County Commissioners informed of Sustainable Harvest study

 

The Clearwater County Board of Commissioners met on  April 10, 2018 to discuss seasonal overtime; new rates at the Land Fill; bids for highway projects; and other issues.

Land Commissioner Bruce Cox received approval for allowing employee overtime for the Land Department and Campground during the field season when needed. This also covers administer of reforestation, site preparation, spraying, road work and operation of the campground outside of normal working hours. 

Commissioner Dan Stenseng asked Land Commissioner Cox about a study being done by the DNR. The Commissioner informed the Board that the DNR recently completed a Sustainable Harvest study. 

“(The study) recommended an 870,000 cord annual harvest on state managed lands. The counties (15) currently harvest approximately 700,000 cords annually, and that wood goes to every mill in the state,” he said. “The percentages are based on total land managed but some of it is swamp land and unproductive land. The numbers for the state do not include state parks, WMAs, and Scientific Natural acres.” 

“They gave up some beautiful wood from the park,” he said. “That is a lot of wood. The county has 17% of the land, and the State has 24%.”

“Paper prices are still taking a dive as paper plants struggle,” he added.

Environmental Services Director, Dan Hecht brought a draft of Demolition Landfill and Transfer Station fee schedule dated April, 2018. 

“We haven't changed the fees in many years,” he said.

Fees are used as an incentive for clean loads; fees are for identifiable compacted waste. He said the fee structure is based on actual cost, and is raised to $150 an hour for machine and man, and $30 a cubic yard plus tax (for space).

“This is not for any revenue, and does not even cover the cost,” Dan said. “We're trying to provide a service. We need to think about what we'll do to replace the space, and what we need to do to look forward.” 

The Board approved the adoption of the updated fee schedule. 

Some changes were made to stay within previously discussed goals for charging fees such as minimize the workload of managing accounts and cash at the landfill gate; keep costs for small amounts of waste from residents on solid waste service fee; large demolition projects such as whole buildings are to be at property owner expense; recover all costs for out-of-county waste received. 

County Engineer, Dan Sauvé and Pat Halloran, Assistant Engineer opened bids for various upcoming road construction work in the county. Low bid for pavement overlay on Highways 13 and 36 of one inch was from Central Specialties, Inc. located in Alexandria in the amount of $1,262,882.24. 

Low bid for pavement markings was from AAA Striping Service Co. from St. Michael, Minn. in the amount of $55,788. Low bid for regravel was from Vogt Dirt Service from Becida, Minn. in the amount of 181,814.38. Low bid for crackseal work was from Astech Corp. from St. Cloud, Minn. in the amount of $103,840.  

The low bidders will be the apparent recipients of the contracts, with Board approval at the Tuesday, April 17 meeting.

Approval for payment of Clearwater County Highway Department bills was given as presented in the amount of $42,133. 

County Auditor-Treasurer, Allen Paulson and Attorney Al Rogalla  led a discussion regarding the Clearwater County Personnel Policy which affects exempt employees.

Attorney Rogalla said his initial impression is that the way it is being handled does meet the law, and he believes it is more an implementation problem, suggesting questions be directed to the Personnel Committee. 

“The Committee is the Department Heads,” Commissioner John Nelson said, who is the Chair of the Personnel Committee. Neal Illies is also on the Committee. 

“We need an avenue to hear input, but we're still the deciding body as the policy maker,” he said. “I want to get the policy manual up to date,” with which John Nelson concurred, stating that there is a written policy. 

MIS Technology Director, Stuart Lien received approval of the Clearwater County local FBI/BCA Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) Policies effective April 10, 2018. 

A motion was passed to authorize the Information Technology Director to purchase the IBM V7R1 to V7R2 operating system upgrade at a cost of $4,995 from CPS Technology Solutions. The current system is eight years old, three years past the normal recommended replacement period, which IBM will no longer support or maintain as of April 30th which would have left the county vulnerable in not receiving security or operating system updates.

DNR/B2B Trail: Personnel from DNR, Mary Straka, Karen Omphress, and Tim Williamson came to the meeting to investigate further possibilities for a trail route across Clearwater County in spite of the opposition from the Townships and the County. It left Commissioners wondering what will be happening in the future. A separate article covers the discussion. Many members of the community were present.

County Auditor-Treasurer, Allen Paulson will begin the process to fill the position of County Extension Educator being vacated by Eli Gindele. He is returning to his home in southern Minnesota. 

“The position will now be full-time between Clearwater and Red Lake Counties.”

The Auditor-Treasurer was authorized to pay the submitted invoices of $182,192 for the County Revenue Fund and $5,199 for the Nursing Service Fund. 

All Commissioners were present at the meeting: Daniel Stenseng, Dean Newland, John Nelson, Neal Illies and Arlen Syverson.