Board of Supervisor - Regular Meeting

I want to wish all of you a good morning and welcome to our short meeting. Don't blink or you might miss it.

We'll start out today with discussion and action on election equipment. Jordan?

Did you guys have a chance to look at the quote I sent you?

Yes.

Did anybody have any questions on that?

is what it is.

Yeah, like one of the biggest things is updating the ADA. So instead of having this little handheld deal that we normally use, it's a touchscreen. So it also helps with people that have shaky hands. You know, there's a lot of elderly people. So that'll be a nice upgrade. And it'll also be a faster system to accept our ballots. And one of the things right now, you know, we've kind of talked, is it a, you know, should we do that now? But with our current equipment, they are giving us a $17,000 buyback on our current equipment. And we fear that if we don't do it sooner rather than later, that that won't be an option anymore because our equipment's going to be too old for them to want to take anything from it. And there were two quotes that, we are going with the cheaper one, which was a total of 92,761. And there was one that I believe was 106,000, but because our boxes are still in good shape, they're able to retrofit the new tabulator portion on top with our current boxes instead of getting all new boxes. And they're also working with us for a three-year zero interest financing.

Is this in your budget?

Yes. Yep. So because we, Lori had it in her budget to hire a new employee, but because we are not doing that until after the first of the year, we have that amount for this first part too. And one of the biggest things too, is that when our previous real estate deputy had retired in July of 24, we chose not to hire for that position. So we only have three people in the office.

These are just tabulators.

Yep. Yep, because we already upgraded our scanner the last time.

Who controls all the data that comes off of those tabulators?

Our vendor.

Vendor.

Yep, our vendor, our election source. So they're the ones that get the testing from the Secretary of State's office with our memory cards. And then those memory cards are mailed to us where I input the memory card into the machines. And that's when we do our test decks with our ballots. So we already have our ballots approved. They're going to be shipped today. And then once we get our memory cards, which are just to us, then we will upload those into our machines when we do our public test.

So how long do you store the hand ballots?

22 months. 22 months.

That's right.

Yep. And we have lots of verification on everything. I mean, we double, triple, quadruple check at the end of the night. What is going to be really nice is faster tapes at the end of the night so we're able to get faster results.

Just want to make sure with all the questions that have been on the elections in the last five years, want to make sure that these things are capable of changing anything we have.

Honestly, in Iowa, I have full confidence in our voting systems. You know, there's different systems that other counties have. It's not a set system. So with having 99 counties, you're able to, you know, it's not 99 counties having the same system. It's 99 counties having different ones. Like, yes, there might be a bulk of them that have the same one, but we have a different one so that we're able, you know, there's still the ability to know that the system works. You know, and even what at election night or after the election, after the canvas, the results that are sent to the secretary of state's office, it's all paper. We have to keep our memory cards clear and we also download a backup. So that way there's no way for anything. Like if there were something to go awry, we would able to be able to take that backup. So those memory cards stay in our hands for 22 months and they don't, I mean, they're never in anybody else's. I have full competence. I mean, I've been here for almost nine years. I've done almost 30 elections. We've got a really good group that we've got on election day, our absentee board, our nursing home board, asking questions. I mean, you know, they're one of the greatest people we could have. We've got a really, really good team. And then starting October 14th, we'll have the absentee voting in here where we'll have our gals voting Our voters. We've already got over 100 requests. So.

Still sort of on the subject. Are we going to need to move out of here during the absentee voting?

Yep. We have the Mazer Monarch Lodge booked for that. So that'll start. So your last meeting here will be October 13th. So the 14th, the... 21st, 22nd, whatever that is. And then I'm hoping if you guys are okay with it, we'll approve it later, but to not have a meeting on November 3rd.

Any further questions for Jordan? I have one.

I'm good.

Yeah, go.

Oh, yes. You want to go to the mic? Oh, sure, yeah. Morning, everyone. It's been a while since I've been up here speaking. I have a question, Jordan. So you say it's, you said it was the tabulators that you're replacing all of them or just some of them?

All of them.

All of them. And the tabulators, that's the part on the top of the box that you slide your ballot through. So are those still Dominion tabulators? Liberty Vote. Liberty Vote, which is... So, an Indian. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Yep.

I'll make a motion to approve the election equipment upgrade. Okay. Kim, let's move.

I'll second. Levi, a second. Further discussion? Very none. Kim? Aye. Levi? Aye. Mr. Clark? Aye. Mr. Dullard? Aye. And Bill? Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you for your work, Jordan. I used to think those were expensive shredders on my phone. Okay, item number three is the approval for the September 8th board meeting minutes. Did anyone see anything amiss? Motion to approve. I'll second. Mr. Clark moves. Mr. Dullard seconds. Further discussion? As there is none, Mr. Clark? Aye. Mr. Dullard. Aye. Levi. Aye. Kim. Aye. And Bill. Aye.

Number four, General Discussion Board and Committee Reports. Kim. I was unable to attend the Hunger Coalition meeting, but I knew Mr. Dullard would be there and be able to report for us. So thank you for that, Steve. I did attend the quarterly SHIELD, which is Safety, Health Issues, Employment Leadership Decisions meeting down in Spencer. Trainings are going very well. We have a new director who's been here about a year now, Lindsay Kroc. She's been here actually for some of our safety meetings that we have here. The safety policies are still being updated in all of the different counties within our region. There's still concern about outside contractors complying with OSHA standards. We, of course, make everybody, we have things in our safety manual that you have to. But some of these outside contractors come in and do their own thing. Well, we're still liable for that. So we want to make sure that those contractors comply with what we have going on. Things are going well. Trainings are going well. And Dickinson County is doing particularly well. Beth does a great job as our safety director here with our team. And Mike does a great job as our emergency director. The last thing I have, wellness goals. We have only six weeks left to reach our goals of saving the county 5% on our health insurance premiums. Please complete your online assessments and please schedule your position physical. Let's make it eight years in a row that we save a considerable amount of money for the county. That's all I have. There it goes, Mr. Dillard.

Well, I'm going to earn your own dollars. For sure. Okay, after our meeting on the 8th in the afternoon, I attended the Hunger Coalition meeting. This month, the coalition was distributing paper towels and toilet paper to different pantries. They would pick them up, and then they distributed them. And those programs, like last month, they did dish soap and laundry detergent. And all of these handouts seem to go very well. These were all things last year when we did a survey of all the pantries. This was one of the things that people mentioned that they were in need of and requested. Our numbers for the last month was Lake Park was 44 households and 118 people. And Goldford Pantry served 114 households and 289 people. Upper Des Moines averaged 96 families. Good News averaged 85 families. And Spirit Life had 40 households and 72 people. First Lutheran is changing its operation. They were open like four days a week from 830, and it was just a walk-in pantry. Walk in, help yourself, but they're changing that all back down. They're trying to pin down which day they can get their volunteers on, but they're going to have a one-day man for maybe a couple of hours. It's a minimum of two hours you have to be open. So I'm informed of that, I'm sure. The backpack program had served 57 students with half being elementary and half being middle school. On the 9th, I had a brief meeting with Beth Will upstairs from county services to do a follow-up on services from UTMO and housing assistance, which I'm going to continue to follow and dig into more. They're pleased with the local UTMO office as far as the help that they get out of them for that, but so far... aid with the homeless and get something taken care of with the homeless is not going all that well. And I need to, I'll be calling the upper Des Moines director this month and finding her this week and finding out what, if they're up to snuff. They said they had three new people on the job and yet we haven't moved hardly anybody off of our list. My next meeting was with the vet board, and we had discussions with cost sharing and the finance of the plaza, and that's going to be redrafted based on some of the discussion we had there. But that is a representation for your records. It's going to be presented. They're going to put this thing all together before they present it, and they'll present it to the full board. and see what the board comes up with. After that, I sat in on a NACO webinar on utility taxes, and it was initially very interesting. Then I got into a whole bunch of technical stuff, and it ended up being mainly stuff that the auditors and treasurers are involved in. So, I mean, it's going to come to us one way or another, but It was more addressed to auditors and the treasurers. In the evening, I attended the VFW meeting. They had a joint meeting with their women's auxiliary discussing renovations to their building, coordinating with Spirit Lake on, you know, for some of the funding that to do, to do it. And, uh, and they also discuss participation in community events and, uh, scholarships. And they're also concerned that when they go to the schools and stuff, a lot of kids, a lot of the youth don't understand what the letters V F W even me. So there they are concerned about that. And, uh, That evening, Mr. Clark and I attended the Conservation Commission. I attended as a guest so that I can get acquainted with, start getting fed in on stuff with that. So the eventual act, I could be an informed alternate if whoever signed that is unable to attend on the 10th. Mr. Clark, Mr. Mark Clark, and I all attended the Dickinson County taxpayers' lunch and learn session. And I'll just make this clear. I didn't know. I only knew Levi was coming. I didn't know Mr. Clark was coming. And we didn't sit together. We didn't talk to each other. I mean, that's how it went. So we were all three there, but it was a good session. After that session, I had a meeting with Atlas director about local services, continuing to follow up with the coordination that they do, especially with upper Des Moines. And I wanted to get a feel for what they've accomplished in the last year. We didn't give them very much seed money, but we did give them some and what they were able to accomplish there. And it comes down to, again, difficulty with homelessness. I mean, if you have somebody walks in the office, they're homeless at that point. Well, yeah, they can help them find some place. They can couch serve. They can move in with grandma. That doesn't solve their homelessness problem. But what that does is when it comes to Upper Des Moines is it puts them to the bottom of the list or off of the list because, well, they're not homelessness. they're living somewhere. So it comes down to a point of either you're lying to them or you just, you don't provide any help or you help them here at a better cost to their resources. All right. It's, it's all comes down to federal and, and, uh, state constraints on housing policies that it's, that it's put on the upper to more for that. Uh, On the 12th, I assisted with our church and food pantry, and our numbers ticked up a little bit more. And finally, that is all I have.

What did you do with all your spare time?

I actually had a tiny bit Friday.

Steve, or Mr. Clark, I should say.

On September 9th, I went to the Dickinson County Conservation Board meeting. They reviewed and approved the bench donation and plaque regulations for any benches that are to be donated to sit on any conservation areas. They discussed and approved the easement report on the narrow preserve. that the Dickinson County Conservation is going to manage when the Natural Heritage Foundation completely turns it over to them. It's an easement they have to have just so that they don't get into trouble for going out onto somebody else's property. They discuss the specifications and the bids for installing a new huff-cut bathroom to be installed in the park by the one-room schoolhouse up there. And if you don't know what a huff-cut bathroom is, it's an all-self-contained unit that they bring in on the truck and use a crane to lift it off and set it in place, but the bids they ground preparation and concrete and have the plumbing all exact so that they can put it in there. That'll be coming before things open up I think next summer, next spring. They approved the IFIRE Memorandum of Understanding for District 3 Burn Management. So that means if you see any of the conservation burning on any of their property that they own, they've complied with the District 3 conservation area burn regulations and attended the class. Whether you like it or not, that's what they have to do. Announced that the Judd Oxbow Restoration Project has been completed. The groundwork has been completed, but they haven't seeded it yet. They're hoping to get that done. Well, they were hoping this week, but I don't think it's going to happen with as wet as it's going to be. Because they seed it for some prairie grasses and stuff to go up around the edges. And then they hope that down in the bottom of this oxbow, of course, they want water plants to come back to help filter the water out. There was a discussion on the three-dimensional archery area, and I didn't know there was a three-dimensional archery area. I didn't even know what it was, but there is evidently one in the county that is used by both Clay and Dickinson County for archers that are getting ready for fall bow and arrow season on turkeys and deer. So there was a discussion on the drainage out of the Sherwood Forest Park area. And it was a little different discussion than they normally have. Evidently, this couple bought this property. And when they bought it, it's an empty property. They bought it, and there was the wet year of 24, and there was a little stream that trickled across the back end of their property. Well, in a dry year, you know, that's not going to happen, but they kind of blame that on all the drainage that's been done around Sherwood Park. So they want their stream back. And I don't think there's, you know, we can't guarantee them a babbling brook across the back of their property. that concern. On the 14th, I went to the Conservation Foundation. They had these Bee and Butterfly Festival on September 12th. Their attendance was up from 400 last year to 945 people. A lot better weather this year and no track meets and stuff like that going on like there had been last year right around Labor Day. The Judd Wildlife Oxbow had been completed, like I said before. Then the next subject forum was the osprey nesting areas. They have one that has been installed in some bad soil, evidently, or not installed correctly. It's tipping. And they want to put another one up on the reeds run area up on Big Spirit. The biggest holdup they have on those is getting someone to go out into those areas where they want to put this and dig a hole and then, you know, put the pole in the hole. the conservation board is going to donate a pole to the foundation, you know, um, I don't know where they get 40 foot or 50 foot poles or whatever, but they don't want to get at one of those big crane trucks out there and get it stuck. So they're trying to find somebody that can, because they construct the platform and everything on the pole before they set it in place. So that's a project they're working on. Um, and they updated their bylaws at the foundation. This week, the 15th through the 17th Iowa Water Conference is to be held in the Iowa Great Lakes. It's the first time since its inception 19 years ago that it will be held in Northwest Iowa, which is probably a good thing for this area. A lot of people come into that, as I understand. It starts tonight with a kind of a reception, and then there's tours and speakers and meetings all day Wednesday and Thursday. Some of the local people that will be speakers, David Thorson, Barb Mendenhall, Stephanie Appel, Kurt Strauss, Mary Skopak, Mike Hawkins, John Wills, Dale Gentry, and a whole list of other people speakers from out of the area. This afternoon, I'm going to meet with, it is this afternoon, I'm going to meet with John and Melanie Baller, the attorney from Emma County, Jeff Plostead from Emma County, and Bob Goodwin on the DD3 drainage district. DNR wants to drain down 12 Mile Lake and Emma County is I think they want to annex the whole lake into the drainage district and we have to talk to Bob about whether that's a good idea or not. After that, I'm free.

Have a good week. Thank you.

Last, let me get my notes here. Last Wednesday, I had my Board of Health meeting. I met with Brandy Larson of Public Health and Nate McCormick beforehand to discuss some of the issues with the Better Care for Better Babies programming that Public Health provides here for Dixon County residents. They are currently funded through January of 27, but serving funded to serve 19 families, but we currently have 23 families they're addressing. And so there is gonna be a shortfall after January, And then she has been in contact, Brandy has been in contact with our current NECA director, which is formerly ECI, and talking about that, what that's going to look like. But we should also expect a visit from public health just to come and talk about their programs here in the next couple of months. I did encourage them that that would be a wise thing to do to come to the board um the uh better care for better babies program is something that um you know we need to stay on top of and and continue to offer those services to local residents in my opinion and so um we need to they'll do a much better job explaining you know not only the services they offer but but where they're coming up short and why they're coming up short so um But that was Board of Health. And then, let's see, on Thursday, I did, as Mr. Dollard had mentioned, attend the Iowa for Tax Relief Luncheon. That was a presentation about Amendment 1 and the income tax moving on the November ballot. On Friday, I had a CRAILS meeting. And Erin gave us some updates. We're approaching 82,000 visitors on our trails through August and almost up to 380,000 over the course of the year. And that is up 15,000 from this time last year. So trails are rocking and rolling. We did, there's some... development updates and maintenance updates that she continues to provide us. But she has a great job. And let's see. Yesterday was our kickoff meeting for the comprehensive land use plan with Rdg. It was a Zoom meeting. I see the committee off the top of my head. Myself, of course. And then Aaron with Trails, Megan Planning and Zoning, Jeff Engineering. There are two Planning and Zoning board members, Carol and Erica. And then the team with RDG. And we went through... The process over what the next 12, 18 months is going to look like, timelines, benchmarks we're going to hit, keeping the community involved, different dates. We talked about dates that would be workable for them being here doing surveys, what they call listening sessions or group sessions with the community. We talked a little bit about marketing for social media, logos, slogans, things like that. But I thought that maybe the big thing was Charlie had asked us as a committee what a successful plan would And so each each committee member kind of gave their opinion on what they wanted to get out of it and what they thought. And so I just kind of shared that. as there's so many different people involved, different departments involved, organizations, even like Iowa, Great Lakes Sanitation, as a part of that original group, I just think we all need to have some sort of foundational, let's get on the same page and not have, let's just have a document that we can just turn to and focus on. And with a new board coming in in January, there's going to be so many moving parts that something just to, is why we're doing it. And so that was kind of what my goal was in that. Some of the other things, talking about development from an industrial standpoint versus housing development versus tourism, just planning and zoning in general. getting all the municipalities, you know, on the same page as well, just having a balanced approach. And so that was kind of what we talked about. And then obviously as our meetings continue to update as necessary. I do have a meeting today with the NECA. And again, that was the formerly the early childhood Iowa. And then Thursday this week, I will be in Spencer for the Northwest Iowa Planning and Development, our annual meeting. Generally, that's online, but once a year, we meet in person, and that's Thursday. That's what I got.

Very good. I had no official county meeting this week. I do have Northwest Iowa Planning and Development on Thursday. Wednesday, I did go to the Spirit Lab. Also, two of our members went to Minneapolis to speak about the grant they're seeking from Minnesota to purchase 160 acres of marginal farmland. It sounds like they did a good job and that it might come through, but we won't know until the end of November. But I'm feeling proud of that. I was the one that brought up we have to march north before we march south. Absolutely true. You know, to take care of the water in our watershed. Another thing they brought up, which I told them I didn't think was a good idea, they want to apply for a grant from the Water Quality Commission. to just have a pot of money to take care of different things. I said, well, I don't think that'll apply, thinking of course what Carlton Mitchell would think of that. But I didn't dissuade them. I said, okay, fine, try it. So anyway, that was my week. Anything from our vast crowd today?

Bill, I forgot Lee is on the committee as well. Oh, okay. Just in case Lee's listening.

Yeah. Not that Lee.

So if there is nothing else, I take a motion to adjourn. I'll make that motion. Mr. Dullard. Second. Mr. Clark seconds. Further discussion.