The Polk County Board of Commissioners met on Tuesday at the Polk County Government Center.
The first item on the agenda was the Monthly review of the Polk County Sheriff’s Office for August. The August statistics included 2,647 total calls, with 789 calls being for emergencies. It also had 160 traffic stops, 11 reckless driving incidents, 17 issued warrants, and two missing persons cases.
The commissioners approved the Emergency Performance Grant contract, effective December 2023, for $29,000. “The emergency performance grant helps with our emergency management program in the county,” said Emergency Manager Jody Beauchane, “Every county across the state gets this, and we qualify for around $29,000 for the year.”
The board also approved the resolution to declare a State of Emergency regarding the 2023 spring flood runoff. The reason the solution was proposed late was that there were no damages reported during the spring of 2023. “We did a lot of public outreaches, and nothing was coming in that was major,” said Beauchane, “In the month of May, the highway department did evaluations of all of the roads, and between three townships and two water sheds, we have damages.” The damages are estimated in the amount of $87,000. If the legislature grants a state declaration for flood damages, the county will qualify for funding to fix the damages.
The commissioners recently approved the purchase of two tandem trucks in the amount of $130,653 for each car from Boyer Ford. Boyer Ford ordered Western Star to build the trucks, and Western Star also sent the vehicles back to the county, which resulted in additional charges of nearly $15,000. The board approved the payment.
“I had to bring these two trucks back to the board to get the amended dollar amount approved,” said Polk County Engineer Richard Sanders, “Right now, they are at Bert’s in Moorhead getting snowplow equipment put on them.”
Sanders announced to the board that electronic bids opened for the projects to install box culverts and conduct a bridge replacement on County State and Highway 9 and 21. The bid was awarded to Knife River Materials of Northern Minnesota awarded the project with a bid in the amount of $1,889,642.60. The bid came in under the estimated cost of the project. “We have two bridge replacements; the first one is for the bridge about five miles west of Crookston on County Road 9,” said Sanders, “We’re going to burn crick crosses; there is a bridge there, and we will replace that bridge with three lines of 14×14 box culvert. So, it’s the same size boxes as downstream county road 216 and upstream through the road that we did a couple of years ago.”
The commissioners unanimously voted to approve the Polk County 2024 preliminary levy. The preliminary levy is increased by 4% from 2023. “The board approved a 4% levy increase over the next two or three months as we finish the 2024 budget,” said County Administrator Chuck Whiting, “The levy can’t go up more than 4% over the next few months.”
The board discussed the common goal of decreasing the final levy to a 3% increase as refinements to the budget occur from now until the public hearing on December 12.
During the meeting, the commissioners started to discuss the campground park improvements and how they could adjust that budget into a separate county fund. “Generally, the parks make revenue which has been used in the past to offset the levy,” said Whiting, “For the rest of the county, the interest may be to have retained by park projects and not the general county levy.”
The lone item on the consent agenda was approving the September 19 and September 20 board minutes.
