're gonna try to figure out some solutions on. It's just Speaking of settlement, pays taxes to all the same county. And Wabasha. And Wabasha. Okay. Any anything else? I I was listening to represent Jacob's appeal for State Highway 74, which is a gravel road. Mhmm. And he mentioned the Odysseyal. Mhmm. Is that a cheaper alternative or would Mathe be It's way cheaper, but it's not built for strength. You got it. You Right. But I was, you know, 86, couple hundred cars a day.
Mhmm. Would it have been worth to look at auto seal there? Well, we did that on '73, and there's a lot of maintenance to that. Okay. A lot of that there was a truck there was a trucking company, you know, that was beating it up. On the flip side, that road lasted a lot longer than we thought it would. That was a cheaper road. Wondering if that yes. It would be a cheaper option for some of our lower travel drones, but yet I know the life expectancy isn't as great. 73 gets a lot of traffic going on. It does. Yeah. Well, just the first half mile.
Correct. Right. Which is did we turn it on to say type of traffic? Like, if it's heavy trucks or heavy equipment versus cars? It's good in, like, residential areas that don't see a ton of traffic. But once you start getting the farm implements and stuff because those farm digulates through our roads, it makes it a little more challenging. We're always the one to look at yeah. To see the farm. Chicken farm. Yeah. Anything else? Nope. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. We're adjourned. Thanks, guys. I'm gonna keep you guys for a second.
Might have might have had these guys just for a second. Thanks. Yeah. We're doing it. Yeah. Hold on. Take a hold on. Thank you.