The Polk County Board of Commissioners met this morning inside the Polk County Government Center. Commissioner Mark Holy was absent from the meeting. After the call to order, the board approved the consent agenda. The only item on the consent agenda was the meeting minutes from the March 21 meeting.
SHERIFF JAMES TADMAN
The board then heard from Polk County Sheriff James Tadman who started by running through the monthly sheriff reports. According to Sheriff Tadman, the numbers in the month of February align with a typical month. “We like to see our burglaries and assaults stay low and right now we’re seeing that,” said Sheriff Tadman. “The big ones this time of the year are with vehicles going off the road due to weather but that wasn’t a big issue this past month and all in all it was a good month with the reports.”
No action was needed from the board. Sheriff Tadman also asked for the board’s approval for three staffing changes. The changes were the addition of a patrol deputy, adding a sergeant position, and then filling a vacant patrol deputy position. “The first position I asked the board to approve was the addition of a deputy patrol position, and we are planning on filling that position from the Justice Center,” said Sheriff Tadman. “The other part with this was to look at our rotations and make sure we’re utilizing our road patrol sergeants the best way possible. By adding another sergeant position we’re making sure we have a sergeant starting with our road patrol at 5:30 a.m. We can then also have our nightshift sergeants work later into the morning as well so that our deputy patrols and crews who are younger have more support. Once we promote someone to the sergeant position, we will need to backfill the vacant deputy patrol position from the Justice Center or with an outside hire which was the third part of this.”
Sheriff Tadman was clear to the board that he does have the money in the budget to add a sergeant position and make the changes work financially. After some questions from the board and clarification, they approved all of Sheriff Tadman’s requests unanimously.
COUNTY ENGINEER RICHARD SANDERS
County Engineer Richard Sanders came before the board asking for approval to award a bid to Newman Signs of Jamestown, North Dakota, for new signage throughout Polk County. Some new signage is needed on roadways and the county received three quotes with Newman Signs being the lowest at the price of $10,566. “Every fall my sign people go out to replace signs. They inspect all of them and then come up with a list of all the signs that need to be replaced for the upcoming year,” said Sanders. “So we put together a quote for these signs, and we received three back with Newman Signs out of Jamestown being the lowest responsible quote. They will be in charge of furnishing the signs, will get them sometime in May, and then when our sign person goes out he can replace those signs.”
The board approved the request unanimously.
MERLE KOLSTAD POPLAR RIVER DRAINAGE
The meeting ended with concerns from Merle Kolstad about the Poplar River Drainage each spring. Merle Kolstad and Randy Cook who were both from Erskine came before the board to state that the culverts near where Kolstad lives are too small. Their belief is that this causes the water to back up on Kolstad’s property during the spring as the snow melts, and all of it can’t flow through the culvert. Polk County Administrator Chuck Whiting stated the board did their part by listening to the concerns from Kolstad, and it is up to him at this point as to if he would like to pursue litigation if he believes it is warranted.
The next Polk County Board of Commissioners meeting will be on Tuesday, April 4 at 8:00 a.m. inside the Polk County Government Center.
