The Polk County Board of Commissioners met inside the Polk County Government Center on Tuesday morning.
CONSENT ITEMS
The board began the meeting by approving the Auditor Warrants and the Board Minutes from their meetings on July 5, 19, and 26. The board approved the consent items unanimously.
ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES- JON STEINER
The board first heard from Environmental Services Administrator Jon Steiner, who explained that the Polk County Recovery Facility and Landfill had incurred significant increases to its budget related to fuel increases, repair & maintenance costs, and increased compliance testing requirements, along with many other costs that are not known yet. He revealed that their cooperative live floor hauling contract with Beltrami and Hubbard Counties and roll-off hauling contract for Polk County were due at the end of the year, meaning that these expenses will greatly impact the operations for 2023 to 2025. He explained that the RRF and LF are currently charging $75 a ton for MSW from partner Counties and $25 a ton for C&D materials, and both project an increase of $5 a ton for both the MSW and C&D tip fees for 2023 and is likely that the tip increases will be back again for 2024 as well. “We do our own hauling contracts for three years, and because of the dollar value on them, they have to be bid. So, we won’t know what that is until long after our budgets will have to be set. The other counties are seeing this, and we also know the fuel prices are expected to continue to go up, so are natural gas prices, utilities, and labor,” said Steiner. “So, we’re figuring $5 a ton is a short-term patch, and we’ll probably be back at it, looking at the 2024 tip fees and beyond and expecting that they’ll most likely be going up again.” He requested the board to pass a motion to approve the fee increases for 2023 by $5 for all MSW and C&D materials from $75 to $80 and $25 to $30. The board approved the motion unanimously.
PLANNING AND ZONING- JACOB SNYDER
The board was then approached by Assistant Environmental Services Administrator Jacob Snyder, who came forward with Aaron Swenby, the son of the Estates owners, to make a motion to approve a final plat in section 21 of Garfield Township for a 3rd Addition to Ridgewood Estates. Swenby proposed two residential lots and one outlot from the existing parcels, which are about 33 ½ acres. Snyder explained that the adjacent public roadway to the lots was taken over by the Township, which has already granted the developer access to the second addition, where they proposed to develop a private drive from the township cul-da-sac utilizing an outlot designed for a roadway in a prior plat. Swenby was advised that the private roadway must be built to township specifications and requires a roadway maintenance agreement to be recorded with the final plot. And before they receive a final plat plan, they had to get a septic soil evaluation from a licensed septic professional for the lots, which Snyder reported they had with a licensed septic contractor named Tim Olson. Snyder also noted that there would be a few “buildable” parcels left over after the plat, which they felt would be developable and have adequate room to add two standard septic systems required by Planning and Zoning. He requested the board approve the final plat for the addition with conditions, which the board did unanimously.
HUMANE SOCIETY OF POLK COUNTY
The board was then approached by Nancy Sykes, Diane Christianson, and Nicole Heskin from the Scruffy Tails Humane Society on a request for the American Rescue Plan funds to become financially stable with long-term sustainability and growth. After giving a presentation of their operations and the benefits that they bring to the county, they noted that it cost them anywhere from $160 to $310 to care for dogs and from $227 to $253 for cats. They also stated that they signed a new contract with Crookston to bring their fees up to the 2022 rates for impounded animals. They noted that their expenses for the year so far have been at $79,951,95, which was much more than the expenses they had at this point in 2021, and were expecting $168,000 in total expenses for this year. They explained that they had a Total Income of $62,272.14 currently for this year, which gave them a net income of $-18,326.68. They wished for the county to lend them $50,000 for them to correct operational shortfalls and make renovations to their building and kennels and a $30,000 request to assure continuity of operations and give them additional time to seek grant funding and employees for their new and existing partners. “For different grants, we have requested the kennels and some flooring due to them being 30 years old. The building is very large, and we have a lot of maintenance in the building and many areas to update,” said Humane Society Treasurer Diane Christianson. The board told them that they would take their request into advisement for future discussions.
POLK COUNTY SHERIFF- JAMES TADMAN
The board then heard from Polk County Sheriff Jim Tadman, who came forward to report that a Patrol Deputy had resigned. He requested the board to approve the Sheriff’s Office beginning the advertisement and hiring process to replace the open position starting on August 22. The board approved the motion unanimously.
COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR- CHUCK WHITING
The board finished the meeting hearing from Polk County Administrator Chuck Whiting, who opened a discussion about how it wants to conduct his performance evaluation—saying that in the past, each member filled out an evaluation form and submitted it to the Human Resource Director to be shared with the board chair. This would then be shared with him in a closed session, with them making a statement afterward in an open session. He said his 10-year anniversary with the county will be on August 20, so the board meeting on the 23 would be the expected date for the evaluation, or they could choose a different date. He said he would print them out later today and have them in to the board today so they would be ready by their meeting on the 23rd.
ARPA Status
Whiting then gave the board a status update on the ARPA funds. He reported that they now had a balance over $735,565 and had not received any more external requests for the funds other than from the Humane Society’s request of $50,000 for procreations, with some of the Commissioners saying that they would try to visit the buildings to see what improvements they would be looking to make with the funds before they would make a decision on what they would do. He noted that Polk County Sheriff Jim Tadman had also requested an additional $269,743 for two 800 MHz mobile radios to contact auxiliary dispatch centers in Fosston and East Grand Forks.
2023 Budget
Whiting finished the meeting by then discussing the budget for 2023. He explained that he had met with multiple department heads soon after their meeting on July 26 to learn more about their initial budgets for 2023. He noted that he hadn’t seen anything becoming a potential major capital issue. “We’ve got some general issues that we’re working on. Of course, we’re also concerned about the tax levy. We’ve got some capital projects, but we’ll also have bond funds on hand to deal with many of those. We’re trying to figure out where we are in the labor marketplace, and we’ll see what we get from a study that’s being done and what we may have to do for the following years.”
The next meeting will take place on Tuesday, August 16, at 9:30 a.m. in the Polk County Government Center.
