Board Meeting Information & Materials - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Welcome to the Board of Commissioners meeting of September 8th, 2026. Those who can, please join us in the pledge. Agenda review.

Madam Chair, there are no changes for the agenda.

Move the review. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. Move to recess for Economic Development Authority. Thank you. Josh?

Second.

Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. All right. So do I need an agenda review for this one? Yes.

There is no change to the agenda for this one, Madam Chair.

I move the agenda. I have a motion and a second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. Minutes of August 11th. I need a motion.

I'll move the minutes.

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. All right. At this time, I will... Wait a minute here. I've lost my place on my script. So this time we'll have a public hearing on the 2026 proposed public housing agency annual plan. That's a mouthful. This hearing provides an opportunity for citizens to submit comments and recommendations on the proposed plan in a public setting. Nancy is here to give us a brief update.

And we have Nicole here today, so she'll start us off and I'll finish it off.

All right. Thanks. Good morning.

Good morning.

Nicole Cunningham with the Blue Earth County EDA. So just to summarize, the 2027 PHA Annual Plan is a comprehensive guide to public housing agency policies, programs, operations, and strategies for meeting local housing needs and goals. The EDA submits this plan, which represents the role of the agency and programs in the community. The plan follows strategic planning identified in the Community Consolidated Plan, strengthens ties to community service agencies, fair housing, and assesses tools necessary to reach established goals. Our tools include the annual review of payment standards and utility allowances, annual review of the administrative plan for the Housing Choice Voucher Program and emissions and occupancy plans for public housing, identify special vouchers including project-based vouchers, family self-sufficiency and home ownership programs, mainstream vouchers for non elderly disabled households, bash vouchers for homeless veterans, foster youth to independence vouchers to meet needs for homeless and at risk foster youth stability vouchers that work to prevent homelessness, utilizing preferences based on community needs and manages capital funding reserves that improve and replace publicly owned housing. The plan identifies and recommends policy changes. The EDA has enacted since submission of the last Daniel plan. For the administrative plan, housing opportunity through modernization act hot, my revisions were made to the administrative plan provided last year in anticipation for implementation. So those, um, hot, my changes stayed in place at mission and occupancy procedures are a cop, a housing opportunity through modernization act revisions have been made to the ACA provided last year in anticipation for implementation in January. Expansion to our regional jurisdiction. The counties now include Blue Earth, Nicollet, Waseca, Watanwan, Sibley, Pipestone, and Rock counties. repositioning of public housing units in the RAD Section 18 program. The conversion allows for a more predictable, sustainable revenue stream while providing the same protection and rights to all current tenants. The program revenue will come from rent payments from tenants that reflect 30% of their income, and the HUD funding will change from an annual operating subsidy and capital fund grant to the housing assistance payments. The Section 18 conversion of the 19 units transitioned on October 1, 2025, and the RAD small PHA blend options was submitted in July of 2025 and is being reviewed by HUD with a closing date of October 1, 2026. The administrative plan includes these project-based vouchers in Chapter 17.

Then the annual plan also highlights the routine accomplishments and new initiatives that happened this past year. So definitely administering our housing choice voucher and public housing programs are key. We did receive a high performer standard for 240 vouchers. We prioritize special populations with five stability vouchers and maintained our units using capital funds with an inspection rating of 98%. We created a housing trust fund. We recreated affordable housing with 28 new homeowners with the Minnesota City's participation program through Minnesota Housing. And as we also expanded the partnership community land trust. And this year we do hope to have This year and next year, we should see 24 new homes in our community with that program using the housing tax credit monies. Then we also supported the low-income housing tax credit project for the Poplar Apartments, which are currently under construction and will provide supportive housing for 40 units for people who are homeless in our communities. And we did expand our voucher programs this year. We have the 25 vouchers through the Bridges program. and 150 vouchers through the Bring It Home rental assistance program. Both of those programs are administered through Minnesota Housing. We've used the local homeless prevention aid that the county receives from the Department of Treasury, and we've served 35 youth and families with children. And the last item there is the voucher transition from the South Central Multi-County HRA and LeWorth County did receive 85 additional vouchers that are currently being administered. We've preserved affordable housing and that really had to do with our RAD conversion of our public housing where we transitioned them into project-based vouchers and that definitely opened up resources that can help us maintain affordable housing in our community. We prevented homelessness. We conducted biweekly case conferencing with other service providers in our community and coordinated with the regional continuum of care on the coordinated entry assessment system. Again, we've used preferences to ensure that we could serve more homeless in our communities, and over the last five years, it's been about 33% of our vouchers do go to people who are homeless in our communities. This year, we did expand the emergency nighttime shelter through the summer months, so we have a year-round nighttime shelter, which has been key. And we definitely want to continue that collaboration and work on a way so we can raise the capital funding we need to provide a 24-7 year-round shelter here in our community. We've also expanded, we continue to expand affordable housing by always supporting any tax credit projects that do go to the state of Minnesota. We've done a lot of community education and landlord engagement. We work with our local service providers under a preventing rental eviction program, which has done a lot of engagement with landlords, talking with landlords, and also listening to tenants and what they have concerns about renting in our community to improve the work that we're doing. We also provide homebuyer education, and we partner with the Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership to offer that, and then Partners for Affordable Housing does the RentWise education training programs, and so we've partnered with them on that as well. So we do continue to keep collaborating with our community partners, and we do list a lot of the service providers here that we work with on a real regular basis. And so the plan was posted for public comment. We did have a resident advisory meeting that was held on August 25th. The summary of... That meeting was attached. Really, they were looking for safety types of things, and so we'll continue to work with them to make sure that they feel safe in the housing that they have. But following this hearing, the board is asked to approve by resolution the annual public housing agency plan as presented. Do you have any questions?

Thank you, both of you. All right, so at this time we will open the public comment portion of the hearing. If you would like to make a comment, please come to the podium, state your name and address for the record. Comments from the public are expected to be civil and respectful. Please note this meeting is being recorded and there is a five-minute time limit. The county administrator will give you a one-minute warning and let you know when you've used your allotted time. In addition, the board may restrict or limit the time allotted to a person whose remarks are repetitive or not relevant to the matter under consideration by the board. Is there anyone wishing to make comment? Anyone wishing to make comments? Okay, last time. Anyone wishing to make comments on the agency annual plan? And hearing no comments, I'll bring the item back to the board. I would move the resolution. I have a motion.

Second.

And a second. Any discussion?

Good program, thank you. Good report.

This is going good. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. Thank you for coming. See, I think you should just script me through the whole thing. We'll move on to drainage. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. I need a motion.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. Now we can do dreams. Hey, Jordan.

Good morning.

All right, what do you have for us today?

Petition for improvement of Judicial Ditch 20. Judicial Ditch 20 watershed is approximately 2,300 acres in size and is located in Sections 22, 23, 26, 27, 34, and 35 of Lyra Township and Sections 2 and 3 of Sterling Township. A petition for improvement was received by Property Environmental Resources staff on July 13, 2026 for Blue Earth County Judicial Ditch 20. Drainage Authority Attorney K.L.R. Van Bruggen of Ranking Union reviewed the petition and found it to be adequate. At today's meeting of the Blue Earth County Drainage Authority, we request the Drainage Authority to approve the findings in order, accepting the petition, and appointing Chuck J. Brandl and the engineering firm of ISG to prepare a preliminary survey report in accordance with Minnesota Statute 103E.241. That's all I have, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

I'll move approval.

Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Now we have a bid award, huh?

Yes. Public bids were solicited for County Ditch 51 approved repair construction plans. A total of six bids were submitted and opened on August 20th, 2026. These six bids received are provided in the table below with the lowest bids submitted from Stevens Drainage and Excavation with a bid price of $277,813.33 and the highest received from Apex Drainage with a bid price of $364,904.20. The engineer's estimate was $328,162.14. Stevens Drainage and Excavation had a base bid of $277,831.33. Sally Excavating had a base bid of $333,515.50. Leland Drainage and Excavating LLC had a base bid of $335,699.00. Precision Farm Drainage and Excavating LLC had a base bid of $336,880.75. MSB Excavating and Tiling had a base bid of $359,615.75. And Apex Drainage LLC had a base bid of $364,924.20. Blue Earth County and ISG have worked with Stevens Drainage and Excavation on past repairs and projects with positive results. Based on the submitted low bid price and past work experience, we recommend the repair work be awarded to Stevens Drainage and Excavation. We request the County Ditch 51 Drainage Authority to award a contract for approved repair plans for construction to Stevens Drainage and Excavation for a bid amount of $277,831.33 affecting portions of County Ditch 51. That's all I have, Madam Chair.

I have a motion. Second. And a second. Any discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Carries. Thanks for coming. Thank you.

Jordan.

Jordan, yeah. He called you Ryan. That's because Ryan's up next, Public Works.

Good morning, Commissioners. Good morning. We've got some guests with me this morning, if that's okay. All right. We enjoy guests. I think everybody probably knows Nick Engels, our design engineer. He'll be talking about something a little bit later, but to my right is Christy with Great River Greening, and she's here to discuss the first action item that we have on our agenda today, which is a cooperative agreement with Great River Greening for an oak savanna restoration of Williams Nature Center. It's a cooperative agreement that partners to utilize a privately administered state grant to manage a buckthorn and other invasive species. She's an expert on it and I'm just a novice, so I'm gonna let her talk about what their company does and what the cooperative agreement entails that's included in the board packet.

Good morning. Good morning. So I work for Great River Greening, which is a non-profit based out of St. Paul. I just live up by Kasota, so I'm local. And we have a grant through Lassard Sam's Outdoor Heritage Council, which is, just so you know, back in 2008, we voted for the constitutional amendment of three-eighths of 1% of our taxes, and then a third of that goes towards habitat work. And so this is out of that fund. This is a three-year grant. I had initially spoken with Josh in the past and we had discussed a number of projects that needed some work within the county and the one that came to the forefront was Williams Nature Center because it's a beautiful park, there's a lot of utilization on that park, it's close to town and it also has a significant buckthorn problem. There's a lot of oak savanna within that park as well and so We were working to see if we can do some buckthorn removal and oak savanna restoration work. So not just removing the buckthorn, but also doing some under seeding and hopefully some thinning to open up some of the burr oaks that we have left. Right now, we put in to do a larger a larger portion of the park, but so far our deliverables right now are only 13 acres. I'm really hoping with the way bids have been coming in down here in southern Minnesota that we can get more than 13 acres, but we'll see how the bids come back. What we do is we administer the grant, so I I work on developing the request for bid. We design the whole project and I work with Ryan on exactly the techniques that we plan to utilize. I release the bid. We do the review of all the bids that come in. We go over that with Ryan to make sure that he's comfortable with that. And then we let the contract, I manage the contract and I do all the restoration work. And as I said, it's only three years. A lot of the projects I do down here are five. This is, excuse me, now it was Sergeant Sam's. Oh my goodness, that's one of my other grants. This is the Legislative and Citizens Commission of Minnesota Resources.

I'm sorry, this is your lotto ticket sales.

I totally apologize. And so we have kind of a whole suite of activities that we've discussed as to maybe the the direction that we want to go. Pretty much anything is on the table out there. It'll be using a combination of activities which we'll be using mechanical and chemical control. We've discussed the possibility of using goats for a portion or for maybe the first year to kind of knock it back so that we can get in there and do more chemical control. It's very thick and it's hard to get into some of that. I just want you to know, I know there's a lot of discussion about goats being useful or not useful. I see it as if we do that, it's just one tool in our toolbox. And then also coming back in, doing some follow-up treatments on that probably for two years after that, and then we'll be doing an interseeding of some species that are native right to here. And those do a couple of things. One, they help compete with the buckthorn, but they also add diversity. And we'll see once we remove some of the buckthorn too, what we have coming up once we can get some sunlight on the ground. So that's the plan for right now. What we've proposed to you, we've put together the cooperative agreement. Brian has looked it over and taken it to the attorneys. He made a couple of adjustments, and so I'll let him talk about that part.

So from a cost standpoint, the total project cost is anticipated to be $159,300. Of that, the grant that GRG is administering will cover $149,300, so for $10,000 of county cost, which is spread over three years. So $3,300 a year. I think we can do that. I think our parks budget should be able to handle that out of its miscellaneous coffers. And definitely something, a portion of Minneapolis Park is also leased from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources because it's contiguous to our park and not Minneapolis Park as a whole. And part of the term of our lease agreement is that we're supposed to do invasive species management, which we admittedly say we have fallen behind. It's very challenging with the buckthorn out there. With that, I would recommend approval of the cooperative agreement included in the board packet.

Move to approve. I have a motion.

Second.

And a second.

Any discussion? I think it's a great idea. Williams Nature Center is a beautiful park and it's good to keep it up. I like the idea of using goats. I think that's an interesting concept and obviously just one tool of the whole bunch and I think that's, but it's a good tool because they can really clean something up.

It might be a nice attraction to our park. You know, my wife and I were out just tooling around yesterday, and the number of people that were out at the Goofy Goat Farm on a Monday afternoon was pretty surprising. I wouldn't be here if they were in a county park.

Good idea. Thank you very much. Thanks for all your work.

Thank you. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming.

All right, action item number two is consideration of an intent to cost participate agreement with the city of Pemberton for the reconstruction of County State Highway 53 within city limits. This agreement is for project development costs, including engineering services for the anticipated 2029 reconstruction project, which is scheduled in our transportation improvement program. This details the typical cost participation that we see of a 90-10 county-stated highly eligible split, and then the city being responsible for all of its non-participating items, city water and sewer. Anticipate this will be part of a much larger scope city reconstruction project, and... That they'll have more cost so they may end up being Leading the construction contract will have to work through that when we get to the actual cooperative construction agreement when we get the project developed One thing I could say there's been discussion on and I think we've got Consensus on it is the existing pavement is extremely wide 70 some feet And our standard has been for areas with parking and businesses, 44 feet, and for areas without really more consistent business traffic, 40 feet. And so we've talked with the city. I think there's a common understanding. There'll be some ongoing discussions there. So I think there's the bar downtown is kind of the main traffic generator down there. So working with the city on that and acknowledging that costs above and beyond that if they want to install extra parking will be outside of county costs. It'll be a non-participating cost. So I recommend approval of the intent to cost participate agreement for project development. I'll move approval.

Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries.

Thank you. Action item number three is consideration of an approval of change order number three to agreement for the Rapid and Hydroelectric Project exemption surrender with Barr Engineering. This change order is for $32,500 due to increased costs and work with the environmental assessment worksheet preparation and revisions needed to meet review comments and prepare a general approach for the county while we work on determining our preference between two design alternatives. BAR's got a more detailed and complex description of the extra work that was required under this change order in the document included in the board packet. I would recommend approval of change order number three for BAR engineering. So moved.

I have a motion. Second. And a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

Okay. Action item number four is consideration of bid award for state project 007609014 for construction of bridge number 07610 over the Blue Earth River at Rapid End. This is our county stated Highway 9 bridge. This is, I believe, the biggest bridge construction project we'll have ever let so far. I say that all the time. This is the biggest project we've ever bid and we seem to outdo ourselves. So with that being said, our engineer's estimate for the project was $24,705,450.50. Redstone Construction of Mora was the apparent low bidder. Their total bid amount was 6.82% under our estimate, or $23,019,596.55. We received six total bids, fairly tight spread, with the high bid coming in at 8.18% over the estimate, so about a 15% spread between the estimates and our engineer's estimate landed right in the middle, which is where we want it. The bid summary was included in the board packet. Again, we don't publish the actual abstract with all of the bid prices until it's been awarded. You've received a paper copy of that today with all the bidders' prices. This has all been submitted to the Minnesota Department of Transportation, state aid. So they had to give us their papal blessing so that we could award the project. So we're here today asking the county court for approval of the contract to Redstone Construction.

It's your bridge there, Kevin.

Thank you.

I'll second it.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries.

All right, thank you. So we're excited to get that one started. Nice bids, too. Yes. Very good bids. action item number five is considering award of professional services contract for design engineering for rehabilitation and reconstruction of county state highway 26 from cassava 5 to cassava 57 we we so we request proposals from select firms we don't broadly advertise we typically go with firms that we've had a good track record with and that we enjoy working with and then we ask for competitive Proposals, and then we evaluate them based on the criteria that's included in the breakdown provided in the board packet. And we received three proposals, one from Bolton and Mink, SRF and Stonebrook Engineering. The total scores, are broken down as well as a breakdown of the total cost that they submitted. Cost, again, is not the sole factor in this, but when we're competing with firms that we have had good track record with and all have really good staff, it tends to be a big divider. We had some tight numbers between Bolton and Mink and Stonebrook. SRF's price was considerably higher. Bolton and Mink had a strong proposal and a fairly efficient approach to it. So with that being said, we recommend based on staff evaluation of Nick, Stefan, and myself evaluating these proposals, we rank Bolton and make first. We recommend award of that contract to Bolton and make.

I'll move approval.

I have a motion. Second. And a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

All right. And our last action item is consideration of... Approving contract change order, and I apologize, the packet said number three. That was a carryover from the bar item. It's change order 25 for state aid project 007610029 for CASA 10 from the West County line to CASA 20. The project plans had an error and omission in the common excavation quantity due to a design software cutoff. And Nick's here to explain how and why that happened. on what we'll be doing to avoid that in the future. This is work. We're not, we're only paying for work that was done. We're not paying for extra. It's just that the quantity of work was missed in the plan. So there were 52,240 cubic yards of common excavation in the borrow area that were not accounted for in the plan. and then a little bit of machine time to facilitate that work. So the total for change order number 25 and the correct change order number was submitted in the board packet, $223,328. And with that, I can let Nick kind of explain how or why this happens within our design software.

So our design software, one of the limitations is when we go into plan production and we produce cross-sections, They only go out so far, and with this large borough area, we made it farmable, so our slopes go way out past what our cross sections show. So we typically only go out 150 feet within our projects. And on this one, from the center line, and with this one, we were out to almost 300 feet in Becker's Borough, we called it. It was near the bridge, so... With that, it just missed that wedge of earthwork that we performed out there. And in the future, we will be aware that it only goes out that far when it calculates the earthwork. So this is work that was done and needed to be done, because this is a significant snow trap area, historically, for our maintenance crews. And it's a long ways from our shop where we keep our snowblowers and things.

And we did talk previously that we'll be stockpiling some of that material on site so that we can utilize it for the 25 bridge and other projects in some of the remnant right-of-way parcels until we can burn through it. So we're saving some money theoretically on those projects where we won't have to acquire or borrow. And then additionally, from a funding standpoint, we are confident we can cover this with our county state highway. And our local option sales tax has also been outperforming our budgeted estimates, too.

So we're comfortable with where we're at in our program. So where in the process did we figure this out? Was it, did the contractor look at it and look at the plans and say this isn't right?

Our staff in the field actually kind of figured it out. That's where they figured it out? Yeah.

You got out there and you start moving dirt. So Mike Trush.

Okay, so he, there was a second borrow site that the contractor also had to open up and when the bridge got taken out, that kind of forced their hand to start pulling out of their secondary borrow site, so then we came into this one and realized, well, we're still way heavy, what's going on? And that's what kind of brought us to this conclusion.

This was on the opposite side of the bridge of most of the work.

Sure. So the dirt had to come across the bridge. So when they took the bridge out, they started pulling out of the other borrow site thinking they, from a quantity standpoint, compared to what was in the plan, that they'd be in good shape.

So you ended up, just so I understand this correctly, you ended up with too much material and had to haul it out of there because you weren't able to use it all? Correct, yes.

Okay. And we're going to use it for future.

Yeah, so Ryan was just referring to by stockpiling it. But was it the whole... No. 200. You ended up using some of that.

We used the same amount. We just stockpiled, I'd say roughly 10,000 yards of the 50.

Okay. Well, now you know.

Correct. So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

Okay, discussion item, frustrated that this came up a second time and it wasn't all brought to the board the first time, but the day after I got back and we talked about the last railroad crossing replacement and improvement, he emailed me a second one. So the railroad is also interested in replacing The UP Railroad crossing on our county road 118, which is north of Minnesota Highway 60, right on the west county line. Estimated county cost of $64,000 is about a third of the total crossing replacement, which is a total estimated cost of $196,629. We'd be responsible for that third of the cost and the traffic control and bituminous pavement patching. It's, again, not a budgeted item within our five-year TIP. However, we do include construction contingencies and other items to cover this project cost. If the board is comfortable with that, request permission to move forward with that crossing repair. Do you need a motion? I think just general consensus. We certainly could take a motion. I should have probably had it as an action item, but it was a discussion item last time when we talked about it. because it was an unbudgeted item.

This will be appreciated and needed in that area. I agree. Every once in a while.

So we were going to, with the overlay on that road, we were going to repave that this year, but now knowing this is coming next year, I'm probably going to pull that back and might make them suffer through one more year just to not spend that money on it this year.

Right. I'm okay with it, but I certainly would make a motion. Let's do it.

I'll second it. Okay, a motion and a second. Any more discussion?

You said a third of the cost will be ours? Correct. And how much was that?

64. 64.

64 plus the materials and labor.

It makes a crossing safer. It can save a life. It's well worth it.

Okay, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

All right, thank you. Informational items. Project updates to South 5 from Riverfront Drive to Sullivan Avenue is proceeding well. Crews are finishing up city utilities up to Pine Street. Road crews are continuing work behind them with the sub base and then paving from Riverfront Drive is scheduled to begin next week. So they'll start paving from Riverfront, pulling to the north and kind of catching up as the curb and gutter and base goes in. Railroad crossing surface improvements are completed. The Centerpoint crews are working south. Holtmeyer has proposed an option to shore their line to be able to install a box cover. I mean, we know that Centerpoint is behind schedule significantly, and so they want to get that box covered in this year so they can continue with their operations. They're actually proposing a plan to shore it and leave it exposed. and so that's under review with Centerpoint right now, but they actually had an engineered solution provided. Centerpoint is not scheduled to jack and auger under the railroad tracks for three weeks, and their work isn't scheduled to be completed until early November, so frustrating, but unfortunately this is what we deal with regularly. There's a lot going on in these corridors. They're not just carrying cars and trucks, they're carrying fiber optics and gas and water and sewer and storm water and you name it. County Road, County State Highway 69 reconstruction. Lawrence has moved on to phase three, which is the work at the intersection near the gas station off of 169. That's expected to take approximately three weeks. The west mill and overlay section is milled with paving to begin this week. They did reconstruct, if you remember correctly, farther to the west. to the far west CHS access to provide a wider, stronger road, so that work is nearly done. And we're anticipating that the project should be wrapped up by the end of the month. 15 and 28 in St. Clair, city utility work is nearly complete. Road construction crew is falling closely behind the utility crew. They've got about two blocks left to put back together. Same thing, hoping to have that wrapped up by the end of the month. That's about a month behind, but All in all, I think the people of St. Clair will be really happy that the project's done, and they'll be really happy to have a nice new road and good sidewalks and safer system. They'll do an overlay next year? The final wear course will go on next year, yes. Then our bituminous overlays, Ulands are scheduled to return to pave the final wear course on 10, and the overlays on 11, and the railroad crossings on 20, 114, and we're going to take 118 off later this month. Again, they should be out ahead of harvest. And if not, it won't be a weight restriction issue. We really run into that in the spring. Red Jacket Trail Repairs. Our staff met with the adjacent landowners and received strong verbal support for the project to reopen the trail. So we're working with them to finalize the acquisitions necessary. But we're going to be advertising hopefully this week and bringing it to the board for consideration during the second board meeting. I hope we're bringing bids forward. Maintenance crews are busy fog sealing this week. The seal coat portions are done. They've got a little bit of chip sealing left to do for some City of Mankato roads, so we do a little bit of a trade-off. City provides a couple of rollers and operators, and then we do a few of their roads for them as trade-off. We'll finish gravel hauling to our roads this week as well. And mowing out the middle third of the county, guardrail repairs, driveway installations, blading gravel roads, bituminous patching and dura patching. Fall, spring, we'll start later this month and we'll talk about that more next week. And then removing the bituminous flumes on Cassaw 16 and 35 and replacing them with riprap in advance of next year's full depth reclamation pavement rehabilitation projects. The last item I have on my agenda then is the Rapidan Dam. and County Road Nine Bridge Update Memorandum. The bridge, I think we could probably go through that pretty quick. Getting shorter. Yeah. I'm hoping someday I can stop giving reports on all this stuff. It would be great. But just we did get the core permit, and state aid gave us approval also to seek requests for qualifications for construction materials testing. So that's out in the ether, and we'll be bringing bids for that forward. Depending on the cost, it may fall under our procurement policy where I can sign off on it. But we're getting after that. Everything's been advertised and is up and out there, and now we're open bids, and we've got good bids. On the dam on July 10th, we met with the FERC regarding license surrender. Won't go into detail because a lot of that got revisited later. On the 10th of August, the FERC issued its Notice of Availability of Environmental Assessment. The EA contains the FERC staff analysis of the potential environmental effects of the proposed surrender and proposed action and concludes that the proposed surrender with appropriate environmental protective measures proposed by the exemptee, that's us, would not constitute a major federal action that would significantly affect the quality of the human environment. It goes on to conclude that with a staff recommendation that the county's proposed action as the preferred alternative, which with best management practices, would minimize effects to environmental resources and that overall the removal would have long-term environmental benefits. Well, that sounds good. It was good. Absolutely. We went with Barr on August 13th. Following the August 25th county board meeting, I notified FEMA and Barr that the county formally decided to proceed with alternative number two. On the 27th of August, we had a follow-up meeting with Barr, discussed our plans to move forward with alternative two, ceasing work on alternative number four on the 25th. Public outreach efforts will remain on hold for the county park portion of the dam. And FEMA anticipates publishing the environmental review by mid-September. That's one of the next critical steps. The hydraulic analysis indicates that there will be very high velocities initially at the throat where the dam will be removed because of the slope and because of the constriction that happens there. That section in the drop section of the river, they're calling that, will dissipate because they anticipate that that river bottom will cut back relatively quickly. So we're gonna see some movement of the river. the profile of the river, they think, pretty quickly due to the loss during flood events. 28th Bar, I met with the Blue Earth County PER and their consultant to review the EAW comments. On 28th, we provided the 60% plan comments to Barr. I just got the revised 60% plans back late in the day on Friday. And on the 31st of August, PER issued an acknowledgement of receipt of the draft EAW. And I think they and Barr are working with the intent that those revisions can be made and posted on the EQB monitor bond September 15th is the objective to get that public comment period started. On August 31st, we met with FEMA, discussed our county decision to proceed with Alternative 2, discussed the fact that BAR is going to be meeting with the Corps on September 2nd to discuss project plans and permit considerations. And once FEMA gets the 60% plans, our staff engineer will update the project scope of work. That will be prioritized with about a one-week turnaround. I'm intending to send it to them today. I wanted to just have a chance to review those quick. And then following that scope of work update, they'll start their environmental review process. We'll provide any other documents, including the draft EAW, to them. They do have the latitude to progress the project, even if the permits may not all be in hand. And we'll continue to provide that information as it becomes available to us. And then I think the last one to point out in there is once the project is routed through HSEM, so it goes from FEMA to HSEM after these approval processes, we can sign the funding agreement for federal funding authorization. So that's what we're trying to track towards. That concludes my report. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

I have just two. Only two? Just two. Bridge and Dan. Yes. With accepting the bid today, what do we see as a estimated or projected timeline on the bridge? What happens in what order, I guess, is what I'm asking.

Sure. We anticipate we've been, I think, pretty straightforward. This will be a two-year project on the bridge. So our objective would be to get the bridge reopened by late fall or winter of 2028 is the objective that things go according to.

I guess I'm more interested in the early stuff now. Do we meet with the contractor? Is there a schedule that's set up?

Yeah, so once the contracts are approved, so that will be routed today through Adobe Sign. Once that's approved, we'll get a pre-construction meeting set up with the contractor. Once the contracts are in, they'll start ordering. We're doing shop drawings for the deep-drilled shaft foundations for the steel, because we know there's a year of lead time on the steel girders. They'll be getting those approved and ordered, and then getting also, again, the materials from those deep-drilled shaft foundations, and then starting to talk about a schedule. We'll have a pre-construction meeting within the coming weeks, and then we'll have a better idea. They're required to provide a schedule at that point to us.

So we can get the... the longest taking process. Fuel tanks, we've had a little experience with that in the past where we don't have to wait for things. So we can get that done fairly early in the process. We don't have to.

You have to get the materials ordered that have a long lead time so that by the time they fall into being ready to be placed into service, we might have that infrastructure in use.

And without that information, the second one's maybe a little harder to answer on the dam is at what point do we project with the bridge schedule how will that kind of stay with the dam at what point will we be when we need to do the next steps on the dam whether it be yeah the access or whatever um well and i think the dam you know the contracts are independent of each other so you can keep everything moving forward

On the dam removal project, where we're gonna run into turbulence is gonna be depending where the bridge contractor is in space when the dam contractor wants to start. It's hard to have two projects of that magnitude in the same sandbox. And that's why we have an alternative access that's proposed to go through the Paradise Valley Trust property. come down and cut to secondary access points. So we like to keep them away. The east side may be a little bit more challenging. They may both have to work out the same access. There may also be some deficiencies if we had because they're sharing accesses that have already been excavated out and constructed and stabilized. So there might be some costs that could be saved there. It's to a degree, when we get through writing the special provisions, when we're ready to bid the dam, we're going to have to write into the, here's where the bridge contractor is. You're going to have to work with them. And we tried to put some language in the bridge contract, too, that gave them some advance warning that the dam removal project was coming and that they're going to have to also coordinate with that contractor. But unfortunately, without any specifics, it gets to be very challenging to be more prescriptive.

Thank you.

Yes.

Any other questions?

No. All right. Quite the report. Thank you. Thanks, you guys. Good seeing you, Nick. Thank you.

County Attorney Pat.

Good morning, Madam Chair. and the report speaks for itself. I just want to point out that the last couple years we've had some spikes in the tax court area, but we haven't this year. We only had 16 filings, and we continue to work with Michael and his folks, and I believe that there's two files that we were able to resolve just last week. So it's always a good result to keep the money coming in to you.

Much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Josh. Administration.

All right. First, we have the minutes for the last meeting.

Move to approve. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

And then we have the bills. I'll move the bills.

I have a motion. Second. And a second. Any discussion on the bills? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

All right, next we have the human resources agenda. We do today have an action item, and the action item is to approve position grade adjustments as part of our job description classification maintenance review process. This is four years ago. We did a classification study here in Blue Earth County for all of our positions. Since that time, we've been with what's called a maintenance agreement with DDA, David Drone and Associates, that each Each year, we review a third of the positions of all of Blue Earth County. And this year, there is a memo attached from Laura Ebelbach, HR Director, and through this process, there are three positions that we are looking at approval for to change from their current grade to the recommended grade. One is the Assistant Facilities Management Director, one a Family Support Worker in Human Services, and a Human Resources Coordinator from Payroll and Benefits.

Do I have a motion to approve?

So moved. Second.

And a second. Any discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries.

All right. And for informational one, we do have employment of a new human services director beginning October 5th, 2026. And also we have separation of Brandon Winters, 911 telecommunicator. Just want to share, Brandon Winters was a 13 year employee here of Blue Earth County in our dispatch. who passed away in the last week. So just from all of Blue Earth County, we want to share our condolences to the family of this loss of somebody that spent a great career with us, giving that support to all of our citizens in the Sheriff's Office.

Absolutely.

Thank you. With that recruitment initiated for a 911 telecommunicator. And that is all for the HR agenda.

All right.

Next we have the financial status report as of August 31st of 2026. Again, once again this month things are going as planned with where we're at. A little bit below on state and federal revenue, but a lot of that has to do with timing of road construction projects for each year. We are a little above where we're at transportation sales tax, which is definitely a good thing that we're continuing to monitor. On expenditures, definitely significantly down at this point from last year. And the main item with that change is really with the Public Works building that we were having a lot of bills going out about this time last year and through 2025. Enterprise fund, a little bit you're seeing this year more expenses as we did some significant expenses for machinery and equipment back a few months ago. I'm still down a little bit on our revenue, which was to be expected with some changes of one of the haulers coming into the Ponderosa. Then looking at county cash investment balances. Currently it's a total available funds, a little over 86 million. Very close to where we were last year at this time. A little bit above that. One thing we do know is we're looking at needing, over the next two years, a significant cash on hand as we start the county nine bridge project, as we then look to next year starting the dam removal and restoration project. although those were looking at this point in time that we should be getting reimbursed at the beginning we're looking at needing to front some of those before some of that reimbursement occurs and then at this time looking at total county funds sitting at um 144 million 834 000. any questions regarding any of that report All right, nothing further from the administration report.

Thank you. Alrighty, we'll start with commissioner reports, Kevin.

Since our August 25th board meeting, I participated in the PACE committee on August 28th. August 31st, there was a NACO ag policy meeting, and on September 2nd, department heads. That concludes my report. Thank you.

Madam Chair, my report is relatively short also. After our last meeting, I had our planning and zoning meeting. We had a gravel pit that was there for some reconsideration, but they tabled it until next month, so we'll probably see that at the end of October on our end. And then I had my legislative meeting with the SECB. Nothing new to report there. They're getting things ready for the next session and organizing some more things and then several ditch calls and some gravel road issues to take care of last week. Other than that, that's my report.

Vance.

All right, on the 26th, Chair O'Connor and myself, when I went to Rochester, we met with some leaders in the industry when we first started. group called When America Leads and Minnesota Wins. And after that, we attended the Transportation Alliance Regional Meeting at the Rochester International Airport. On the 27th, I had a detox meeting with a group that rents from detox in their building. It was called the Enterprise Group. and discussing the rent issues at that time. On the 1st of September, I had a NACO membership standing meeting. On the 2nd, we had a department head meeting, and that evening there was a MnDOT open house for the Highway 169 project. And on the 3rd, I had a, a NACO transportation policy meeting on Zoom. I had a TZD, South Central Steering Committee meeting, and I attended the Maypole meeting that evening with Mark. And that is the end of my report. Thank you.

On August 27th, we had the Partners for Affordable Housing meeting. And then on September 2nd was our Department Heads meeting. And yes, we saw Vance there at our September 3rd Maple Policy Board meeting.

Thank you. On August 25th, I had a Region 9 meeting. And on 26th, the meeting with When America Leads with Congressman Finstead was there also. And then the afternoon was the Transportation Alliance meeting. On the 28th, I did sit in on the webinar with NACO on data centers. On the 1st, I had another Region 9 meeting with their labor attorney. And on the 2nd, department heads. And that is the end of my report. So I need a motion. I'll move to recess. I have a motion to recess. And a second. Any discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? We are in recess. Thank you.