Commissioner’s approve abatement & Shoreland permit

The Red Lake County Commissioners met on September 11, 2018 at 10am with Commissioners Al Remick, Ron Weiss, John Lerohl, and Chuck Simpson present. Dave Sorensen was absent.

First on the agenda was Tanya Hanson from Red Lake County Soil Water Conservation District (RLC SWCD) requesting a Shoreland Permit to be approved. The permit is for Enbridge Pipeline who is requesting for maintenance along the Clearwater River. Remick made the motion, Simpson seconded, carried.

Expenditures were looked over and Auditor Robert Schmitz informed the board of a billing issue with the Auto Value bill, which Auto Value will fix. There also was a bill in the group that caused Remick to abstain from voting. The expenditures were paid with a motion by Lerohl, seconded by Simpson, carried with roll call vote with abstain from Remick.

Committee meeting reports were started with Remick’s report on the RLC SWCD meeting he attended. The main discussion was about the Buffer projects in the county. The SWCD is working with farmers on the buffers. Everything is going well and a grant from the pipeline is being used for other projects. Hope to have them all finished by the end of the year/season. Remick also reported that a NW Water Festival is being held soon in Fertile and Warren that our 4th graders from the local schools (RLCC & RLF) will be attending.

Lerohl attended an Extension meeting where the discussion was on the local grocery stores situation. Many local grocery stores are having a tough time making it. People work in larger towns, and inadvertently end up shopping more there than in their small towns, which hurts local businesses. Lerohl also talked about a project where local vegetable farms are working with local suppliers to get their products (garlic & potatoes) into the local stores, using the suppliers for distribution.

Lerohl also attended a NW Regional Development meeting and they toured Errico Manufacturing, located in Viking, MN. Errico is a multi-generational family owned business; founded in 1976 by George Erickson. Originally a tool and die shop with an emphasis on special machines, it has evolved into a sizable manufacturing facility currently producing over a million parts per year. They supply their customers with production machining, stamping, and forming to customer specified designs.  They are capable of producing CNC machined parts from bar stock, extrusions, castings, and forgings using both vertical and horizontal machining centers. Lerohl said it was very interesting tour. They have 40 – 60 employees depending on demand for their products.

Another meeting Lerohl attended was a MN Housing Consortium. The discussion at that meeting was about the project to place a couple of new homes in local communities working with Homark, Inc. HRA is working with this project also.

Ron Weiss attended an auditor’s meeting where issues with the system are discussed and recommendations are made for fixing issues. 

Weiss also reported on the Tri County Corrections Center (TCCC) meeting he attended. There were 8 person’s from Red Lake County in jail, and none in the Juvenile Center. The health insurance for employees is going down from last year. A grant to reduce recidivism has been received, Weiss will report on that at a later time when he has more facts. TCCC is discussing with Mahnomen the possibility of more beds being available once Clay County’s new facility is up and running. And looking at the budget, payment from Red Lake County may go down based on the average usage of the facility. 

Weiss attended a meeting of the Area on Aging (Land of the Dancing Sky) where they discussed the aging population and homeless. Insurance plans for seniors is being dropped in the NW MN area and the seniors will have to find a new supplemental plan by the end of the year. This is impacting 19 counties in our area. 

Simpson attended an Economic Development meeting and there were 2 new applicants for loans, with 15 loans out with only one business who went bankrupt, things are going well.

Schmitz presented a tax abatement issue with Enbridge that was found. The problem was that the amount was over-valued due to transposed numbers. Lerohl made the motion to approve the abatement, Simpson seconded, carried.

Schmitz also reported that the accounting needs a new agreement needs to be ratified. This affects many counties and this is why the ratification needs to be done. The audit is not completed yet, but will report on it when the audit is final.

Angie Lundeen, from Human Resources has been looking for information for re-alignment of their step system. This has not been done for many years and the questions are how much will it cost, do they need to do it, how it will affect departments. Lundeen has talked to Kittson County who recently did theirs. They said they did it because of union contracts which forced them to do it. Lundeen also found out it is not as expensive as it used to be, because they now have data available from past years, cutting down the research time. Lundeen was instructed to find out more information and get other quotes for the next meeting.

The meeting was adjourned.