Multiple non-budget action items were discussed during Tuesday’s Polk County Board meeting at the Polk County Government Center in Crookston.
Polk County Sheriff James Tadman presented his August monthly report to the board. The total calls for service in August were 849, slightly higher than the 837 in July, but Tadman maintained that the numbers are about average for this time of year. One area that Tadman did point out to the board was 35 calls for animal complaints, with three involving animal bites and two involving the same animal. “Our animal complaints were a total of 35, but we handle anything,” said Tadman. “Maybe a deer needs to be dispatched, or horses get out, or cattle that have gotten out of their fences, or anything like that. We did have three animal bites, and an animal bite can be considered an animal biting a human or biting another animal and causing injury to them. But we had a total of 35 of those. For total calls, we had 849, but it’s our civil process that we have keeps us busy with 272, and then our traffic stops for the month was 232, but all around it was pretty average.”
Tadman also told the board that two sheriff’s department boat lifts and one boat were damaged during the severe weather that hit the county on September 3. One of the lifts was at Maple Lake, and the other lift, along with the boat, was at Union Lake. Tadman believes that the high winds blew the lifts into the lake. The equipment was retrieved, and the department is evaluating the damage caused to the boat and lifts to determine damage estimates. Tadman emphasized that the department has additional boats on hand, so there are no concerns about patrolling the lakes as the summer months come to an end, and lake residents begin pulling their boats from the lake for the season. “We had our boat lift that’s just on the south side of East Shore there, and that got damaged and got turned over by one of the docks out there,” said Tadman. “That was totally demolished out there, and then we had our boat and the boat lift out there on Union between Union and Union Lake Sierra, and that ended up getting flipped over at that time with the boat in it. So we were very surprised to see that damage and wondering that there had to be a lot of wind that went through there. Right now, we’re evaluating it to find out if it can be salvaged or not.”
The next items were from Environmental Services Administrator Jon Steiner, who provided a resolution for the 2027 Polk County Market Price for the remittal of the Solid Waste Management Tax, raising it from $ 29.02 per ton to $ 29.52 per ton. He provided another resolution to increase the Mixed Solid Waste tip fees for Polk and partnering counties from $92 per ton to $100 per ton. The last increase in tip fees came in 2024, and Steiner explained that the market for certain recyclables, like plastic soda bottles, has decreased significantly, and the county is beginning to run out of room in cold storage for the current amount of recyclables. The increases will allow the county to try to stay ahead of rising expenses for its facilities and lower revenues from other sources. “We have seen a lot of the recyclable commodities, the prices drop on them,” explained Steiner. “We were talking about the storage in the Fosston Cold Storage Building has been full of the soda pop bottles, the number one plastic. The global market pretty much has crashed on it, and we are being charged $25 a ton if we wanted to get rid of it. That just turned around, and we just sold five truckloads for a few bucks a ton to try and clear some space. So, storage space has been an issue for us, and then just the rising costs, and that’s changing tip fees and things like that for everybody.”
Both resolutions were approved unanimously.
Facilities Management Director Richard Langlois presented a resolution to the board authorizing the replacement of a county-owned 2018 Chevy Equinox. Langlois explained that replacing the Equinox would help lower lease costs for a new vehicle through Enterprise leasing, and the transaction is within the current budget. The board unanimously approved the resolution.
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.
