00:00:06,500	OK, it’s 5 o’clock and I know we have a chaplain in the room, please. OK Thank you, Comm.. Please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father. Creator Sovereign lord over this earth. We thank you for the blessings that you’ve bestowed upon this county. We thank you for the commissioners that you’ve given to, to guide and direct us.

00:00:37,330	We thank you for our county workers, uh, law enforcement and and those other workers that are doing important jobs in our county. We thank you for all of them, Father. We ask God that you’ll just continue to be with them and to protect them as they do their jobs, watch over them.

00:00:55,830	Be with their families, Scott, and just uh provide for their needs. God, we ask tonight that you’ll be with us in this meeting that your presence will be here, that your wisdom will be upon our commissioners and that they will have your wisdom to guide our county.

00:01:15,630	God, thank you again for all that you do for us. We pray this in the name of your son. Amen, amen. Please stand as we do the Pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, commissioners. Thanks, Chaplain.

00:01:38,400	Thank you. Uh, with that, I’d like to call the uh county Wheat Board to order, uh, please call the roll. Comm. Schwab, Comm. Woodcock here, Comm. Munsen here, Comm. Bittner, Chair Bakken here, first item up approval of the agenda. Move to approve motion 2nd. Any other discussion? Hearing I call the roll please, Comm. Schwab, Comm.

00:02:05,700	Woodcox, Comm. Munsen, Comm. Bittner, Chair Bakken here, uh, or yes. Uh second item up, uh, consideration of the July 2024 meeting minutes and bills. Mr.

00:02:25,100	Chair, I had an opportunity to, uh, approve the bills or look at the bills today, and I would move that we approved the bills and the minutes of the May the July 1st meeting. Thank you, motion is there a second. Motion seconds. Any other discussion? Hearing none, call the roll please, Comm. Bittner. Comm. Schwab, Comm. Woodcox, Comm. Munsen, Chair Bakken. Yes, uh, next item up update and discussion on approval of bills. Any further discussion on that? All right, uh, Comm. Schwab. Uh In the past, The Weed board.

00:03:01,470	Convened to approve bills. But there were months that they never Really convened. And I think bills are paid. And in talking to the state, They maintain that. The weed board works under the guidance of the county commission.

00:03:31,730	So I’m wondering, and this is kind of, kind of go further if we set up another weed board. Is that we can’t, we can if we want. To use what we’re doing for the other county bills. And I think we should be doing that on on the uh weed board. Think about doing that on the weed board also. That way you’re not skipping months.

00:03:57,430	Because We’re paying bills before we’re approving them. And why have a we board meet for half, half a A minute or two to approve bills. Makes no sense, so I think maybe we should consider setting it up that. It goes through our method that we do use now for all the other bills.

00:04:23,630	I think it’s of course the weed officer. You know, he, he checks the bills. I believe they’re checked twice down in the office. That be right? And then a Comm. checks them so we could do that if we wanted.

00:04:43,200	It’s something to think about maybe we should do, especially seeing as how that we are the weed board at this time, it makes a lot of sense, you know, we may look at that as a change in the future if there is a. Another wee board again, but for right now I, I think that makes a lot of sense, discussion. Mr.

00:04:58,700	Chair, Fisher Wilcox, when I reviewed the bills today, there’s only one there and I think that was a normal procedure. I thought we were doing was we board the weed officer would submit the bills to the auditor’s office, and they would submit him to the approve them themselves, the otter has to approve them and the and the weed board officer and then the Cum County Comm. the final approval.

00:05:16,800	That’s what we do, we’re doing today, so I don’t see anything wrong with that. I mean, as long as the, as the auditor looks at him as the chief financial officer, and then the County Comm., whoever is designated, looks at him. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t. See anything wrong with anything wrong with that, Comm.

00:05:32,570	Ritner? I agree with that I I would make a motion that we’d do that motion second. Any further discussion? I call the roll please, Comm. Schwab. Yes, Comm. Woodcock, Comm. Munsen, Comm. Bittner, Chair Bakke. Yes, uh, Comm. Schwab, any other comments? Darren is our new lead officer is going to give us an update. On what’s been going on.

00:05:59,470	Welcome aboard and thank you. Yeah, thank you, Chair, uh, commissioners, uh, tonight, uh, I’m just gonna throw it in your guys’s ball, see what you guys have for questions and see if I can handle that. Then I can let you know what I know if you didn’t ask. So, uh, Comm.

00:06:20,670	Woodcox, do you have any questions for me? Just, I just wanted to know the normal when he visited before with the normal procedure, what we’re doing now since we’re late in the season, just get an update as to how we’re handling the spraying this year, OK? Uh, we’ve, I’ve been we’ve had one sometimes 2 trucks, I’d say 2 days out of the, out of each

00:06:38,230	week we’re having two trucks out on any given roads. Um, we worked from the city limits. Work our way out from Bismarck, figuring that would be probably the best way to go because, um, first on uh from on June 17th, there are a lot of complaints were just mainly within the 1st 68 miles somewheres in there,

00:07:00,130	so to quiet that down. And then further out we got a real people they’re, they’re gonna spray when they can, um, if they see problems and they’ve been real, real good about it. So, uh, that’s what we’ve been doing for spring right now. I am. Thank you, Mr. Manson.

00:07:21,130	Darren, how many contractors are you working with? You said one possibly 2 trucks is that 12 possibly 2 contractors that is 11 individual contractor that’s set up with the two trucks. They have 3, but they’ve had prior. Commitments, you know, so, um, that’s why we’re getting the 1 and 2 trucks a week.

00:07:43,600	As I know earlier we talked about maybe setting up a few contractors I wasn’t sure if that had gotten that far or not didn’t have any hits, um, for guys that were set up for the application that we needed done. So that’s, that’s why we have the single company out there right now. Thank you.

00:08:03,800	Darren, if you wouldn’t mind uh um little of your background just for those that are home that may not know you and uh Um, and then I would like to get in a little bit to.

00:08:23,700	What we’re doing for a little bit of catch up this year as far as, you know, it kind of breaks down between DOT and interstates and our responsibilities, so if you uh background uh grew up in Morton County. And was out there for a number of years.

00:08:43,400	My wife and I, we moved up into the Minoan or not in townships,,,, 1617 years ago now, um, and as far as, uh, the spring, we’re just taking care of the roadways in our township. We’re not, we’re not doing any of those state highways this year for seeing right now, um, I, I want to get in touch with the the. The gentleman, um, through the company.

00:09:02,600	And I want to talk to him as far as, you know, getting out and maybe getting some fall spring on some of the surge areas, um, had a lot of, a lot of calls on it and They’re just kind of sporadic. They’re kind of all over the place where there’s only like one in this township, 3 in this township, and I’m not meaning only bad. I’m just saying that.

00:09:22,300	In, in the order to get it uh the application done, it’s gonna be a lot of traveling and, and get, you know, we’re just gonna have to figure out if that’s going to, you know, be a worthwhile just cause, or do we just hold off until next spring when we’re organized more and, and, uh, get the LAP program out there and, and get, get organized more in that area.

00:09:39,070	Thank you yes Any other questions for Darren? Well, once again, welcome aboard and thank you. Yes, thank you, gentlemen. Uh, any other business? Hearing none, the wheat board is now adjourned. OK, I’ll call the August 5th meeting of the August 5th, 2024 meeting of the the Burleigh County Commission to order.

00:10:03,970	First item is roll call of members. Comm. Bakken here, Comm. Schwab, here, Comm. Woodcock, Comm. Munsen, Chair Bittner here. Nexus approval of the agenda. Anybody have any additions, subtractions, anything you want to talk about? Move to approve. 2 motion 2nd to approve any further discussion? Call the roll, please. Comm. Schwab. Yes, Comm. Woodcock, Comm. Munsen, Comm. Bakken, yes, Chair Bittner, yes, motion carries.

00:10:30,030	Consent agenda. There’s abatements, applications for license, raffles, and special event permits. Anybody want to pull anything out of there for discussion? If not, a motion, please. I will we approve the consent agenda. The motion is second to approve the consent agenda. Any further discussion, seeing no call the roll please. Chris Schwab. Yes, Comm. Woodcox, Comm. Munsen, Comm.

00:10:51,130	Bakken, yes, Chair Bittner, yes, motion carries. Planning director Flanagan, Mr. Chair, Comm. number 4, I did have a chance to look at the minutes and the bills, and I move they be approved. Would I blown by that 2, OK. Thanks for the catch.

00:11:11,830	Motion is second to approve the meeting minutes and the bills, any further discussion? Call the roll, please. Comm. Schwab. Yes, Comm. Woodcox. Yes, Comm. Munsen. Yes, Comm. Bakken, yes, Jem Bitner. Yes, motion carries. Get back on track here planning director Flanagan. Welcome, Mitch. Good evening, commissioners, um. First on the agenda, the first item is the uh Recommendations from the July 10th.

00:11:39,100	Planning Commission meeting for the rezoning of the Burley County soil district conservation soil district. This is located out on 1107 Northeast 171st Street in Minoan. It’s, uh, they first came to us, uh, intending to construct an office-based learning facility earlier this year, an 8300 square foot building that would be used for public assembly and including educational learning center.

00:12:03,900	The proposed zoning will be public use district PUD, but it’s not a planned unit developments for public use, which is established in areas for principal land use as government, civic, or institutional uses. Current zoning is egg.

00:12:25,100	The building permit and plans information have been reviewed, the zone changes, the final step before issuing a permit that the planning commission, the recommendation was to approve was 8 to 0 with a recommendation or condition of adding chip seal to uh to the to the gravel on 171st Street. That condition was not part of the approval. It was just part of a a recommendation. Comm., any questions for Mitch? Mr. Chair, I move we approve the, uh, zoning change.

00:13:00,370	Second, I have a motion a second to approve the zoning change any Any further discussion, Mr. Chair Comm. how much traffic are they in? Anticipating on Um, with this building, once it’s constructed as far as the the need for a chip seal or Or some dust mitigation. I haven’t got into that with that with them.

00:13:21,770	I mean, they, the, the chips here would be a requirement for Burleigh County to do. That’s Burley County property, so that would be a consideration of the highway department and you. I’m not sure about the, the occupancy, the number of people or the assembly use.

00:13:39,430	I mean, you could easily get 200 people in 250 people in there. OK, take care. Sure Comm. Johnson. My memory from the meeting and as I’m reading the notes here. Planning commission meeting. A motion to recommend approval with one condition. Applying a double chip seal to gravel. My understanding is that was part of planning and zoning’s requirement.

00:14:00,730	To be moved forward. I understood it as as a recommendation. That it wouldn’t be, it wasn’t part of the approval of that of their others proposed zoning. It reads your approval with one condition. Right, but I listened to them, watched the meeting. It was. Mr.

00:14:27,000	Zuroff that suggested that it would be a recommendation that was part of that motion. Not a requirement. That would be consistent with my understanding too. That was a recommendation and that’s also why I voted against that. Um, Because I felt that the, uh, planning and zoning commission should not be making road decisions for Burleigh County.

00:14:50,600	That’s a decision that should be made at this table with our highway department. So the motion She was not including the chip ceiling. Is that a motion? I made the motion without the chip seal and the second was the same, OK. Any further discussion? See none call roll please, Comm. Bakken. Yes, Comm. Schwab, No, Comm. Woodcock, yes, Comm. Munsen, Chair Bittner, yes, motion carries.

00:15:29,970	I think that it would be good. If the Burleigh County Highway Department could follow up a little bit on that and see if there’s something we can do there. Um, there was a concern expressed about the condition of the gravel on that road after it got wet and there was some conversation about the shooting the mag and the whole

00:15:47,270	thing, except that, um, You know, we want your recommendation on what to do there based on that, and I know it also goes back to that problem that we’ve had with, with the, the, uh, specification on the gravel. So we might be mixing two things and that’s why I wanted you to be involved in this. Right.

00:16:04,070	Thank you. Next, Next item, uh, commissioners is the um appeal for a special use permit that was denied at the planning commission on July 10th, uh, in your packets is the basic history and information of that application and with the findings of the planning commission.

00:16:31,830	Um, basically the, unless you want me to read the entire staff report, basically the premises they, they planted a corn maze about 4 months ago to um allow public onto their property, uh, to Participate in that corn maze. It’s about approximately 5 acres in size.

00:16:55,230	And um this has been kind of going along the lines of our, our agritourism ordinance that we’ve been working on since February and we’ve had 3 stakeholder meetings in large discussion was um over that one little ordinance for to allow it or or to just You know, the conditions of the tears, how many people are allowed on the property today and that sort of thing.

00:17:16,230	Basically, what is the issue here is we respond to this as a complaint in early spring of 2023. The neighbor to to the west, he raises deer. He’s a small farmer. He raises deer. Uh, for so he, he sells them to for game clubs and that’s sort of the Carnegie clubs. The neighbor to to the east has uh purchased this.

00:17:41,400	has purchased that greenhouse the Baldwin greenhouse, the stole Farm Holdings has purchased that in uh I believe 2023 they bought it. I’m not sure of the dates, but it was a premise here is the whole, the whole idea is one neighbor. is registered a complaint about the use of the other neighbor.

00:18:02,700	And the premise also is that These agricultural properties should be allowed this this activity by right. And that it’s agritourism, it’s part of um Part of agriculture on one side of the fence on the other side of the fence, it’s commercializing agland. It’s allowing people making a commercial transaction to allow people on your property for entertainment. And that’s as simple as I can get with this.

00:18:23,800	And there’s been a lot of chatter online. There’s been a lot of Facebook comments, radio shows and that sort of thing, questioning the integrity of why we’re even out there.

00:18:44,700	Why are we creating an ordinance for this? And it’s questioning of integrity of the planning commission and zoning in, in particular, because it’s It’s allowed use they think it’s an allowed use by right. The tourism, that sort of thing.

00:19:06,000	I did send you two draft ordinances, um, We’ve had the 3 stakeholder meetings it pretty much went through the whole all the comments and the discussion is basically on one side of the fence, you think it’s a, you know, they don’t, they don’t want this ordinance in place, they’re opposed to it, the other side of the fences, they think it should be there because it’s commercializing egg land. Um The revision that I sent to you would be would allow.

00:19:23,500	On the, on the first tier would allow up to 50 people a day any day of the year for these type activities. If you want to have more than 50, you can apply for tier 2 special use permit. That would go in front of the planning Comm.. Up to 100 people if you wanted to go above 100 people, then you would rezoned to a PUD.

00:19:40,670	So that’s where we’re at with this whole thing. I didn’t, and she want me to read more from the staff report and, you know, the, uh. Information from a planning commission as well. OK, well, I sat through the whole meeting.

00:20:02,970	So I don’t feel I need a whole lot more information, I think. At the end of the day what the real issue is is we don’t have an ordinance in place that allows for it. Is that that’s correct. Basically, in a nutshell what the. we’ve been trying to create an ordinance to allow it. Yeah, that’s the premise.

00:20:25,670	We, we were approached earlier last year actually with um Burnt Creed Farms, you recall in in February that hearing for a special use permit. Even considering that there was nothing in our ordinance that says you can have an event center on your property.

00:20:45,530	It was, it was a stretch and so we started working on this ordinance and we’ve had 3 stakeholder meetings and basically it’s we’re hearing the same thing at each meeting. And it’s either your for it or you’re against it. But the idea is that For most people that I’ve talked to that it’s commercializing Agland. It’s allowing a transaction of of of complete strangers onto your property for entertainment.

00:21:10,330	For recreation, corn maize, the You picked pumpkin patch, all that stuff. And if you keep it under 50, then I mean that’s, that’s the one version that I sent you guys, that it’s allowed you to go ahead. But you go a bit a little bit bigger than that, up to 100 people, then you need a special use permit.

00:21:29,000	If we don’t respond to people like the neighbor with his deer up there, we’re not doing our job. We’re not, we’re not, um, we’re ignoring. Um, a complaint. And so we could be held responsible for that too. We can’t ignore these complaints. At, at the bottom line is there we got two neighbors that don’t agree on this.

00:21:48,300	And One is affecting the other and Part of the motion uh discussion at the planning commission was the fact that the Everybody has property rights. That’s not in question here. We all have property if we own property, we have our rights to do what we want in there as long as it doesn’t affect your neighbor.

00:22:05,500	Or as a conflicting issue with your neighbor. conflicting use with the with the zoning that’s what zoning is all about. And so it’s, that’s the bottom line of this. Well, that was kind of a big thing for me at the meeting.

00:22:23,200	Um, I, I’m supportive of agriculture in every way, and I, I was a little bit concerned that people seemed to be thinking that the county was somehow anti-agriculture or anti-tourism, and that’s not the truth at all. For me, it was that the there is no zoning ordinance in place that allows for that special use permit that was being requested.

00:22:44,370	So they’re asking for a special use permit that’s Doesn’t have a category under our zoning ordinances. So I think my question for the state’s attorney would be Can you issue a special use permit in the absence of Ordinances that allow it. if you don’t have any authority to do it, then the answer is no.

00:23:06,070	So if there isn’t a statute or an ordinance that allows it, then you, you can’t issue that. For me, that was the that was the end of it for me, Comm. Munsen, Mr. Chair, uh, thank you. And that was my biggest conversation with the, with the folks at the. The meetings, the stakeholder meetings is we’re trying to create an ordinance so that we have something to enforce.

00:23:29,030	The interesting part about ordinances and a lot of people believe that if there’s no ordinance, they can do whatever they want. The opposite is true. We need an ordinance to allow you to have that activity. And I, and I want to commend Mitch and his staff.

00:23:46,030	They’ve worked very hard, uh, through the stakeholder meetings to try to make sure we have. A very workable ordinance and, and honestly, that’s our next step. is to get this ordinance approved so that we can go to the next piece. Of issuing a permit Mr.

00:24:04,830	Chair Commission Woodcock, where are we at with this ordinance that we are working on at what point are we? Are we ready to look at it yet, or are you still formulating it or well, I, I think that we can present it at a public hearing in September. I think it was still tweaking to do, I would like to state’s attorney review it.

00:24:19,930	I did send you guys just the draft and it doesn’t, it’s not much change from the stakeholder meetings that were discussed. The only difference is on the one that I sent you the tier 1 and tier 2 is it allowed by right you can have up to 50 people a day. And it any day of the year. For these agricultural recreation, um, items. And go ahead.

00:24:39,000	I mean, and the idea is that if you want to start a corn maze, you know, you can have 50 people without anybody telling you what to do.

00:24:53,200	But if you go above that and start bothering people and start causing problems with traffic and dust and, and, you know, that sort of thing and noise, then you have to get a special use permit. Because it’s We don’t want to restrict it or stop it. The idea is that we don’t want, we don’t want have two neighbors complaining and we have to respond to a complaint and then we had, well, it’s not working, you gotta stop.

00:25:08,100	So that’s what we’re trying to do. That’s the integrity of our purpose here. Is to allow this. But have a review of it, so all the neighbors, everybody around is OK with it. And that’s, we’re not talking about the whole county, we’re just talking about adjacent landowners. And that’s The bottom line, the crux of it. Yeah Good question.

00:25:42,070	Let me think about that. So I guess Mr. Chair, where, where are we at? I mean, the planning and zoning recommended. That this did not does not occur, is that correct? That, that the corn maze is not going to be allowed.

00:26:05,270	The the the the consensus was that unless the neighbors are able to reconcile this complaint based, they’re not going to reconcile the by the looks of everything I’ve seen, they’re not gonna be any reconciliation between the two neighbors. I don’t know. I, I asked, you’re not a prognosticator. I am not. I, I think I did talk to Jamie.

00:26:24,870	I did tell him that he has a responsibility as a property owner to manage what he’s doing and to if the deer are getting spooked, then the question is who puts up a fence, who puts up a barrier. Should it be a shared cost between the owners? I don’t know.

00:26:44,030	I can’t answer that question, but as with Mary, she’s the proper or theso farm holding, and they’re the property owners, they have a responsibility of not affecting that neighbor will they come together and have put up a, a barrier that would allow it. And they had Burley County out of the middle between the both of them because that’s where we are right now. We’re we’re right in the middle between those two people and it’s, it’s.

00:27:01,330	It’s not uh where we need to be, that’s where this commission needs to be, Mr. Chair. Comm., Mitch, said September for a public hearing is explain the steps that we need to go through between today and that meeting.

00:27:24,930	Could it be the second meeting in August for us, or does it because of timing and because of notifying public and being in the newspaper how many times does it really put it out till September. Unless we we could hold a special meeting. We could, we could hold a special meeting and Um, probably the 3rd week of August.

00:27:45,500	I would like to expedite it as fast as we could to make sure that we. Can try to answer as many questions for the residents as we can. Right, uh, stuff’s on vacation, uh multiple vacations this this for August, but I will see if we, because it takes, uh, you know, you have to advertise it twice or 10 days, so I, we could probably set the week of

00:28:06,600	the 19th for the public hearing and asked binding Comm. to show up for a special hearing. Yeah Or for not, not the plan but for the uh public hearing for the for the County commissions. Reading the ordinance.

00:28:25,200	If you guys are OK with what I sent you so then does it have to be red twice. It has to be read what that first time and then you have to wait another month for the second hearing and then it’ll come before you guys. OK.

00:28:45,700	So it’ll be into September, so you’re what you’re referring to is the planning and zoning commission special meeting for the first hearing this is not an ordinance that’s being proposed under the Home Rule Charter ordinance. This is a regular county. We’re changing the zoning ordinance, right? OK. That’s about the only way that I can see an expedited path through this because otherwise we, we just.

00:29:07,400	don’t have the ability to say go ahead and do it, you know, as much as we would probably want to. Could be some. That’s a conflict. That’s a conflict, if you ask me, um. Um, did you have anything else to add? You had one question, and I’ll give you one question. That’s it. Come on up and give your You sign in. Thank Good evening, leaders and guests.

00:29:42,870	My name is Mary Pool, and as Mitch said, I do represent uh the stall farms and Baldwin Greenhouse and nursery. I would like clarity on understanding, um, the appeal, um. Process. I understood this was to be our ability to appeal the decision to do not pass. Our ability to have a corn maze.

00:30:10,070	So I would like clarity on that and then my question is. Is that two questions? No, I want clarity on what you were talking about. I don’t think that’s a question. I, I think that’s deserved.

00:30:31,630	Um, My question is very simply, where does that leave us with the corn maize, if we choose to go ahead and we say we’ll limit it to 50 people per day. It sounds to me like we we’re golden, but I would like to. Hear a yes or no from this board. That’s not something that this board can answer right now because we don’t have the ordinance in place to make that call.

00:30:56,730	Ordinances are established based on public input and public meetings, not my decision. Then why did not my decision. Then why did except so the clarification is there, there was no ordinance in place to allow for a special use permit, so the application got denied. We’re working on ordinances to allow it, but they’re not in place yet, so our hands are tied right now.

00:31:16,630	And so until, and that’s why we’re talking about having expedited process to Try to get that ordinance in place so that it kind of saves the day for this. So my appeal. is null and void even though I showed clearly that the gentleman lied. Um, we’re not going to get into that right now.

00:31:36,400	I don’t think that’s fair because then we got to allow him to get up and say, oh, I didn’t lie, she lied and I’m not we’re not going to get into that situation is pretty simple. There is not an ordinance in place that allows for it.

00:31:51,600	And we’re trying to work through that and we’ve been working on that for, as you know, a long time already. Yes, but they still accepted. My $300 and the request for special permit. That’s all I have to say. Mr. Chair, Comm. Woodcock.

00:32:11,500	We get any kind of clarification if we can if they can have 50 people without anything, no permits, no nothing, they can have up to 50 people. So who’s going to monitor that? Is there gonna be somebody there saying, well, 4 of them left and so we can have 4 more come in the entrance and all that and who enforces something like that? We don’t, we don’t have the time or the expertise or the.

00:32:27,370	Financial ability to have a couple of deputies they counting in and out. I mean, that’s so what if they go ahead and do it? What’s the consequences? Let me, let me try you want an answer to that real quick, or is that? I don’t know if you heard me. Well, here’s here’s my opinion real quickly.

00:32:49,270	We haven’t even adopted the ordinance to allow Tier one or tier 2, correct. So until the ordinance is in place. Unfortunately, they can’t do anything, right, which is why I’m asking for an expedited process because at this point there’s no ordinance. In play To say yes. And I need this to go faster.

00:33:12,270	So that we can get it through the system, have the public hearings so that we can make a decision. That’s reasonable. Yeah, I mean, I’m not, I’m not opposed to that at all. Um, but to answer Chair, I mean, Commission Woodcox’s question. We don’t have an ordinance, so we can’t say yes to tier one to enforce. We don’t have.

00:33:29,330	Can I get some clarification from our state’s attorney as to whether or not they can walk, they can start the corn maze with have 50 people at maximum, and Can they do it without any permits and they, they started tomorrow. Can they do that without any permits or any applications or anything.

00:33:47,930	If that’s what the um the ordinance now says or any law now says that they don’t need a permit for that, then yes, they could. There’s nothing that we can do to stop that.

00:34:04,530	The only problem is what does 50 people mean? Does that mean people waiting to get in as well? How do you count the 50? Is it 50 within the location or 50 at the next question. And so, um, so that’s the concern because they want to limit the amount of people that are in the area driving on the roadways, things like that, and that’s why if it’s over a certain amount, To get that special use permit in place because then we’re taking into account all of those other

00:34:18,930	things that may affect that area and so um my opinion would be that the 50 people would be the 50 people in the area of where that’s taking place, like whether they’re in the parking lot or actually in the maze itself, your next question is probably going to be who, um, monitors that and what recourse

00:34:35,700	would we have if they violate that, um, then obviously whatever the penalty is for not obtaining that special use permit and then using the land in violation of that. Permit is what the penalty would be, um, who monitors that? I couldn’t tell you. Because it’s not a criminal violation. It’d be a civil penalty.

00:34:54,000	So typically, it’s not the sheriff’s department who’s going to go and do that. It would be some sort of inspection by the planning and zoning. Staff So it’s a mess. It’s, it’s a mess they don’t, there’s no teeth in your ability to monitor that either, is it enforcement’s cumbersome and it the the minimum it’s cumbersome to.

00:35:16,600	And I, yeah, yeah, I think it’s a. $30 a day, I believe it is. I have to look at the inside it’s in the planet zoning ordinance, but did you say $30 a day, I believe it. I’ll have to look at it, but it’s. It’s set by century code.

00:35:40,070	So Um, Yeah, the earliest I, I, we could, we could work for getting a public hearing for those ordinances on the week of the 19th. And lets planning commission for a special hearing and that sort of thing and. And then we’ll wait the amount of days after that and hopefully get it to the planning or to this commission sometime in September.

00:35:56,670	I would appreciate that. Do you have something to say? Let me understand this the way this thing is going. Uh We need to get an ordinance in place, right? So we need an ordinance in place. What is It’s the public hearing. Through the zoning, the start of getting that ordinance. Is that what we’re saying? Yes, OK.

00:36:23,170	So the next question I have is this 50 people. Does that include staff? You might have 20 people there, there are staff. How do you, how do you regulate that participants. Participants participants. Those are questions we’re going to have to answer at some point in the future.

00:36:58,830	It’s part of the process that’ll come back before this board. So worth going through all that, commissioners, what do you wishes? A motion to do like what you’re saying is probably in order. I would move Uh, that we Move quickly to get a public hearing in front of the planning and zoning Commission so that we can hear this ordinance.

00:37:31,600	Uh, that so that it can be moved to county commission faster, please. OK, motion doesn’t have pleas. Here we go. A motion. Is there a second? Motion of the secondary further discussion. Run that motion by me again. Oh, I’m sorry, go ahead, you go, you go. Would you repeat that motion? I would move that we ask.

00:37:57,700	Planning and zoning to have a special meeting. For this ordinance. Setting up a special meeting. Of Of the planning and zoning. Yeah, because they have to hear it first. In order to send it to commission for our approval. part of the chat though. You also need to in Um, Referencing the appeal. Well, that’s a second motion and that’ll come right after this.

00:38:26,400	Mr. Chair. Comm. Comm. Woodcock is um Is it imperative or is it required that we go to planning and zoning or can they, can they go direct to county commission cause they just, they just recommend something to us. We’re the final, final say so in that.

00:38:46,500	I Can I ask Julie that? Is it, is that the process that has to happen is it goes to planning. I know it’s ordinary. I know it’s common. We always do it, but can they bypass? And the or And the planning and zoning bypass, the planning and zoning requirements and come directly to us.

00:39:05,700	Um, I’m not aware if there’s anything in the ordinances that require it to go through planning and zoning first. I would have to look at those to see that. If there isn’t anything that requires it first to go through planning and zoning, then it could come to the commission first. I’ll, I’ll look at the um.

00:39:23,900	I’ll look at the ordinances and cut down on the time, right, that process is laid out in the zoning ordinances. It takes 2 weeks, 10 days, twice to advertise and so the earliest would be the 19th of August, which would We could either have it here and I don’t, you know, you don’t want, you’d rather have them at the planning commission. We could have them on that Wednesday.

00:39:39,970	With the planning commission. The, the one part of the process that we are bypassing is the normal processes that comes before the planning and zoning commission, I’d say like tomorrow’s meeting under consideration. And then it gets scheduled for a public hearing at some future meeting, usually the next one.

00:40:01,970	And so by this action, we would be bypassing that consideration step and whether that’s fine or not, I don’t, I don’t actually have a problem with it, but that’s what we’re doing. With that motion. That would be up to State’s attorney. OK. So she’s gonna find out and. I said I’ll look and let you know. Sorry, I didn’t turn my microphone on.

00:40:24,670	So we should probably have the motion contingent on what she My motion will be contingent upon state’s attorney’s lawyers approval of the expedited meeting. OK OK, any further discussion? Mr. Schwab. Yes, Comm. Woodcock. Yes, Comm. Munsen. Yes, Comm. Bakken, yeah, let’s hear Bitner. Yes, motion carries. Comm. Munsen.

00:40:52,430	I would also like to make a motion that we, uh, return. The special use permit appeal fee back to the applicant since they really can’t have an appeal yet without an ordinance, so we should not have accepted that appeal. We should have not accepted that. Fee So I would like that returned to the applicant. 2. We have a motion of second to return the fee.

00:41:17,730	Any further discussion? See no call, Comm. Schwab, Comm. Woodcox. Yes, Comm. Munsen. Yes, Comm. Bakken Bittner, yes, motion carries. We’ll return the uh. Special use permit fee and then we’ll wait and see what happens with the ordinance. OK. Right. Next county Engineer Hall, 2025 budget adjustments. Welcome Marcus. Good evening, commissioners.

00:41:48,200	You do have a board letter in your packet kind of laying things out, um, I kind of summarize it also uh during their discussion that we had with the county board on budgeting, uh, this last meeting, uh, the county board made a couple of changes to our budget, and at that time I’d requested that it would be nice

00:42:04,600	if we could have a little bit of time to work with Comm. Schwab and my staff, uh, to pull things together and come back to the board with a recommendation of how we’d like to see, uh, this all come together. Um, this does. Not change the mill levy or any of that.

00:42:20,400	That’s all that was all approved and this does not change that in any way. The two actions that the county board actually took at the meeting was number one, they did increase, we had to reduce the budget or we presented a proposed budget that was reduced, uh, because of revenue shortfalls that we were experiencing, the county board asked us to increase our

00:42:40,870	proposed 2025 budget to match that of the 2024 budget that we are currently working under. In addition to that, the County board ask us to reduce any reference to increases in mill levy to cover some of the costs of the budget that we had put together. So with both of those changes together.

00:42:59,070	Uh, we were looking at about a $5.1 million gap that we needed to come up with, uh, we talked a little bit at the budget meeting about sources of that funding we talked about the legacy fund, the highway department savings account, general fund, and Prairie dog money that we could look at that.

00:43:16,770	Um, in the board letter, I’ve got a proposed sources of the funds that we were looking at, we are recommending uh taking half of the legacy funds, uh, we get a little over 2 million, um, that’s what is scheduled for us to receive this next year.

00:43:38,530	We said half of that, um, so that’s a little over 10, uh, taking $1 million from the highway department, uh, savings account. Uh, taking a transfer of 1.1 million from the general fund coming over. Uh, the next line item that I have there, sale of existing equipment, and it will make more sense when we talk about the expenditures that we’re going to propose.

00:43:58,330	One of the expenditures we’re going to propose is remember last year when we were putting this year’s budget together we had to cut one of our blades. We’re, we’re, we’re proposing that this additional money go to replace that blade now, so put that back in.

00:44:15,030	And so as part of that, we’d have a new blade under the 5 year, uh, buyback process. Well, we’d have that existing blade that we would sell. Therefore we would have some additional revenue coming in to the county budget, County Highway Department budget. So that’s that 50,000 coming in from the sales of that piece of equipment. And then in addition to that, uh, 1.8 million.

00:44:32,800	Uh, we’d use on construction projects on the Prairie dog money that uh at this point we’re anticipating that hopefully we’ll get that the 1st quarter. So, uh, as far as the flip side of that, that’s where the revenue is coming in, the expenditures, uh, the 1st 2.

00:44:51,600	7 million would just be uh used to cover the um the reduction that we had as a result of not using any mill levy increase, basically, and that goes into other um things that we’d already put together in our budget. As I mentioned, the motor grade, a motor grader, um blade basically uh basically purchased and then 1.8 million in construction projects.

00:45:12,500	And uh the construction projects that we are proposing at this time is a microsurface of 71st uh from basically 83 over Centennial Road and then continue on from Centennial Road from that location down to. Yeah, Jericho. Um, in addition to that, we do a microsurfacing from 66th Street on Sixty-sixth Street from County Highway 10 down to Lincoln Road.

00:45:41,170	Um, Now a microsurface that’s something uh state’s done them in numerous locations. They’ve actually done an 1804, going to the north. There’s some of those that are microsurfacing up there.

00:45:58,670	It’s better than just a straight chip seal, but it’s not quite as good as an overlay, so it’s somewhere in between that as far as a repair technique. And then both of those roadway situations we would be repairing and patching soft spots before we went ahead and did the microsurfacing. Uh, then the next thing we were proposing is a mill overlay of Highway 10. This will be a continuation of the project that we have going on this year.

00:46:15,370	So we just from where we left off all the way over to 83 sterling basically finished that project off the same kind of thing that we’re talking about now, so it’s a mill in overlay.

00:46:32,030	And in addition to that, we would do a chip seal project basically from 66 for where this project starts, the roundabout, all the way over to 83, uh, to cover that whole road up with the chip seal.

00:46:49,430	And both of those last two projects, um, we’re looking into using rural federal money and then we just match with 20%, so the 20% is the money that we’re looking for as far as the construction stuff. Um, the reason that kind of would like to get some feel. I didn’t put a resolution in the packet of proposed resolution. I would like to have some discussion if you feel comfortable with what we’re doing here, let us know for two reasons.

00:47:05,130	One is necessarily so that we can make sure that our budget matches what the desire of the county board is. And then number 2 that we’ve got at least some feeling for what projects you’d like us to see us do next year so we can get a jump on those so we make sure we deliver them.

00:47:20,230	Neither of these or none of these projects have any water involved with them. So if you involve Water, that’s a delay that takes a long time. So these are all on surface kind of projects and they can be put together fairly quickly, um, assuming we don’t run into any unusual kind of thing, so, uh, at this point I’d just like to have a little discussion if

00:47:36,900	from the county board direction to how we should proceed and I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have. Commissioner’s questions. Mr. Marcus, the uh motor greater one.

00:48:03,400	Sizable capital expense, um, what other As far as in the life cycle, where are we at as far as other major equipment that uh we need to be aware of. going forward. A good question. Um. The motor graters uh that we have currently in uh this is the only one that’s not on the 5 year playback process.

00:48:22,500	So this is the one we’d like to get back in this so everything else is back in the system the blades are back. This is the one outlier that we still have to deal with and then uh we do have some front end loaders that are on buyback and stuff that we’ll, we’ll have at some point in the future will come back and then um our trucks generally speaking, we run those about 10 years, those are

00:48:37,600	not a buyback program we run them as long as we can, basically, as long as they’re still fun. So we still have a few things that are gonna pop up off schedule, but as far as being on schedule, motor graders next, and then we’ll get everything there eventually.

00:48:53,700	Yeah OK, so the only other question I had is on this general fund transfer. Explain that To me. Uh, Comm., uh, the highway department and the and the general fund are two different, uh, funding sources or funding packages.

00:49:14,500	And so one of the things we talked about briefly at the budgeting meeting was that we do a just a general fund transfer to cover that cost, cover some, some number. We didn’t have a number at that time we talked about or threw out a 3rd,,, 33 kind of number, um, but that’s what we’re really talking about is a general fund transfer. So basically that would come from your reserves that you currently have. Uh, in your general fund.

00:49:34,770	OK, general fund reserve. What was that amount? Uh, that’s 1.1885042. OK, got it. I have a little bit of reservation there because we’re um. You know, going to be looking at increased costs on several other things. I just don’t want to commit to that right now. I’m not really having a problem with that, but.

00:49:52,470	So Um It’s the only thing that gives me just a little bit of a hitch, so, but Mr. Chair, so the net effect of this would not be a nil increase. That’s correct.

00:50:15,470	The board, uh, made that clear, yeah, there would be no meal increase for the highway department and that this deals with this is how you covered that potential, OK, well I appreciate you putting the effort in on that and I, and I want to repeat my appreciation for getting back to working on existing infrastructure versus um new projects that Allow some of this stuff to slide and so. Obviously moving forward we can look at um.

00:50:35,230	The amount of work needed and the funding and the whatnot, but I think this is a good start because I appreciate the effort. Pretty much. OK, that’s all I need is uh basically some reassurance that this is the right direction.

00:50:52,630	We’ll move forward then with putting plans together, of course, all these plans, all these projects come back to the county board for your approval for advertising and moving forward in the spring, so. Good. Comm. Schlood. Marcus out of curiosity, uh. What is that Um, Sylvia wrote. Costa County so far.

00:51:23,430	The what road was that? The Sibley Road that’s washing Island, uh, right now we’re looking at about $50,000 the, the erosion of of of the the area that we had down on, uh, Sibley Drive, uh, next to Apple Creek. It’s right around 50,000 is where we’re at right now. So That increased rain. Go ahead. There was one bill today for 39 but I expected a couple more um at the time when we did the Lincoln.

00:51:43,800	Sixty-sixth Street Bridge and we got money back from that that we’ve been putting aside that was set aside for special projects like this where we might need some money here and there.

00:52:01,700	Is this 50,000 gonna come out of that money we got back from the bridge fund actually commissioners that 66th Street project we’ve already allocated and we are in the process of spending all of that money. So this 50, 50,000 whatever it is, at this point we’re looking at just covering it through our budget as best we can, um. At the time that it originally came up.

00:52:18,900	I didn’t know if we were going to have to use emergency funds or what have you, but we think we can cover that under existing budget conditions right now, so. second question. The Sibley Island, uh, I don’t know if the city Iland flood project was turned down, uh, we had Lincoln Township had committed some money and the Bertie County committed some money to raise those roads.

00:52:40,170	Since that project is not going to fly and it won’t fly for the near future, according to what I understand. is that money that we’ve already set aside and where would, where is that good, good question, Commissioners.

00:53:00,270	The deal that we had struck with the water board on that particular project is that within 2 years of the time they completed that project, we would look at raising 12th Street and 48th. Uh, that was basically the, the position we take in. And at that point, um, we were going to, uh.

00:53:17,470	Deal with the cost ramifications of that with the county board at the budget cycle when that came out so we had 2 years to deal with that. So at this point we didn’t have it allocated or set aside or anything like that we’re just gonna deal with it in the future, so. OK, thanks for the clarification. Any other questions or comments, Comm., the one, the one thing I’m worried about down there is uh.

00:53:38,530	It seems like that creek is kind of gone a little wild on its own. And we might wanna Think about in the future, we’re gonna be down there saving houses along that side. Has anybody ever looked at that possibility? Commissioners at this point, uh, the river is still eroding along that area and we still are seeing some erosion.

00:54:04,430	I don’t believe any houses are in danger at this time, but that is something that we just need to keep an eye on as time goes on here, so you think we need to extend this, um.

00:54:22,030	Um Um, at this point, I, I’m not recommending extending the rip rap, uh, because I don’t feel that the roadway is in danger, OK? And I don’t feel any houses are in danger, but at some point if we do that changes and we are currently flying that now, uh, and I’m passing some of those pictures along that we’re seeing and we’re seeing some erosion still, um, so we just

00:54:36,500	got to keep an eye on it and if at that point we get to a point where we’re the roads in danger or the residents are in danger, we’ll have to deal with that. simple points we’re monitoring it, Comm.

00:54:51,800	, quick question since we’re talking about slump areas of University of Mary, we had a tremendous amount of rain on the north side of Bismarck, 2.5 inches at our place. What about the slump area on River Road? Did we see any, any deterioration there cause that looks really ready to come down, commissioners, we are in the process of, um, flying that one also and taking pictures with

00:55:10,000	our drone. Uh, we don’t do that one quite as often. That’s every couple of months we do. Um, but I went by it yesterday. I didn’t see anything unusual or anything that jumped out at me that I was an additional erosion, so. Thank you. Thanks, Marcus. Yep, appreciate it. Hm Sheriff Leeben. Welcome back.

00:55:34,870	How was Alaska? It was jealous. much rather been at the budget meeting. Let’s let’s get that out here right now. You want you want me to believe that, right? Fishing in Alaska anyway um, I would be glad to show you the photos later. It was Um, good evening, Mr.

00:56:01,270	Chair, Commissioners, um, kind of a little bit of a groundhog day with the jail report, um, You know, really not a lot changes out there for the most part, which is good, um, pretty predictable what goes on, um, average daily population staying right around that 250 to 260, we’re currently at 257 for the last count, um.

00:56:26,930	If you remember pre-COVID, we’re up in that 300 range pretty consistently we dropped during COVID. And then now we’re right about in that 250, 260, give or take, um, billing, um, currently for the year we’re at $1.4 million and some change, um, to give you an example, in 23 at this time, we would have been at 1.

00:56:55,930	1 million in 22,794,000 and 21, which is kind of like the benchmark since we opened the jail, basically what happened is we were in COVID. But the state was having to pay us for the prisoners. When they shut down the prison.

00:57:15,430	Um, so that was kind of our best year because our numbers were down, um, overall, but the ones we were holding, we were getting paid very well for. And so that was 1.2 million so we had predicted when we implemented these new daily raids that we were going to see an increase in income and we’re really seeing that, um.

00:57:39,100	One of the things we are seeing after the the discussion with the joint board and the city over jail raids. The city is uh really reducing their prisoner numbers and um so I don’t know, you know, if it’s a change in the sentencing out the municipal court or what they’re doing, we are, and this is some state’s attorney lawyer could attest to too.

00:58:01,500	We are seeing a lot more of the cases that are coming out of the city. Our county offenses basically, so you know there’s a lot more higher profile cases that are happening and so the county would pick up the bill for that.

00:58:23,600	Um, if you don’t, if you have any questions, just feel free to ask, but basically as usual, the bookings remain very high compared to the average daily population, I think last week we had like in one day, like 35 bookings in the jail.

00:58:46,100	If I remember correctly, don’t quote me on that number, but it was a considerably high number, and like I’ve spoke with you before that what we look at that booking number so closely for is because that’s where a lot of our manpower gets used up is in that 1st 24 hours of an inmate in our facility. So even if our population drops, um, we still typically what we do with the staffing and and why those.

00:59:08,300	AARPA positions are so important to us is as we open or close a pod, so basically increase or decrease our footprint in the building based on numbers. We are pulling from the booking area to staff those pods. And so if we have to open a pod because of our numbers, we pull people out of booking.

00:59:29,970	Which reduces the amount of people out there to deal with that initial, uh, workload that comes into the building. Usually it’s pretty comparable, whatever comes in eventually goes back out. And so that’s really the labor intensive part of the operation.

00:59:58,170	The alternatives to jail, um, that’s our alcohol testing program, uh, SRAM bracelet, drug patch, that those numbers stay pretty stable, but in reality it’s a blessing because 288 participants on that program in the event that we didn’t have that program, those people would more than likely a good majority of them be sitting in our jail. Um, staffing continues to be a problem.

01:00:16,070	Last time I think I came here and told you that or during budget that, uh, we had just came through a good hiring process, um, we did, um, but the problem is it doesn’t materialize on the end when we’re talking detention. So we had, uh, give me a second here, I can find a sheet that we started with, um, I believe we had 76 applicants for the open positions in detention.

01:00:41,730	Uh, 29 of those people made it into the interview process and we came out of the interview process with 22 applicants that had made it. Uh, that’s unprecedented in modern times for us, um, but. We get into the background portion and either people pulled out of the process or uh we disqualified them for various reasons.

01:01:07,930	So currently when we went into this process, we were actually looking at filling every position based on those interviews and felt that we could actually hire some unfunded backfill, which would give us a buffer, um, as we had employees leave or we had.

01:01:34,700	To terminate their employment unfortunately because of what we’ve lost in the process, um, we’re looking at hiring 6 at the end of this month, um, and ending with approximately 5 open positions.

01:01:58,100	So, Again, that continues to be, you know, I’d say troublesome and problematic, um, because we’re doing about everything we can, um, as I’ve told you, we’ve recruited um down to 18 years of age, um, and the ones we are hiring at 18 years of age are good, solid people, um, but definitely we can see, you know, the lack of life experiences at that age in comparison to somebody that’s, you know, in the. early twenties with college or military or maybe some prior work experience.

01:02:21,300	So, um, we continue to, you know, do the best we can, um, trying to fill those positions, uh, we continuously monitor over time, um, but like I’ve said before, not only to the budget meetings but this board we’ve, we have to budget more for overtime because we anticipate that we are gonna run short like so

01:02:42,970	right. Now with us. Hoping to hire these 6, they’ll start at the end of August, and we have 5 vacancies, so technically we’re running 11 positions. And I always typically say that, um, in a two week period, just counting salary, that’s about $2000 per open position, but on the other side, we’re paying overtime which is more

01:03:09,270	expensive, um, and plus the burnout factor there. Um, I came before you, you know, and we have that state funded back the blue program, uh, we’re currently still in, um, we’re looking at, you know, we had basically started out with a retention bonus for the deputies and detention officers and then, um, a hiring bonus

01:03:34,830	for the vacancies, um, as we December is the first benchmark where we will pay the retention bonuses for everybody that was here December of 20. 3, like $1300.

01:03:59,330	What I can tell you is the recruitment bonus and the retention bonus in my opinion, isn’t a big factor, um, it, it hasn’t really stabilized our numbers, uh, the retention side we’ve still lost, you know, employees that have gone somewhere else or like we typically see on the sworn side, they get out of the profession entirely. Um, but what I will say that is interesting coming out of, as we’ve monitored this and I mentioned it before.

01:04:25,330	Um, our best resource is our own employees. The recruiting that they are doing is where we’re seeing uh uh an asterisk, and so that’s something at some point I will be working with Pam on, um, and potentially that’s data we can use countywide, um, to look at, you know, if we want to explore something along that lines because I, I, this last time,

01:04:49,100	this last hiring, the initial 9 that we conditionally employed 6 of them were recruited by our employees. Now, obviously we lost a couple of those in the process, but out of the 6 that we are going to hire, um, I just talked to our hiring Guy and, um, he didn’t have the exact count but felt it was

01:05:09,900	over 50% of those were recruited by our employees. So that still continues to be the best thing we’ve got going is our own employees recruiting for us. Um, The, uh, on the budget side, um, Comm. Bittner, Comm.

01:05:31,370	Bakken had asked me to look into a couple of things we talked about on the budget, uh, for next year. First being the food grade, I believe Comm. Wood Woodcox and Comm. Munen would remember this, um, we lost the food grade contractor to our vendor out in the jail, so we ended up going with a higher food grade as part of our food supply out at the jail.

01:05:55,670	I did speak with our vendor, and they are still having to operate off of a different food grade, and so basically what that means is, Correctional facilities are below schools and hospitals in the grade of food that’s served and so right now we’re basically operating with school grade food is my understanding.

01:06:18,970	He said that’s still the case, uh, but they are thinking they’re getting closer to finding somebody that’s gonna get into that, um. Business and supply that type of quality of food, so there is different grades according to I would believe the USDA. Um, the other question that was asked was on the more Comm. Bitner had talked about that was in the budget. Um, as Comm.

01:06:44,030	Woodcock and, uh, Comm. Munsen would remember we postponed the purchase this year, um, because some of our added expense out there and uh Comm. Bittner had requested that I talk with maintenance supervisor Quinn about looking at a different type of utility tractor, uh, tool cap, if I’m correct.

01:07:06,930	And he had said he had spoke with you already, um, he’s afraid of the soil conditions out there and the tight. in some of the areas that it wouldn’t work. So I thought I would bring that update to this board.

01:07:23,330	You might want a demo one if that’s a concern because you’re, you’d be surprised we use We use one of those a lot, OK. And I will Mention that again to him. Um, the last thing and this is kind of an add-on at the last minute.

01:07:44,300	I just to bring you up to speed, uh, the last couple days of storms have not been good for the detention center, uh, the uh storm, I’m trying to keep the date straight, so when last week Wednesday I believe was the hailstorm, that kind of materialized over South Bismarck, uh, we had a vehicle down in Copper Ridge, uh, which was kind of the epicenter if you saw on social media Baseball and grapefruit size, uh, hale, so we’re we’re trying to figure out on the uh On that

01:08:06,700	vehicle, uh, where we’re going to be at. Unfortunately there’s not a a vehicle budgeted this year or next year for the jail, um, sounds like that one we might be in a predicament where uh if we file an insurance claim they’re going to total it out, um, based on the age of the vehicle and so, so that’s

01:08:27,100	an issue we’re going to have to work with and then Thursday morning, um, if you remember that cloud that storm that moved through the darkness at 9:10 in the morning, um, we took some lightning strikes, it appears out at the detention center that knocks some cameras out, um, that had happened previously, um, they do have

01:08:52,800	fuses in those cameras, uh, to prevent, you know, power surges, obviously they can’t withstand the lightning. So, um, I’m waiting on an update for maintenance, but that’s another issue, uh, we’ll be dealing with. Potentially an insurance claim.

01:09:15,900	Or maybe even have to come back, um, to the capital, uh, fund and depending on the cost of those repairs because it sounds like we lost quite a few cameras and maintenance was trying to get them back up. That’s my report. If anybody has any questions, I’ll be glad to answer them. If not, Comm., any questions for Sheriff Leeman? Did a good job. I don’t see any questions. Awesome, appreciate it.

01:09:40,070	Thanks, gentlemen. The county auditor Sploskowski slash County Finance Director Jacobs on preliminary budget discussions. I think we’re talking about some clarifications based on our previous meeting. OK And the reason for the clarification is I thought we were pretty clear that we were not going to be increasing property taxes, so.

01:10:19,070	Um Yeah, I guess the only thing I’ve got is a resolution that clarifies, um. What we talked about and so. It’s in the packet, basically based on last year’s dollar amount, um. In terms of the levy. We would need to utilize $40802,392 in reserves to balance the budget, but we have turned back.

01:10:51,230	In 2023, we turned back 4,721,000 this year we’re on track to turn back the same amount. So in other words, it’s not really likely that we’ll actually use those reserves. It’s just something we have to put in the budget so it shows balanced.

01:11:08,130	Right, and that was the point I was trying to get across while we were having those conversations about budgets is that This current budget was based on numbers that we didn’t spend to begin with. So I think the numbers are pretty clear. The state audit shows that, you know, last year we, we were overfunded by 4.

01:11:26,300	4 million I believe and then this year is going to be the same sort of thing because we’ve had the, the same budget situation, so, um. My goal was to make sure, and there is, I think, a resolution, um, so that the citizens understand, contrary to information that was in the Bismarck Tribune. There is not intended to be a Property tax increase on the citizens of Burleigh County for our portion of the property taxes for the next budget year.

01:11:50,100	I want that to be perfectly clear that our intent was to not have an increase in property taxes for the next budget. Does anybody have any disagreement with that? It So he does have a proposed Resolution I would move to approve. Second, Motion is second to Mr.

01:12:25,200	Wood, do we need this resolution? Well, see, that was the thing, when questioned about you know we levied we know we’re gonna spend where else we’re gonna get it. I mean, that’s the thing because my understanding from conversations is that when the Tribune contacted Staff that there hadn’t been a specific motion to that effect.

01:12:48,070	And I think that for clarification purposes, this would be a motion would clarify that in in no uncertain terms where we’re at. Any further discussion, I have a motion to second. Call Roper. I’m sorry, I didn’t pick up the, uh, who made the motion, who picked up the second I made motion 2.

01:13:14,770	And just to clarify that as it says in the resolution that we’ll be collecting at the exact same dollar amount as last year, which would equate to a mill levy decrease. We we’re gonna be looking at, I would say about 31.12. Mill rate If at that dollar amount. Versus last year’s at 32.64. I just want to make sure, just clarify that’s the intent of the motion.

01:13:41,830	Should that be part of this? Um, resolution. That’s the first I heard of that little bit of math, right, same here. First I’ve heard of that and so that just kind of muddies up the water. Um, I think we’re still in the preliminary budget process. We can cut this. We don’t have to correct.

01:14:01,630	For, for today’s purposes in my opinion anyway, we’re just in re reinsuring to the voters that were not increasing, right. However that works out, so, so we’re not. Increasing mills or or I should say, We’re not increasing dollars to the taxpayers.

01:14:25,330	Right, well, because a lot of responses you just said it would be a reduction in the, yes, but, but at this point more than it was last year and so if we, if the commission wants to collect the same amount of dollars as last year, that requires less meals, so I just want, I, I had that conversation with the finance director, and I think that notion of we’re not raising your taxes, we’re just keeping

01:14:43,000	the mill levee steady. That’s a, that’s a. dishonest thing to do in my opinion because that’s still a tax increase on the citizens, no matter how you cut it. And so the goal, what the conversation I had with the finance director is dollars. Net net net to the taxpayer is no interest.

01:15:03,200	That is That is my That is my That is my That is my That is my That is my can we repeat That is my can we repeat Um, OK. I don’t think my motion needs to have Mills. It’s just dollars and if that’s the intent, perfect, that’s exactly what we needed.

01:15:21,100	We need clarification on the intent of the commissione Lee, did you have any input, any, any anything you wanted to. I on it know it’s the exact dollar amount as last year, so that would be represent no taxing. The way you wrote it up is my motion. OK. Any further discussion it any further discussion? Call the roll, please. Trisha Schwab.

01:15:41,070	Yes, Tricia Woodcox. Yes, Comm. Munsen, Comm. Bakken, Chair Bittner, yes, motion carries. Thank you, Commissioners, for that clarification because that was a surprise to me. Um, next is, uh, Two kind of heavy lifts. Sales tax bond escrow fund. And then a financial statement audit report heavy lift.

01:16:12,570	So the, the sales tax thing, I’ll I’ll try to go. You know, as quickly as I can through these two items. I mean, we don’t need to. Be here all night, but the the sales tax, what happen is the bond market has, has. You know, gone down a little bit.

01:16:30,430	And so what that means is that, you know, if we, is that our We require more money for our escrow account. The basic math is we’re getting lower interest rate. Now, therefore, we need more money upfront to get the same return. Um, so what happened is that at the June 17th meeting, we, we got our marching orders, uh, from the commission to go out and basically go through this diffusance process.

01:16:52,430	We understood it could take 60 days and we’re within that 60 days and the and the, the bond market has gone down. So there was, there was a Federal Reserve meeting. People got spooked and now we’re, we’re down about at least 0.5%.

01:17:12,430	So what it means is we’re gonna require, um, About $1 million more between Burley and Morton in our escrow than we did 4 months ago. Uh, so it’s about, about, uh, I think it’s about 90,900,000 actually it amounts to 750,000 to Burleigh and 150,000 to Morton.

01:17:41,500	Um, So the recommendation here or the thought anyway is, is that we Um, there’s actually another, uh, Proposed resolution in the packet that basically, um, Asks the state’s attorney to draft some language. Uh, to go along with our escrow agreement and then directs the county auditor to go and pursue this getting a signed escrow agreement with Morton County.

01:18:03,200	I think that the escrow agreement would definitely make the process easier in terms of um working with the bidding agent that would still require we do something about Morton’s shortfall. So whether that’s burley or Morton, but Morton would always about 5000 at this point. Um, they’ve been pushed back another month as a result of this bond, you know, you know, price drop and so. We still have to do something about Morton County.

01:18:22,200	Uh, an option is for Burley to pay the difference, um, And Morton pays us back. That would have to be, I think we’d need some language from the state’s attorney though in the way of an actual, you know, agreement, um, at this point, I, I don’t know, otherwise I guess we can wait.

01:18:39,300	I mean that’s really the other option we could ask Morin a second time to come back and transfer in in money from their general fund we’d be looking at at least a month, I think, before we could, they could, they could meet and agree on that.

01:18:58,600	Personally, I, as a non-lawyer, I think the non-attorney, I think we did authorize The auditors to Hagel when we did that, that joint meeting, but I don’t know if the Morton County Auditor is gonna wanna You know, if she, if she feels the same way that she would be empowered to, you know, loan $5000 without going to the commission.

01:19:18,800	Um, the one is the one thing about if Burley just pays the money as, you know, as a loan is we can’t touch that money anyway in BND, um. Until this is all taken care of. So it’s, it’s not like something we could use, um, for another purpose. But anyway, that, that I think should be decided though. Uh, I didn’t include it.

01:19:39,570	I don’t think I included that language in the resolution, but I think we need to, to decide if we want to do something about Morton. My concern is that the, the bond market went down, um. Because the Fed said they’re going to meet in a month and probably cut rates.

01:19:56,670	So the rate cut hasn’t even happened, and the, the interest rates have gone down. So my concern is in a month if they meet and they actually cut rates now the market’s gonna react to the next rate cut, if that makes sense, cause they’re kind of, I mean, for example, I saw CDs trading or uh for 3%.

01:20:15,070	They were 5% a couple weeks ago and I saw them advertised for 3, so evidently, That bank, whatever, whoever it was, thinks that in in 6 months rates are going to be close to 3%. Um. So anyway, I stand for any questions or. Discussion Questions, Commissioners. Hard to even know what questions asked.

01:20:49,830	Um, One of the things we keep running into is, is that we don’t know what Morton County is, is willing to do, if anything. And it’s just that situation has not changed, and unless we have some communication between our auditor and their auditor. I don’t know how we How we do it. You know, we’ve, we’ve already lost.

01:21:15,030	Probably 1,000,000 based on this um interest rate change and another interest rate change of the same size or even higher is going to have that same sort of effect on us. I recall that I think we had a conversation they were worried about some $20,000 in lost interest. If they did this on, on that amount.

01:21:34,600	Um, You know, but we’re we’re looking at, we’ve already lost and this just this short period of time since we proposed that. Approximately 1,000,000. Um That’s not chicken feet, Comm. Walkinskowski, when’s the last time you had a conversation with their auditor and what was the nature of that discussion? Well, officially the, uh, probably the last discussion that we’ve had was when Burley County met with Morton County,

01:21:59,900	at least directly with them on how to work out this process. That’s several months ago and so we didn’t we direct at that meeting that They would work on that? Hm And we’ve tried to have communications with them of sorts. However, her commission is on a different path than this commission is on. Mr. Chair, Mr.

01:22:25,900	Woodcock would be worth us to have another joint meeting between Martin County and and our joint commissions and Move this forward because all we’re doing is wasting money, time and money losing taxpayer money, yeah, and they are too just because they are, they’re right behind us, so they’re just a part of this as we are, so

01:22:43,470	would that be worth exploring? I would think so. If I can jump in, commissioners, I would appreciate finding out whether or not Morton County is even interested in this because I don’t want to waste our time and resources drafting an agreement that they’re not even interested in signing. OK, I, I think that makes sense.

01:23:02,870	So would it Would that be a conversation between chairs that would that suffice? Um, that may, but I would be cautious about that because we are discussing public funds and public bond that, um, if they’re, if you give the authority of your chair to have a conversation.

01:23:27,330	We don’t want to be the appetite which is a fine communication between one on one but then reporting back to the entire commission during a public meeting would be the way to do that, even to request the meeting another joint meeting. Yeah, I, I, I, I think that would be probably apropos. Well, give me some contact information.

01:23:45,130	I’d be happy to have that conversation because right now it’s costing both companies a whole bunch of money unnecessarily and and I guess if foolishly foolishly, yeah, and I don’t, maybe, maybe Morton County didn’t understand the the finances of it. Maybe they thought we were kidding. I don’t know.

01:24:03,730	I, I thought I was pretty serious at that meeting, but Um, we are obviously talking about. You know, high dollar amounts here, so if you get me contact information, I’d be happy to have a discussion with the chair and, and bring it back. Or I don’t suppose for information purposes give some kind of summary by email or anything or um.

01:24:26,900	If you’re gonna set a meeting, set a meeting, but communicating back to all the commissioners about what’s going on again should be left for a public meeting so we’re not accidentally violating an open meeting. That’s fine with me. Thank you. Um, I’m fine with that.

01:24:45,100	Because if we don’t, if we don’t have any, if they’re going to do nothing, which I guess I can’t blame them if they want to do nothing, but. We don’t have a path. To, to saving or or actually earning money on this was the goal. Right Mortin County Chair and I sit on the chamber committee together. I just sent you his contact information. OK. Thank you. I appreciate that. That a uh Cell phone number.

01:25:13,100	Yeah, you got it in your text. could not parse the name, OK. I just want to confirm it while we’re standing here. We’re sitting here OK, yep, got it. Thank you. is that sufficient for that. I, I did try to call the Morton County auditor Friday and then again today and she just wasn’t in the office.

01:25:45,870	Um, I’m, I’m just missed her, I’m sure, but, uh, left a message, so I’ll, I’ll reach out to her as well and just uh the goal was to just, you know, let her know what’s going on.

01:26:05,370	And we are planning to meet with the bidding agent, those guys this week, so we’re trying to keep that process moving forward parallel. Is there any way to to nail this down in the absence of this um escrow that’s what we wanna do, um. The, the challenge is, can we commingle funds with Morton to buy these investments without an escrow agreement.

01:26:26,230	And so that’s the conversation we’re going to have if you understand what I’m saying, cause you know, um, the other, uh, we’ve got some thoughts on that, um, but just the main thing is we have these two separate accounts and really we need to co-mingle them to buy the investments.

01:26:43,130	That’s if we wanted to buy the entire amount, right? We were only looking to buy enough investments that covers our amount, then we don’t need that. I that I don’t think we do. No, the only issue is that we would have to somehow value those investments when the time comes to put them into the escrow agreement because basically we would have, um, you’ve got.

01:27:01,030	Principle and interest, that type of thing, yeah, so we’d have to have probably a third party come in and value it and say, OK, Burley has this investment for this many years, it’s worth X. Morton has this investment for this many years, it’s worthwhile.

01:27:17,230	There just needs to be a value put on those investments so that we make sure that we’re purchasing with the equal or with the correct weighting, because Morton’s gonna have, you know, say 13%, we’re gonna have say 87%, but yes, we could do that. In fact, if I could get the last.

01:27:33,000	The last half of these things purchased, I, I could sleep at night because that last half is going to be so much of our, um, of our value, right, because it’s all those years times the interest rate. So we could even get 2025 million, um, purchase that would insulate us a lot from these um market, you know, forces, but I think, I think that’s a path we should seriously be trying to follow in in the meantime, we’ll talk

01:27:55,500	about that. I think Wednesday it sounds like we’re gonna be meeting with the um with the Bond guys. Because if we can just take the amount that’s We know our number. Get that invested and, and get that interest that seems to make a lot of sense to me. Comm. B, uh, just for timeliness sake, um.

01:28:18,200	Uh, upon conversation with the Morton County Chair, um, Would it be worthwhile having a Public meeting just just we can do it online and just so that we can have an open meeting and set that if if they’re. amenable to a meeting then we can set that.

01:28:40,900	I, I can certainly, uh, float that balloon and see what Apple can do. Thank you. OK We could zoom or we could do. Who OK. Anything else on that particular topic? OK. Financial statement audit report. Next item is our, uh, our audit report. We got an unmodified opinion, so that’s good.

01:29:11,300	Um, that means that the, the state auditor’s office was able to get enough evidence essentially to, uh, to agree with us, to support, uh, the numbers in our financial statements. So that was, that was a positive. Um, we did have several audit findings this year.

01:29:32,070	Historically, the county has had minimal audit findings, um, In 2020 with that 2020 audit actually it kind of started with the 2019. Audit, but it was really the 2020 audit where that changed and we started to, to accumulate findings, uh, in 2020, we had 10 adjusting journal entry entries in the report, that means there’s 10 items that the state auditor’s office had to correct to get us in compliance with, uh, you

01:29:52,470	know, with Gap, um, that number has grown to 20 in the current year. And so based on the audit reports, the county seems to be facing increasing challenges in applying uh generally accepted accounting principle.

01:30:10,270	Um, and then also based on the report we seem to be facing challenges in meeting all of the statutory duties of the auditor treasurer. So the specific audit findings there were 3, and I’ll just, I’ll go through them and then I’ll. If you have any questions or clarifications, I can, we can clarify them and then I can, um, go into what would be the finance department’s findings and recommendations relative to the audit findings.

01:30:33,630	Um, So the first finding was audit adjustments that’s for both the county and the component unit, the water resource district, and the finding states that during the audit of Burleigh County and Burley County Water Resource District.

01:30:52,930	We, the state auditor’s office proposed material adjusting entries to the financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, the adjustments were approved by management and are reflected in the financial statements. So material can mean it’s either a dollar amount or it’s a number. So in this case, it was both.

01:31:08,030	Um, so what it means is the state auditor’s Office had to make significant adjustments to our books to get them into compliance with GAP as part of the, um, preparing the financial statements. The second finding was under pledged securities and uh That was a case in which Burley County did not obtain an adequate pledge of assets at Wells Fargo as of December 31, 2023. The county was under pledged by $308,772. The county is not in compliance with NDCC 210409.

01:31:34,500	The cause is that Burley did not have a process to ensure the entity is is adequately pledged. Now the pledging is really like, uh, it’s like security, it’s like you’re ensuring your deposit of, you know, public funds is essentially what it means, um.

01:31:53,600	So the criteria from the century code, uh, states that when securities are pledged to the board of any public corporation, the treasurer or other individually legally charged with the custody of public funds shall require security in the amounts of $110 for every $100 of public deposits, so it’s 110%.

01:32:14,600	Um, You know, so if we have 1 million on deposit, then the treasurer must, must go and get a pledge in the amount of 1.1 million. So this would be stocks, bonds, securities that a third party says yes, if this if Wells Fargo goes belly up, you can have these securities, um, you know, like I said, it’s basically insurance.

01:32:36,170	So the 3rd finding was a lack of segregation of duties within the component units, the water resource district, um, that’s a common finding and basically it says we have limited personnel and so people are doing incompatible duties. You got one person doing everything we, we have a bookkeeper. I, I think that the resource district hires.

01:32:51,570	And so really the only thing the commission needs to evaluate here is, is the risk of loss. Greater than the cost to fully staff the water resource district, um. You know, loss would mean error, fraud, that type of thing, um. Many small entities face this, and I think generally speaking, they just conclude it would be more costly to fully staff the organization then to risk.

01:33:15,370	The loss, especially when there’s other things you can do. There’s other, you know, procedures you can put in place, um. Even something as simple as a bank reconciliation can help to catch, uh, fraud. Or error. Um, so were there any questions on those 3 findings or should I head into the recommendations.

01:33:38,830	So with the significant deficiency um in the, in the pledging of assets. How is that resolved and who resolves that? So I, I think it has to be resolved through um It’s, it’s, it’s on the, the audit report. So to resolve it so it’s done for this year.

01:34:03,530	So to resolve it for next year, we would need to, to, um, To actually perform that that task of getting the pledged securities. It’s a policy thing, it’s a procedure thing, um, it’s really an awareness thing. It’s being mindful of, um, of our obligations under the Century code.

01:34:24,730	So that’s within the Auditor treasurer’s office, so they would need to, um, To I guess develop the policies and procedures or our our office could develop the policies and procedures, but ultimately that’s the auditor treasurer that needs to do that. OK, so then is there some particular direction from this board that needs to make that happen? we say Auditor’s office is directed to fix that.

01:34:45,300	I think we could come what what I’m hoping we can do is come back with specific policies that the board can adopt. Uh, this might be comparable to what our HR director did when when she took over that role where over time we write the policies and bring them and they they get voted in and then eventually they form a policy manual.

01:35:04,200	So that probably is what would need to happen is we need to your, yes, specific, you know. Procedures, steps that the commission would vote on. So those duties would fall upon you as you’re going through the department that’s now yours, so what is the timeline for having Those in place, those policies in place so that we’re not in this position for next year.

01:35:29,770	Probably realistically months to get them, you know, drafted. I mean, really, yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, for, for some of these things, the, the, the North Dakota Association of Counties has a has a an auditor calendar that has has a lot of this stuff on it, so that would be the starting point.

01:35:46,170	So then when would you be bringing that back to us for the policies. Certainly, certainly within the next couple of months. OK, thank you, yeah, but there, as you’ll see there’s. You know, it’s, there’s going to be. Quite a few policies that the, that the commission would, uh, adopt or not adopt.

01:36:02,870	So then, then I would, I would take it then that the lacquer segregation of duties, um. would probably be something that would be in in that in that same line, I think so, yeah, yeah, perfect. Mhm And in that, in that case, we might just recommend some policies to sort of.

01:36:25,770	Give us a little a little bit more comfort. I don’t think we want to hire. People to do the accounting at the water resource district. I don’t think it requires a full-time staff member, but maybe we could, could bring some policies that, you know, make us feel like, you know, bank reconciliation, stuff like that, so somebody else is

01:36:41,130	looking at the books, so it’s not just one, even though there’s one person performing the task. There’s another oversight, uh, component to it. That, that’s probably what I would anticipate um in that case, Mr. Chair, what a resource district is already looking into it and I think they’ve already solved the problem whether they come back.

01:36:59,230	This border or not, but I, I know they’re uh they’re financial person that’s on their board is already working on it, I think they’ve got it solved, so yeah, and I because it is a small office and they hire a secretary to do almost 90% of everything and that’s where the problem was, it’s too

01:37:16,430	much control into one particular person without the proper oversight, but now they’re, they’ve got it already, I think, so I’ll, I’ll, I’ll find out and get back. I still think that there needs to be a policy in place that there’s a periodic oversight from here.

01:37:32,700	At this level, you know, through our finance department so that that’s not. missed Basically because of the year-end audit. So the the recommendations from the um. From the finance department are basically Uh As, as far as the Finding number 2, that’s something we’ll, we’ll, we’ll have to come back with some policies and procedures.

01:38:02,200	Finding number 3 will have to come back with some policies and procedures specific because really the recommendation is develop policies and procedures. Um, but we will have to come back with the specific policies and procedures for those too, so the rest of the findings relate to the audit adjustments, uh, which is basically your accounting essentially is what it is, uh, so the first recommendation relating to

01:38:22,100	audit adjustments. Now to be clear, these are in response to um. The 20 audit adjustments that we, we. That the the audit revealed. This is not a comprehensive list of the stuff that. Probably we should be doing. It’s, it’s just strictly in response to this, um, these 20 findings.

01:38:44,800	I just wanted to be clear about that because there are other things that we, we should be doing and we can, we, we will be talking about those as, as time goes on. The, the first recommendation is to adopt countywide and fund level cash management policies. Um, the county has several funds with negative cash balance. Some have carried a negative cash balance for years.

01:39:05,500	Some cannot be made positive if you have a. A, um, an unorganized township that has 6 people living in it. They’re never, you’re never gonna get the property tax out of it that you need to maintain the roads and stuff like that, so they will just, they will always have a negative fund balance Um, so,

01:39:23,900	and that is some of those townships have been that way for years. In other cases there are funds with negative cash that is a lack of cash management policy, uh, or, or cash management plan.

01:39:43,670	Um, so to be clear, Cash management that is the treasurer function, so the county of course is an odd a combined auditor treasurer, but it’s a specifically a treasurer, um, function. And so a few months ago the finance department met with the county auditor’s office to talk about our investment policy, and that’s where we learned that we do not have a cash management plan.

01:40:01,470	We, we asked and we, we were told that we don’t have a cash management plan. So having this negative cash on your books, number one, it makes it hard to read, um. Because when cash goes negative, it’s really a liability. Like when you overdraw at the bank, it’s a liability. Uh, and so that really should be moved to another part of the ledger. It shouldn’t hang out in assets.

01:40:20,970	It’s not an asset. should move over to the liabilities. Um, so it’s just hard to read for accountants, um, but another con consequence is it’s creating issues with our SECom fund to be, um, specific. Uh, so at the year end of 2023, we had a negative cash balance in SEcom of of just over $100.

01:40:41,330	Literally our our Wells Fargo, uh, account was $1,000,000 negative in SECcom. At the same time we have an investment of 1.5 million. So the negative cash is, is cash that we’ve actually spent. We spent it, I think, building out the. The, the facility we’re doing some improvements or something like that in recent years.

01:41:00,830	So that is cash that’s actually spent. But at the same time, um, so, so what I. When I say it’s actually spent, that means they had to borrow it from somewhere, so it had to come from somewhere.

01:41:17,730	So it probably came from the general fund, um, if you know that general fund has the most cash, so that’s where most of it came from. So this fund is borrowing from other funds essentially. Well, at the same time they’re borrowing from other funds. They have an investment of 1.5 million.

01:41:37,300	And so what’s happening is we have a joint powers agreement with the city, which says our investment income has to stay in this fund that is like a joint fund with the city and so. We owe the general fund 1 million. We have $1.5 million in investments and all of the interest on the $1.5 million is, is staying in the fund. And so that’s ultimately, I think going to go toward that facility that we, that we share with the city.

01:41:57,400	So we might be in a position where we are really giving more than we are required to, um. To that Funding interest and so that’s, it’s just a consequence of, of not having a cash management plan is essentially what it is, um.

01:42:23,900	So we, we haven’t gotten negative in the actual bank account, but it’s just really between funds, um, and then we’ll talk about with investments to, um, at the next meeting, how, uh, having not having a cash management plan is impacting investments because we’re really not able to maximize that.

01:42:48,370	That hole, um, That whole situation, so that’s the first, the first recommendation and again we will come back with specific, you know, what the specific policy is, um, But it’s, it’s, it’s at a high level. It is kind of where we’re at today, um.

01:43:07,170	The second recommendation is to improve our year-end process, you know, in the past, and that’s where a lot of these entries came is that the year-end process where we’re going from one year to the next, and of course your financial statement audit is for the year, so you have to close out the year and we’re having a lot of issues there, a lot of entries there. Um, And, and really the the recommendation is we’re, we’re kind of stuck on a list.

01:43:25,570	We have a list that we work from, um, and when things change, when new stuff happens, the list is no, is perhaps not. Not good anymore because something new has happened and it hasn’t made its way to our list of procedures, um, And so we’re kind of trying to raise the Awareness, get people thinking in terms of the financial statements, um, I think some of the specific

01:43:48,330	policies are, will be that we should really break up this process, receivables person should work on the receivables at your end, payables on the payables at your end. I think right now it’s pretty much one person who’s who’s, you know, doing it all or trying to do it all, and it’s just not effective, um.

01:44:06,730	Another recommendation is that we set a hard or soft close on a hard close. So we say, hey, January 31st. Soft clothes, um, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, Uh, start wrapping it up and then February 15th, it’s done. Anything we get after February 15th goes to the next year.

01:44:26,900	We’re not going to keep the books open for months and months and months waiting for bills to trickle in. So that’ll give us at least some, um, Some deadlines and that’s all permissible under under accounting standards, um, you know, if you get a bill in March, uh, you don’t have to, you don’t have to, you know, if we get a bill in March 2024 for

01:44:44,600	Dece from December or we get a check from December. And it’s already March. We under the accounting standards should consider that revenue for the current year because we can’t use that to pay last year’s bills. They’re, they’re long gone. Um, so this, this would be totally permissible under the standards, but Comm.

01:45:05,300	are there any constraints, uh, on those timelines when it comes to century code? We, we’ll look into that. Yeah, I that I don’t know. It’s a good, good question. So the third recommendation is is continuing education, uh, in generally accepted accounting principles and, and really this is one where we’ve had a number of issues that are just, I just

01:45:22,400	think it’s. We just need to, I mean, I’m thinking of you, Comm. Schwab, your comments about continuing education, where I’ve worked in the past we’ve always had to do 40 hours a year of, of continuing it for accounting stuff.

01:45:42,470	It’s just we just do, um, so that’s kind of what I’m thinking is maybe a policy where we require 40 hours a year of accounting, you know, continuing and we had a couple of, of, of adjustments here that are just related to just a. Either a misunderstanding of the accounting principles, perhaps, um, one example is we sold some equipment and it got put to miscellaneous revenue.

01:46:03,570	Uh, the auditor’s office, state auditor’s office came in and reclassified it as other financing sources. That’s required when you sell stuff, you have to, you know, display it on the financials as other financing sources.

01:46:23,770	So by putting it in miscellaneous revenue, it, it could get lost, um, and I think it even could potentially get lost, um, in an audit. I, I, I’m not sure how they thought to look at the miscellaneous revenue other than it was a really big number. Uh, the other issue we had was when we recorded Prairie dog payments this year. We recorded them as a transfer in.

01:46:44,130	Um, And that was reclassified by the state auditor’s office as an intergovernmental revenue, which is appropriate. Transfers in are not revenue under under Gatsby. So when you call something a transfer in that’s excluded from revenue. So that situation really would have understated our revenues by $4 million.

01:47:03,030	Um, so it’s just the the really the recommendation here is, is 40 hours a year of continuing E for our accounting staff. Um, the The next, the next recommendation is to update the general ledger and This is a big. Big task, um. Very big task, basically our ledger is, um, Our general ledger is minimalist. And it is very minimalist, um, I’ll I’ll give you an example. Our tax account has 11 different sources of revenue.

01:47:37,200	So we put taxes in one account and it’s got 11 different sources of revenue and it’s very hard to use, um. Grand Forks County has all those broken out. Uh, we, we did talk to Grand Forks County about this because they use Tyler. Um, they’ve got 5 columns in their ledger, and they’ve got 4000 lines.

01:47:58,400	We have 3 columns and 1600 lines. So we just don’t have an adequate ledger to describe our. You know, the the the the economic activity that’s going on in the, in the state. But this would really, we would come back with a you know, we would.

01:48:19,300	Work with department heads and come back with a ledger basically for the commission to to approve. So we’re really talking about 2026, I think would be the implementation date of that, um, because it, it’s just gonna take some time, um, so that’s the next, and I, and I, I just, I do think that’ll improve the accounting and make it make it easier for people to keep, you

01:48:35,900	know, the, the, the correct books, um. The next recommendation would be a supervisory review process, um, I think we’re, we’re getting there with the finance department, the, the, the challenge there, um, Is that.

01:49:02,000	You know, we’re not in the reporting line of reporting and therefore, um, We don’t really have the authority to say, hey, make this change, right? Um, so what we’re. But, but nevertheless, we need to have some supervisory review. We need to have somebody come in before the audit and You know, or on an ongoing basis, go through and review transactions and for looking for things like Gatsby Gap errors, that type of stuff.

01:49:22,800	And so that that’ll probably take the shape of coming back to the commission with some items, um, if there’s something that’s maybe contentious, uh, we would have to then come to the commission because we’re not in the lines of reporting, uh, at the, at the county auditor’s office and the county auditor is the CFO.

01:49:40,870	And so, you know, we report to the commission and so if there’s things that they don’t wanna change, quite frankly, they, they don’t have to listen to us. And so in those cases we would have to, to then come back to the commission.

01:49:55,870	We have had a couple of instances like that, and I, I just said, you know what, we’ll just wait, wait for the audit report, um, some, some, um, Disagreements and stuff over accounting, but I just felt like we’ll just wait for the audit report and, and then, uh, discuss it at that time. Well, since we’re discussing it right now.

01:50:17,370	There’s there’s been multiple mentions in this, in this process about um recommendations from the finance department. That are that are being refused to be implemented, implemented. What’s the, what’s the, uh, what’s the answer? We, we’ve had, so when we, when we started before the audit, there was, there were a couple of um.

01:50:42,230	Of journal entries that I proposed, I found them in the last year’s audit report is where I, where I got them so I’m looking at the 2022 audit report. I see it doesn’t match our books. Uh, I look at our books, we hadn’t made the changes that were, um, made by the state auditor’s office and so then I approached the county auditor’s office, just as an example, one of those was our,

01:51:00,530	our sales tax bond since we’re talking about it, it’s topical. Um, it’s really a bond sinking fund and it, it was just completely removed from the books in. 23.

01:51:15,330	And so my recommendation was we really need to put this back on the books because it is an asset and I was told that no, we’re not gonna do that. And then it showed up on the audit reports given for no, we’re not going to do that. No, I did not. I, I do not recall a reason.

01:51:32,400	It was just, uh, I had multiple emails and then an in-person meeting and I was just basically told that they, they didn’t have no intention of making that entry. Now, that has improved a little bit. We have had some, uh, entries that we’ve proposed that that they have made. So in that respect, perhaps things are improving, but you know, that was a, uh, an entry that could have been avoided that is, is now on the audit report. OK.

01:51:53,000	So what actions should we take or do you recommend we take to ensure that its resolved. I think at this point we’re going to have to, um, We’re gonna have to, I think we can continue to meet with the, with the county auditor’s office and, and propose, uh, entries.

01:52:13,600	You know, at that time, that is when I said, uh, I’m just gonna wait for the audit report because I figured it was gonna, you know, show up on the audit report. Um, I don’t think we should wait and. Get all of our errors from the state auditor’s office once a year.

01:52:30,270	So I, I think that, um, We’re going to have to continue to try to work with with the county auditor’s office, but we’re also gonna, in some cases have to come to this board. And um, and, and propose some of these fixes as in the form of a resolution, I’m afraid.

01:52:53,270	I resolution today? I don’t think we have a resolution in this packet other than if the board wishes to, um, To vote to adopt these recommendations. And then we can come back kind of like our HR director did with these policies, um, as we develop them, you know, next week we’re going to be talking about our next meeting.

01:53:13,370	We’re going to be talking about investments where we do have a policy, uh, we’re just not following it, Comm., I would make that motion to adopt those recommendations and you know, when I.

01:53:35,130	When I went through the audit report and going and looking through all this, there’s nothing there that those simple changes and being in the compliance promotes more transparency and eventually it’s going to make the budgeting process easier for the budget committee, so, um, I would make that motion. Second, I have a motion a second a further discussion, Comm. Woodcox. Can I get that. Reed what what is the motion? To adopt the recommendations from the report. OK, the ones that are in here, OK.

01:54:03,530	he’s got them all laid out here, you know, I didn’t know if there’s one resolution that covers the whole thing or what? Yup, that’s. Any further discussion, no to call the roll. Comm. Schwab, Comm. Woodcock, yes, Comm. Munsen, Comm. Bakken, Chair Benner, yes, motion carries.

01:54:23,130	I want to back up a little bit before it was, that was pretty much it on that. back up to. The last uh conversation we were having before the. Um the Sales tax bond escrow fund. You had a a recommendation in here that we didn’t take an action on. We did. It was uh. Gosh, that might have been the one page I didn’t print off.

01:54:50,000	That was the resolution, but that is what. The gist of it was what we discussed at the table, so the precursor is you having a conversation and an open assuming that. If we’re able to get Morton County to agree to pursue this escrow thing.

01:55:08,500	It looked to me like the motion that he was proposing in here as a resolution would enable that. Again. You know, so Um, Basically, it was giving it a little bit more weight by having this resolution. Does that make sense? I think the resolution was to direct because when we voted back in February to, um, We empowered the county auditors to, as I said, basically Hagel.

01:55:35,370	So I think the resolution was for the board to direct the county auditor to. Reach out to Morton County within a certain amount of time, like 5 days and um basically try to get this escrow agreement set up. And I think we should do that anyway, is what I’m saying.

01:55:54,670	You know, we didn’t, we didn’t take an action. It’s on uh. It’s not necessary to Pass a resolution, I think so it’s just one more step in the process speed it up. I would make a motion to pass that resolution contingent on how your conversation with the Morton County.

01:56:18,270	Uh, Chair goes, if, if, if it’s a dead horse, then it won’t matter, right? But that makes sense. Second, a motion of 2nd. Uh, for the proposed resolution in the packet. Um Subject to those, to that. Any further discussion? Call the roll. Comm., Comm. Woodcox. I abstain. Comm. Munson, Yes, Comm. Bakken, Chair Bittner, motion carries. My reasoning for abstaining is I’m not.

01:56:52,430	Sure exactly what we’re doing and that’s, that’s fine it’s necessary. In Chair, could I get clarification on exactly where that resolution is just so I know how to, yeah, it’s in the, it’s in the packet here. Um, I think you put the packet together. It’s right ahead of the recommendations from the financial statement. Probab be helpful if we had page numbers so.

01:57:22,330	Um, The resolution is Well it’s labeled as page one, but there’s a request for county. board action, the proposed resolution is at the bottom of what’s labeled page one, and it continues on the top of what’s labeled as page 2, which is right ahead of the 2023 financial statement audit findings and recommendations. OK.

01:57:48,800	The only thing, other thing I, I have to say is that um the the accounting staff handle an unbelievable volume of information and they do a very good job. All of the, it’s all of the detail that they’re able to capture, um, is they do a great job.

01:58:12,100	This stuff is so complicated and the county’s so big and there’s so much going on, um, that it’s kind of gotten away from us, I think, but as far as the. Day to day stuff, you know, they do a great job.

01:58:29,900	Sure, no doubt about that, um, but the simple fact is that we need to, we’ve had a lot of conversations just so you know, commissioners about the Tyler technology and the different modules and what we’re already using and what other counties are already using the same thing and how they’re applying it in ways that we’re not, and we think that we can get to be a lot more efficient and accurate and have better. Forward looking information about budgets and finances and that whole thing.

01:58:46,000	So. We are working on that. I know he’s, he’s actively working with Tyler Technologies, so. Thank you, appreciate that. Thank you for reaching out to some of the other counties too and getting some other examples and that that collaboration between counties I think is very valuable. Thanks Lee.

01:59:09,500	Hm OK, the next thing is me, um, um, we’ve had a conversation. And I think I’m going to hand this off a little bit to uh emergency manager because he’s handling our IT department and the uh big part of the Provident remodel, but the question came up uh during conversations about the Provident rebuild, uh, remodel about how much actual storage

01:59:28,770	we need to have, how much. You know, valuable office space on the main floor? Are we allocating to storage, um, because that’s my understanding that um under the previous recorder, we, we, we spent, I don’t know, a couple $100,000 on digitizing the um.

01:59:50,370	Records of Burleigh County as far as deeds and everything that goes on in the recorder’s office. And we we still have a lot of hard copy storage that doesn’t necessarily have to be in that valuable first floor office space area and so we were considering, can we do something else with that? And it brought up a little bit of a conversation about Um, something as simple as

02:00:09,370	researching Burleigh County meeting minutes from Years back. You know, and so the, the notion of having the conversation, I’d like Mary to, to kind of jump in on this, but the notion was to try to move forward with, first off, finding out really where we’re at with digitizing. And where we could be.

02:00:29,930	So if Mary is here, no. She’s coming. All right. Sorry to put you on the spot, but Chair and commissioners, um, even when we look at our website, we need to be all about the local government transparency, so as much information as we can provide on our website for anybody to research. That’s always a great deal.

02:00:55,230	Our county by and large has a lot of data. But we can’t quantify it or do anything with it because it’s still in paper form. Some departments have digitized some information, um, but it’s not on the website or if you’ve ever had to go back and research anything in the commission minutes.

02:01:14,730	You’re going back to a paper document and we just need to do better. So what I would like to see is the department’s really look at their retention policies. Some are, they are dictated. As far as how long you keep things, but and some are permanent records that we have to keep forever.

02:01:35,100	Do we have to keep them in paper form? Can we keep them in digital form, um, and it’ll lessen our storage needs for sure, um, but why would we want to move that stuff to the Provident building if we can decrease our storage now, and, and make it more, um, readily available whenever somebody wants to do research.

02:01:55,000	So, um, the retention policies are out there. I think we just need to start looking at those in ways to decrease our storage footprint in the, in the Provident building and even if you’re not. Moving to the Providnt building, you’re just, you, your local storage needs.

02:02:13,700	Why are we storing what we’re storing? Do we need to and what’s the retention policies on them. So could we make that in some form of a motion to ask department heads to kind of start compiling that or how do you think that’s what’s the association of counties sends out our retention, uh, records that we need to review every year and then we report back to them what we disposed if it was

02:02:33,870	paper or electronic. Um, you know, whether that, you know, was a terabyte or how many megabytes that we disposed of, you know, deleted, um, but we should really be looking at those paper copies.

02:02:52,570	Do we have to keep the paper copy and if we do, is it something the historical society would archive for us, or, you know, do we need to keep that stuff, so I just think we really need to take a serious look at The paper stuff, Comm. Bakken, Mary, our discussion, so there was a lot of money spent on digitizing records.

02:03:19,870	Previously, correct? Um, the recorder’s office did go through a large digitization process that project come fully to fruition or? I believe it was 100% digitized, I’d have to talk to Missy, um, but it’s made available online that people have subscriptions to, um, obtain that data. So I think as the records are ongoing. They’re digitized. Thank you.

02:03:45,830	Incidentally, I got a I got a text message from the former auditor wondering if there’s any way the budget could be put on our website and I said, well. I don’t know. Because we don’t, we don’t, haven’t made the leap, I guess, from the paper copy to. The computer here.

02:04:05,130	So that’s just one more aspect of it, so what would be the next step in your estimation to kind of Get us moving towards that thing. I Oh I don’t know if the board makes them. I, I don’t, how do you make the department heads really look at their retention policy records as far as, you know, paper versus digital. I, I just really think we have too much paper that we’re storing.

02:04:25,730	Maybe we should be asking for some kind of a summary of where we’re at and where can we go from the department heads, uh, go ahead. Well, a few years ago the social service department, they had, we hired some interns in the summertime, and they came in and all they did was actually.

02:04:43,300	Digitized, they went through everything as much as they possibly could, and they got a lot of it done now. I don’t know where it’s at now, but uh they did a lot and all it does is take effort, you gotta, if people got downtime, you tell them to go ahead and start doing, you gotta get a system and you gotta go through

02:04:56,300	that and get it actually done and that’s the only way it’s gonna be done whether you hire another person or not, I has it uh each department would probably have to have a person, but, uh, cause there are a lot of us go to the courthouse in the basement of the the the dungeon down there.

02:05:12,200	Good luck, well, it’s along the same lines because you know we, we, it’s expensive, uh, square footage is Buckley and correct me if I’m wrong, but the Association County actually lays out from a department perspective what’s necessary for retention as well, OK. Right. Sometimes it’s calendar year plus 10 years, sometimes it’s 3 years.

02:05:34,570	I mean, even for my department what’s needed, yeah, that, that is all laid out. We just need to ensure, do we have to keep the paper copy? Can we keep a digital copy, you know, where is that? How about if we ask for a summary of some sort along those lines from our department heads.

02:05:54,970	Where are we at in your department? Where could we be? What’s the And what’s the century code that applies to your particular department. Well, and that’s where the Association of counties can come in and do some help because everything’s laid out right there, so maybe the, the question is just to direct the department.

02:06:14,470	Each department, the department heads to. Here’s your list of what you need, you should probably do a punch list every year as as part of your department with association of counties does send that out to each department every year.

02:06:33,630	It’s whether you comply with it and, and again, if you, if it’s a permanent record or you have to keep it for 345 years? Do we have to keep it in paper copy? Can we do it digitally? I would make a motion that we adopt a policy that follows. That List from the association of counties to make sure that we’re retaining what we need to retain. I wanna say it’s already in Centry code.

02:06:59,230	It’s just the philosophy of do we have to keep it in paper or can we do it digital and get rid of the paper or is there any direction from the Association of counties on what’s Paper what’s digital. No, not that I’ve found.

02:07:20,230	So I think the question just needs to be asked, yeah, I, I rescind my motion because we need a little bit more information, a little more guidance on this and um, you know, the I, I can reach out to the association of counting ask for that or if you want to as well, it doesn’t matter, but uh, um, because they should have all that laid out on what’s.

02:07:35,500	A part of the retention policy which they have laid out I think part of it would be get some feedback from the department heads. I mean, we’ve had this conversation.

02:07:52,700	I think the department heads understand what we’re talking about and did some feedback, see where are we and what can we do differently or better or and to Comm. Woodcockox’s point, every department isn’t going to need a person to digitize, but collectively we might need to hire somebody to digitize some of these records, you know, how much really is out there? The retention schedule is already there and the policies are already there.

02:08:13,200	But what are we doing with that? Yeah, so it’d be good to know whereabouts we are, our recorder is here. She’s done the mo. Momentous, I should say momentous, monumental it of uh information and they’ve got a really down to a science, so we wanna hear from her briefly. So we do have, um, Comm., chair, Chair. We have all of our records digitized at this point.

02:08:39,800	They are not all searchable on what Mary was talking about Erin, which is the North Dakota recorder Information Network. Um, they need to be up to, I believe, or excuse me, 1980 with our back indexing of our documents.

02:09:03,200	So from 1980 to the present, if you go in and search your subdivision or your section township and range and you’re looking for a certain record, you’ll be able to Find that record prior to that point, um, you would need to come into our office to research our book to find a document number and then you’d be able to go on to Andren and research that.

02:09:25,300	So we’re working on getting everything indexed, but it’s in our spare time. So when we’re busy with our daily stuff, we maybe don’t get as much done with that stuff during the, you know, during a, a normal work day, but we’re in the process of, of working. to get those done.

02:09:48,070	Um with with Erin now, um, as an association, we’ve made it easier, um, we have what’s called a day pass, so as a constituent, you can go out there for $7 for 24 hours and you can search all of the records for the 50 of the 53 counties that are members of ER and get copies is just like you can come to our office to get copies for $1 a. Page.

02:10:08,470	So, um, with that, but, um, with my specific area with books, um, I have done a little bit of research with other counties and every county at least has their tracked index books on site, which is all of their subdivision books and their section Township range, um, that shows ownership. They have all of those books on site.

02:10:34,230	The older, there’s, there’s 3 counties that. Have, um, Just they’re tracked in index books on site, all of their other records are at the salt mines in Kansas. Um, the other counties so far that I have heard back from with this have all of their books and microfilm.

02:10:59,130	On site or they’ll have their books with their microfilm at the salt mines. Um, the three counties that have their information all at the at the salt mines in Kansas, um, McKenzie County is one of them, and they pay about Close to 60 a year to house. Those books, um, offsite and that goes up every year, of course, because of um.

02:11:25,930	You know the fees and, and things like that with contracts, contract fees. Um, the other one is Grand Forks County. They lost all of their books in the ’97 floods, so they have their tracked index books in-house and their microfilm is off site.

02:11:46,000	Um, and then the other one is Williams County where they have their tracked index books, but everything else is, is, um, off site, so. Have we eliminated our microfish entirely now. So we have, we had 2 copies of Microfilm, um, just so we had a backup.

02:12:09,000	So our backup is at the salt mines, um, and that was done the last bit of that was sent in, I believe it would have been like 2006. What. What. What. What do we pay to We’re a little like rate under 2500 a year for that, no.

02:12:32,370	Not So, um, and then McKenzie County had said that when they shipped all of their books, they had to send like it was on the county’s dime to get the semi here to ship all of their stuff to the, to the salt mines and they actually took all of their roller cabinets and everything, so they have their records room almost looks like a duplicate of what they had, but they pay like, you know,, $5600 a year roughly. So, OK, well I appreciate that information.

02:12:52,670	The goal is to get that kind of information essentially, um, soon from from everybody, you know, not just one department because I think it’s a bigger, you know. It’s a bigger tent. So I know we used US records, um, doing our digitizing and they come in and they do it all on site.

02:13:14,570	So, but I know like for us. We can’t get rid of our books, we would have to send, I mean, you know, we couldn’t just dispose of them. They are digitized, but we couldn’t dispose of them. They would have to disposing of things of records, that’s not the point.

02:13:34,730	We’re, we’re basically talking about the value of first floor office space versus book storage, but Comm. Woodcock, can US records comes in and we actually hire them to do the work, is that correct? And, and it’s honestly. Like they work 24 hours, so even when we’re not here, they have a key to the office.

02:13:58,830	They’re working overnight so they can get done faster and can we, how do we pay for that? Does that come out of the. Well, that was for the preservation, yeah, my preservation fund paid for the recorder’s records to do that, it wasn’t really. Tax Bertie County property tax dollars.

02:14:22,430	It was done by the preservation fund, which is a fee associated with every recorder, which is unusual in that other departments don’t have that available, the funding. I think there’s a way to move forward. Go ahead, Comm. Bach. You mentioned the not everything’s searchable yet. Right.

02:14:46,300	So what’s, where’s that process at? Well, in the back end indexing process where however many we get during the, you know, we’re going from current back to the beginning of time, so, um, it’s just. I don’t think in my, in my time, it’ll ever get done just because it’s back to the 1800s and I’ve been, I mean 20 years now been with Burley County. So, and it’s been, um, 96 to the present. So from 96 to 80 since I’ve been here.

02:15:11,300	is where we’ve gotten with that. So you think it would be realistic for like over the next couple of weeks or the next month or something that our department heads can kind of give us a summary of where we’re at and where they could be.

02:15:26,770	I don’t wanna, I don’t want to stretch it out too far because it seems like you should be able to answer the question probably by our next meeting just a summary real quick and that should be next agenda, Comm. Woodcock.

02:15:45,470	This US Res company that does it, do they do what they do work for the auditor’s office or would they I think they work for county government offices, so I think that’s something we can explore as to what the cost would be to do that and uh that might be an alternative.

02:16:01,470	They get it done, they get it done right, they get it done quickly, and they, and it’s done uh properly, so maybe something we can investigate the courthouse, the basement of the courthouse is just chock full of and but they have different rules. As far as how long they have to keep it, some of them they have to keep forever. Right, I mean if in in paper copy, not they won’t even allow some of it to be digitized.

02:16:15,870	Depends on the record. Right, but would you be able to get a kind of a summary relative to that or most of those record retention policies are available online through, um.

02:16:33,230	And like we get them from the association of counties and there is a website you can go to where you can look up the specific record and it tells you how long you have to keep it. But that we still have to some of them are forever we can’t eliminate them. Well, what I think would be best is every department gave us a summary of what they do do or have to do, right, the rules.

02:16:51,330	OK, we’ll be expecting that, I guess by the. Whether the next commission meeting we can talk about that further. Jerry, you’re retired if you got some spare time you, you were saying you were looking for something to I I look for I look for a I look for a I look for a feed as directors change over and we do things more electronically

02:17:10,730	online some of those records were always there, so they just stay there. That’s the way we’ve always done it, so that’s the way we’re continuing to do it, and I just think there’s an opportunity to digitize them and Chair, hopefully Now forward or whatever where we’re digitizing everything, you know, we’re not keeping any more

02:17:32,600	paper than necessary, we’re still doing county commission meeting minutes in the book. Meeting minutes are I can scan. I’m a good scanner. We want accuracy, buck. You want you require accuracy too. Oh man, especially if you want to get paid for it.

02:17:56,500	um, thank, that’s the goal is to get more information and work towards out a better solution for the county. Next, county HR director binder, um, sorry it took so long to get to you. Welcome. Thank you. Chair Bittner commissioners, um, I do have handouts because I did not make the cut for the packet, but that’s OK. More people and we Yes we did.

02:18:44,200	OK And we’re trying out new contact lenses, so we’re gonna see how far this goes. Um, the first item I have is the Tyler Technologies, the HR module that I’ve been talking about. For different meetings. I actually have the proposal for that module, but I want to have you guys page over to page 5.

02:19:04,600	Where you have like a little wheel. It’s got green on top and blue on the bottom. It has school ERP Pro on it, OK? Um, I feel like I should have been the intro before Aaronskowski and and finance director Jacobs because I could have gave you some of the, the underlying things, um, because this is school ERP Pro which

02:19:27,670	has our general ledger, the, the top green is a financial management and it has the general ledger, it has the budgeting, it actually has a budgeting and forecasting model in it. So the software we has has But as Finance Director Jacobs was saying we are minimalist in our general ledger system, so it won’t work.

02:19:46,670	To do the forecasting because we’re putting way too much into 11 fund or one account. And so it can’t spread it out to do the accurate budgeting. Um, so just to give you that, so that is on top, that is what that finance management module is, we have that.

02:20:07,670	On the bottom we have blue, and that has the payroll module. The payroll module is actually part of the finance management. So even though it’s blue here, it’s actually green. What’s going on with the HR module is we have some of these items. Because we have payroll.

02:20:25,170	We don’t have all of these items, so we do not have an HRIS. We do not have fully functioning HRIS so we’re doing manual, um, items. So if you look on the far right side of the blue, we have ACA reporting. That is what I was talking about that we contract with I Bailey and over the last 3 years, we have paid them $14,5454.

02:20:50,830	74 just to upload the HTML file to the IRS. and to do a mail merge into the 1095 form. And mail it out to our employees. So this is 20,000, the HR module, and the 20,000 is. One time, the majority of it is one time, um, implementation costs and licensing fees, and the reoccurring would be $1,849.

02:21:17,730	Basically, we have this module already installed on our computers, but because we didn’t purchase the HR module. We don’t have access to the majority of it. The only thing we have access to is what interacts with the payroll software. Did you, did you say earlier that we already have that the green part. We already have the green part.

02:21:35,600	That is, that is a financial financial management, so that’s our general ledger system that is our um employee expense reimbursements, uh, budgeting and forecasting, e-procurement, some purchases and payables are in there, fixed assets and warehouses, some accounts receivable are in there. I don’t know if you have the grant management part of it turned on. Right.

02:21:55,600	Um, but that is what we currently have. And so a lot of the conversations that we were having concerning the state audit and whatnot. It seems like we already have the ability to. We have the ability, we just have to clean up the will, OK, and then so what your, your proposal then would be purchasing the the in the blue.

02:22:14,000	I would like to purchase the HR module, and I’d like to do that as soon as possible this year yet. Um, I do have some money in my overall budget, although the line item for contract services. I do not have it, but I do have it in my overall. Budget.

02:22:31,870	Also, I believe our technology budget where the rest of the tech Tyler technologies Infinite Vision’s products come out of may have some room to absorb some of this 20,000 as well. Commissioners, I would entertain a motion to approve motion a 2nd and a 3rd to approve. Any further discussion? Call the roll, please. Mr. Schwab, Mr. Woodcox. Mr. Munsen, Comm. Bakken, yes, Chair Benner.

02:22:56,970	Yes, motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, just one question, Pam, um. For next commission meeting, can you get a breakout of what where the dollars would be coming from so that we can get a look between the technology budget, your budget, and where we would have to figure out if we need to come

02:23:14,770	up with some extra. I will do that. If my budget can absorb it, I’d rather just keep it in my budget it’d be the cleanest. If not, we can look at that technology. I will work with auditor Sponskowski, let us know what the plan is next commission meeting, please. Thank you.

02:23:29,530	And then the next handouts, um, I was asked by One of the a couple commissioners about the finance director job description, um, and when we did the initial finance director, we’ve never had a finance director and a deputy finance director.

02:23:48,330	Remember when we went recruiting for that we kind of put all three of those positions up there and saw what stuck and we ended up with a finance director and a deputy finance director. So I looked at the job descriptions and you’ll see the auditor treasurer tax job description is there because it has to be. You have to start with the auditor and treasurer. That’s per century code.

02:24:06,630	So this job description references the entry code and I printed out the sentry codes that it references. So it’s the county auditor, chapter 11:13, the county treasurer, which is Chapter 1114, and the county budget. Which is chapter 11:23. And actually chapter 11 23-02 auditor to prepare budget of county expenditures. It tells you exactly how that budget needs to look.

02:24:30,900	So that’s why we come up with the sheets that we do on our budget because everything has to be there. So the county auditor, treasurer, that job description is based off of those North Dakota Century Code chapters.

02:24:49,900	So then we get into the finance director, and this is where we were getting confused before, because the finance director does not fall under any of those North Dakota entry codes from the auditor treasurer or that county budget where the finance director falls is under the, the board of county commissioners. So it’s under yours, which is chapter 11-11.

02:25:10,000	And if you look on the 2nd page of the actual entry code it says general duties of Board of County commissioners and the board of county commissioners Shall superintend the fiscal affairs of the county, and it goes down and kind of describes what the fiscal um requirements are the revenues, the expenditures, it’s also on. The 4th page and I’ve kind of put brackets on them for you.

02:25:28,770	This is what the finance director is doing. The finance director is working for the commission. The finance director reviews, analyzes, recommends internal controls, recommends policies and procedures on behalf of the county commissioners, not on behalf of the auditor. Recommends it to the auditor.

02:25:49,470	And that’s how they work in tandem, but the positions, although they parallel each other quite a bit, they are separate. That’s my century code, that is by Centrico. No, that is by Centrione and that’s why I attached the sentry code behind it. I remember we had our conversation and, and that’s why I attached the different entry codes to the different job descriptions because that’s where they fall. Great.

02:26:12,470	OK, and the deputy finance director, I left the same. Because that position, the job description actually does a fairly good job. of what that position does. Plus we also have some uh. Swapping between the auditor’s office duties. And so that one we’re gonna leave as is and see where it falls out. Before we start changing that.

02:26:37,630	OK Uh State’s attorney lawyer, did you have anything? I, I, I heard, I heard a conversation back then, but but whether or not the county commission had to approve the job description before it’s official. And so, OK. No, I mean, they can for the finance director.

02:26:57,630	The auditors is per century code, so it doesn’t really, it’s irrelevant whether they want to approve it or not. But if you guys want to make an emotion, you can approve these job prescriptions as written to a motion we approve the job descriptions outlined for the finance director and the deputy finance director. Motion in a second, please. additional discussion? S Mr.

02:27:23,930	Schwab, I Because you’re the you you have you had the Christian Woodcox, Comm., Comm. Bakken, Chair Bentner. Yes, Mr. Chair Kerry’s Comm., if I remember correctly meant that I’ve been around there too many years, but we did vote that the voting should be rotated, and there’s a list and we did, we did, it was alphabetical maybe it to begin with and then we rotated you

02:27:47,200	voted first the next time you vote first, next time you vote, except the Chair. always voted last. That’s by law, I think, but the other four were always rotated.

02:28:05,000	They were never always in the same cause I know we used to manipulate that so who could get the biopsy manipulative kind of Guy that’s why they always had they had me going first. That’s why I remember that but they should rotate they should rotate that. That’s only fair, and I, I think it’s a policy way back, yes it is. Motion is there a second? Can I get clarification on that so, so the way I’ve been doing it is the the Comm..

02:28:31,000	I go on a, I always go on a clockwise position and the Comm. next to the person, the Comm. next to the Comm. who who seconds the motion. is where I always start if Comm. Bachman stops seconding motions wouldn’t it’s my fault. I apologize if you want it different, make it a more.

02:28:50,000	Let’s do it properly. Can we Can we Comm. is only gonna be first on 1 out of 4 votes no matter what the boat is. There’s a motion in a second. OK. Let me has to vote first. You have to vote on that. Paul Call her. Did we? No, said he, I’m scared to who um, Comm.

02:29:25,000	Bakken. Yes, Comm. Schwab, Comm. Woodcox, Comm. Munsen Bentner goodness sakes, that’s a lot of housekeeping. OK, um. I think we’re at that point in the agenda where I ask any other business for the good of Burley County. Seeing none, Comm., Comm. Schwab. Oh, you forgot that. I forgot to ask great question.

02:29:55,870	I Anybody here from Summit Carbon Solutions? We start with the weed board, so I it’s um anybody from Summit? No, because they they were early and we are adjourned