The Polk County Commissioners were asked this week to begin thinking about how they’d like to approach the financing for the 2020 Capital Improvement needs for the county this week. The largest project on their radar is the Human Service Center in East Grand Forks.
Polk County Administrator Chuck Whiting had a discussion with the board about the merits of each possible funding source, which they will need to consider as they progress through the budget process. “We’ve talked about our building in East Grand Forks a couple of times in past,” said Whiting. “We’ve got to remodel that building over there. We’re looking at between $2.5-3 million in improvements – roof, HVAC, and interior remodeling. We talked today about how we might approach that in the budget and from using fund balances, to increase the levy, to borrowing or some hybrid of the three. We’ll work that out in the coming months as we go through the budget, but that right now appears to be our biggest capital improvement project we’ll be facing in 2020.”
The board also received an update on the elevator project for the Polk County Government Center. Because the project is broken into two components, the equipment as one and the elevator shaft as the other, each piece of the project falls under State Statute requirements for needing for formal bid process explains Whiting. “$175,000 is a state statute. If we have an engineer’s or architect’s estimate that is under that, we go out for quotes which is a little less formal,” said Whiting. “If it’s over $175,000, we go out for formal bids, which means sealed bids, time for contractors to submit, and kind of a more straight-up comparison. That’s the threshold and the legislature has increased that over the years just recently to $175,000. For our elevator project, it’s two pieces within one project. To purchase a new elevator itself including the mechanic pieces, the carriage, and the lift components, then to build a separate shaft in the building of the carriage to fit in.”
The total elevator project has been projected to cost about $205,000. The commissioners also approved several county ditch maintenance requests for County Ditch (CD) 55 in Section 35 of King Township, CD 88 Branch 1 in Section 1 of Gully Township, CD 109 Branch 1 in Section 27 of Johnson Township, and CD 176 in Section 18 of Rosebud and Section 13 of Sletten Townships. Those ditches were damaged as a result of spring flooding explains Polk County Engineer Rich Sanders. “We had the heavy spring flooding, so we had a lot of county ditches in the eastern part of the county with some slope to them where we had culverts wash out,” said Sanders. “The county board approved four maintenance requests to replace four either field or farm approaches within the county ditch system. Jody Beauchane, our ditch inspector, will be hiring a contractor to come in and replace those culverts.”
The commissioners agreed to re-enter into two separate five-year agreements with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR). One is for game and fish, the other for what they classify as Tier II sales. The DNR registration and titling system are currently being operated out of the Taxpayer Service Center while the Licensing Center undergoes a remodel. The commissioners also approved a change order for the license center to change to a hard surface for the floor in the customer portion of the center.
The commissioners also approved their consent agenda which included the minutes for the four previous meetings, two payments to Hewlett Packard totaling 1,010.20. And reissuing five lost warrants to Mike Theis, Harlan’s Boats R Us (2), and Amy Theis (2) totaling $4,527.48.
