Department heads appeared before the Polk County Board during budget meetings last week, as the county prepares to have a preliminary levy in place ahead of the September 30 deadline.
One of the larger budgets presented to the board was the sheriff’s department. Deputy Chief Mike Norland shared the numbers with the board, which include the purchase/lease of seven new vehicles through an agreement with Enterprise at a cost of $107,181.58 and a new vehicle storage shed in Fosston for seasonal equipment like boats and jet skis at a cost of $150,000. Norland mentioned that the vehicles are currently stored at the incinerator in Fosston, but space is becoming limited, so a new storage shed could be built to allow the department to properly store all of its equipment and keep maintenance costs down. “The main one would be the building we’re looking at for our boat and water equipment, our emergency management trailer, stuff like that, which is currently in Fosston, but that’s going to be going back to the incinerator,” Norland explained. “So we want to make sure we have a place to put those vehicles.”
Another large budget was public health. Public Health Director Sarah Reese mentioned that their budget is unique: around 87 percent personnel costs, with 37 percent of those costs funded through the levy. She also mentioned that her department is constantly seeking new funding sources, such as grants and allocations, to support new and existing programs. “I think we’re very creative with our funding sources,” said Reese. “We have a variety of different funding, state, federal, local. We have third-party reimbursement. We have private grants. We have a whole host of different funding sources, and so we know that some are more sustainable than others. So, we are always working on partnerships and applying for funding that can support the county and reduce the levy impact as much as we can.”
One area of discussion by the board was appropriations to non-profit organizations. The county board has received multiple funding requests from organizations, including the Polk County Historical Society and the East Polk Heritage Center, to support general operating expenses and capital improvement projects. The board was not sure how many, if any, organizations should receive funding. Commissioners Paul Reese argued for funding groups that have accreditations recognized by the state, like the Polk County Fair and the Polk County Historical Society.
Following all the budget presentations, Polk County Administrator Chuck Whiting was confident that the county could set the preliminary levy at around 4.5 to 5 percent, representing a $1,462,459 increase. However, Whiting would like to work with the board to cut the levy down to around 3.5 percent before the budget is finalized in December. “We’ve got some work to do. We’ve got some trends we want to kind of change,” Whiting said. “We’ve been able to keep the levy down in the past with a lot of use of fund balance and so forth, but we’ve got some unanticipated expenses that have come up this year like the school collapse, for instance, in McIntosh. That’s county costs to clean up and dispose of, and we’ve been making a lot of internal changes in our finance area, accounting, and getting some outside help for that, but we’ve got to get our transition here completed so we can kind of run on a new platform, so to speak. They felt the preliminary levy would around 5% They’ll deal with that next week.”
Whiting was pleased that every department had a solid presentation, despite some long days for staff members, and that all the numbers were presented well and organized by Finance Director Stacy Grover and her entire department. “I think it’s been great,” said Whiting. “She knows what she’s doing. She used to do a lot of audits. She did this kind of work for the school district up in International Falls. She takes it to heart and is very earnest about our work, and it’s a fundamental change in how we’re approaching things and trying to do it a little more in a contemporary fashion. It’s a little different standard for accounting and reporting, and of course, we’re bringing in new software to help us with that, so there’s a lot going on in her world.”
The next Polk County Board meeting will take place on Tuesday, September 22, at 8:00 a.m. in the county boardroom at the Polk County Government Center.
