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Tri-County Community Corrections gets good 3rd quarter audit and approves the 2025 budget

The Tri-County Community Corrections board met on Monday morning and received good news on the third quarter audit, approved the 2025 budget, and had a great personnel report.

PERSONNEL UPDATE
Six new employees have been hired, including four corrections officers and two hybrid officers. They also promoted three employees and received two resignations. “Honestly, for the first time, I don’t know how long we’re not posting for corrections officers or juvenile custody officers,” said Andrew Larson, Executive Director. “We have made good progress, and we have had a really good candidate pool recently with really strong interviews, really strong candidates that seem interested.”
Larson told the board that they might be a couple of employees heavy. “That is purposeful on our end, and rather than running on a fine line, we are hiring a couple more just to make it. If we encounter any resignations, we should be able to absorb them pretty easily,” said Larson. “Overall, we are sitting pretty good.”

3RD QUARTER AUDIT
The third quarter audit was solid and approved by the board. “We look at our total expenditures based on what we had budgeted and what our total revenue, and both items were at 75 percent,” said Larson. “Through three quarters, we are at 75 percent of our anticipated revenues and at 75 percent of total expenditures, and I would say that is about as good as you can ask for.”

2025 BUDGET APPROVED
The board approved the budget for 2025 with an increase of 3.76 percent from 2024. “We are pretty fortunate that we can
see some anticipated revenue growth in 2025 through an expanded contract with the U.S. Marshals Service, and we saw a pretty big increase with our per diem, and that really helps,” said Larson. “We also eliminated some positions just to help keep the budget pretty manageable for the partners. I think they are pretty happy with that number.”

RFP FOR MEDICATION
Tri-County Community Corrections will be asking for proposals for the Red River Valley Juvenile Center and the Northwest Regional Corrections Center medications needs. They currently have a contract with Thrifty White Pharmacy, but they want to see if other vendors in the area are interested. “We are going to be going out for bids just to see if there are vendors in or around the area that may be interested or may have some innovative approaches to medication delivery, some cost savings,” said Larson. “Ideally, we would like to get something that ties into our electronic health records that can make it a little easier to add medications into the system and order them. We hope to have a recommendation to the board in December or January.”

OCTOBER POPULATION
The October jail population averaged 147 per day, with 125 males and 22 females.  The top five offenses were 33 were in for parole/probation violation, 29 for failure to appear, 24 for DWI/DAR/DAC, 20 for assault/domestic assault, and 10 for controlled substance.
The Juvenile Center’s daily population was six. “Our numbers, in general, tend to be pretty modest compared to where we were in previous years, and that is okay,” said Larson. “We have numbers lower now than we have seen in all the years we have been in this facility, including COVID. Our local numbers have been consistently down for the last couple of months, and I think that is a good problem to have, especially with low staffing.”

NEXT MEETING –
The next meeting will be on December 16 at 9:00 a.m.

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