Board Meeting Information & Materials - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Welcome to the Board of Commissioners meeting of September 15, 2026. Those who can stand, please join us in the pledge. Thank you. Josh, agenda review.

Madam Chair, there are no changes for the agenda.

Move the agenda.

Second.

Motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. And then we will move on to Judicial Ditch 23, public hearing, repair hearing. Welcome to the Judicial Dish 23 repair hearing. Are there any changes to this agenda?

Madam Chair, there are no changes to this agenda.

Thank you.

Move the agenda.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? So the purpose of today's hearing is to present the engineer's report and to receive comments from all parties interested in the judicial ditch 23 proposed repairs. The order of business for this hearing is as follows. Staff will review the jurisdictional documents. We will hear from the appointed engineer and then we will open the hearing for public comments. So we'll have Jordan, Blue Ridge County Drainage staff to review the jurisdictional documents.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Jurisdictional documents and notices. Landowner informational meeting held on June 11, 2026. Hearing notices were mailed September 1, 2026. Notice was posted for this hearing outside the Blue Ridge County Historic Courthouse located at 204 South 5th Street, Mankato, Minnesota. Notice a public hearing was also published in the Mankato Free Press on September 1st, 2026. I have a memo to read here. Some background, the Blue Earth County Judicial Ditch 23 watershed is approximately 1,200 acres in size and located in Sterling and Shelby townships. Based on inspections of Judicial Ditch 23 subsurface tile, a repair report was developed. Blue Earth County drainage staff consulted with ISG engineers to develop a repair report. The repair report was developed using drainage staff input as well as engineering survey recommendations. A copy of the draft engineer's report was submitted to Blue Earth County Drainage Management staff on June 11, 2026. Informational landowner meetings were held on December 17, 2025 and June 11, 2026 to discuss the proposed repair report, including costs and plans. On August 25th, 2026, by signed findings and order, the drainage authority set a repair hearing for Judicial Ditch 23 for today. At today's meeting, we are seeking the approval of the drainage authority for the draft repair report for the Judicial Ditch 23 proposed repairs and the resolution to finance. That's all I have, Madam Chair.

Thank you. So I need a motion to accept the affidavits into the legal record.

So moved. Second. A motion and a second. Any discussion?

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. All right. Move on to the engineer's report. Good morning.

Good morning. Like Jordan said, we're here today to discuss the repair report for Blue Earth County Judicial Diction Number 23. Could you state your name? Yes, absolutely. My name is Jacob Mueller. I'm an engineer with ISG.

My name is Adam Stenzel. I'm a graduate engineer with ISG.

We were predominantly the ones working on this, working with Chuck Brandl, the appointed engineer for the project. So this is a repair proceedings. With that, we're looking at the repair report has been completed and submitted. If approved today, we would move on to the formation of construction documents, move to bidding, and eventually construction, potentially at this year or early next. A bit on the background, some of the coordination with landowners and drainage staff. Work on this system essentially began back in May of 2024 following some regular inspection through televising the county was performing. At that time, the redetermination of benefits was being performed as well. There was a meeting to go over those redetermination of benefits as well as examine some feasible options for repair or improvement to the system as well as field any landowner input if there's any concerns about the drainage characteristics within their lands in the system or anything of that nature. After there was no desire to pursue any improvement, there were some issues that were noted through that televising, so there was another landowner meeting to go over repair options in December of 2025. There was no input from landowners at that meeting, and then another meeting was held in June of 2026, just a... a few months ago to go over a few repair options that had been developed, kind of a range between repairing the majority of the system, some of the more critical areas, and then only spot repairing the absolute most critical areas. Resulting from all those meetings, there wasn't much input at the two repair meetings to kind of go over that. We did generate three options for that meeting in June of 2026. At that meeting we discussed with drainage staff as well as other members of the drainage authority to see what would be a benefit to the system, what's kind of the minimum scope needed to repair the issues of the system in an economical way. With that, I'm gonna let Adam kind of take it over for some of the characteristics of the system.

Yeah, so the JD23 watershed characteristics. It resides within Sterling and Shelby townships in Blue Earth County. The system provides drainage to about 931 total acres. There's an elevation difference of 87 feet across the watershed. The hydrologic soil classification is predominantly seedy, meaning agricultural drainage is necessary to drain those lands to make it farmable. And land use is predominantly agricultural row crops. Here is a map of the existing watershed. It's the first map in the handout. The red boundary you see is the JD23 watershed boundary. The system is all public tile, which is denoted with the black dashed lines there. There's an orange dashed line. That illustrates an abandoned tile. At one point in time, that branch was abandoned. That runs off to the north. The main line outlets into Judicial Ditch 49, otherwise known as Providence Creek, generally runs north as a 26 inch, 22 inch, and an 18 inch to where it comes to its junction with Branch 2, which runs off across County Road 150. to the northeast, off to the northwest, branch one, lateral A, sub-lateral A, and sub-lateral B all kind of branch off and cover kind of the west half of that watershed. The majority of the tile here outside of the main line ranges from 14 inch, 12 inch, 10 inch, 8 inch, so a lot of small tile with this system. Here's an existing elevation map. This just denotes elevation with the highest elevations being the red and white, whereas the lowest elevations being kind of the teal and lighter green there. I will point out just near the outlet of the system along the main line there's a historical kind of lake bed along there. With that, we have kind of a tile depth map, kind of some history of this. We did investigate subsidence as part of this, kind of characterizing the existing system. We show tile depth based on our televising and locating that occurred. The main line is pretty shallow. We're seeing a lot of the tile having less than five feet of cover, especially when you get down to the south end of the system where it goes through that historical lake bed. Some of that cover depth compared to the historical information we did have has subsided quite a bit. History of the system. So it was established in 1918. meaning the system's over 100 years old. It's kind of been through its lifespan. The original system consisted of 17,300 feet of mainline branch, lateral, and sub-lateral tile. just kind of going through some notable events. There was an abandonment of branch three, sub lateral B sub branch one, which was denoted at the orange tile line there on the map. There's been no documented improvements to the system. Some minor spot repairs have occurred, but one of the key factors is there wasn't a lot of good historical records for the system. We had a little bit, but historical planet profiles were not made available. We were unable to get those, so we did a lot of televising, tile locating to really analyze how the system lays out, look at the conditions, and kind of filled a project off of that. There's an ROV done at March 1st, 2024. Getting into some of the televising that we did. Here's the televising map. I think this is the third to last sheet in the handout. All the yellow kind of highlighted over the tile is areas that we televised. We have some pictures here of offset joints, some of the spot repairs that occurred that are kind of deteriorated or in poor condition. You can see near Outlet of the main line is actually in pretty good condition for being over 100 years old. Here's just some more televising pictures looking at the top left, some offset joints, cracking, debris in the pipe. You can kind of see that throughout a lot of these areas. This is looking at small portions of the main line, a branch two tile, a lateral eight tile specifically. A lot of that's in pretty poor shape, getting close to kind of a failure point. Here's a bunch of the locating that we did when we were out doing televising. Like I said, we didn't have any historical records, so that became really important to try and determine size and grade when we're going through this repair. I'll focus the majority of your attention near the top half of the watershed, call it. most of the deficiencies that we saw through the televising kind of in that upper half specifically looking at some of the branch two where we get fractures and deflection and mud and sediment in the pipe looking over at kind of branch one and the laterals with that where there's sags and humps and some failed collapsed tile and then off to the northwest more collapsed tile and kind of just areas in general where the televising revealed kind of the worst of the worst condition of the pipe. Getting into tile capacities, we see that the main line has an average capacity of 0.33 inches per day, which is actually pretty good considering the system is 100 years old. A lot of systems we see much, much lower capacity than that, but it's important to note that these calculations are done as if the tile is brand new. So it doesn't account for any failures, restrictions, collapsed tile, offset joints, stuff like that. And that can reduce capacity by 30 to 40% or more, depending on just how bad that deficiency is. With that, all these grades, sizes, locations were all determined based on televising and locate. This system had pretty extensive on-site investigation compared to some of the other systems that we look at. The main line is a 26 inch, 22 inch, and then I talked about some of the other laterals being that smaller tile size.

Yeah, so looking into proposed design here, again, I think I mentioned earlier that back in June of this year, we brought three proposed options to a landowner meeting to kind of discuss possibilities. And that kind of ranged through a spectrum of different opportunities for repair. The first, Adam mentioned that when we're looking at the elevation map that some portions of this system do not have the original cover level. We didn't have profiles, but we did have cut sheets from the original construction. So that doesn't exactly tell us where the tile was, how deep it was, how steep it was, but it told us on average how deep it was through extraction. So we were able to do some interpolation and figure out that we've approximately lost about two feet of cover in the downstream extents of the system. Looking at that subsidence is always a really valuable option to look at with the repair. So through that you can see on this map, it's also in your handout, some of the pink areas denote areas that we would install the tile deeper and justifiably and repair the upstream extents as a standard repair. This was a larger scale repair and In talking with drainage staff, one of the members of the board present, we determined that this was not something that should be pursued if there was no landowner interest. It's a larger scale project, it's replacing the entire system. While it does have its values, without any support from landowners, it does not make sense to pursue. The second option, you'll remember Adam talking about the televising. This focuses solely on the areas of branch two, lateral A, branch one, sub-lateral A, and sub-lateral B where we saw the most concentrated issues. A lot of linear cracking, intermittent collapses, fractures, etc. So replacing swaths of the worst of the worst to get the system back to functionality. This is something that we saw as a bit more of a realistic repair extents to just fix the system and get it back to functionality. A third option was developed for that June meeting where we proposed to solely replace the actual collapses and nothing else. Fractures, spot repairs is essentially what we call them in kind of a lot of our work where we're just finding the exact locations of the issue and slowly replacing those. This option was developed as sort of a minimum to essentially fixed collapses under the roads where there's functionally no drainage happening right now. Fixed collapses in fields and property lines where currently nothing's happening. So those are again some areas on sub-lateral A, lateral A, sub-lateral B. And you'll notice some of these areas that the spot repairs become very concentrated. We're doing one every 50, 200 feet. And there's more areas along here where the tile is getting really close to failing as well. With all that, the June meeting didn't have any, we didn't get to gather any input from landowners at that meeting. So in working with the drainage staff, the Blue River County drainage staff and one of the members of the board, we kind of looked at where's maybe a hybrid option between that option two and three where we just repair the worst of the worst, but maybe do it in a slightly more economical way than just doing spot repairs. Spot repairs generally are fairly more cost-inefficient than replacing swaths of tile as the contractor has to go out, dig a pit, replace a 20-foot stretch of tile, fill it back up, and be done. Thinking about that over the long term, it's... you're paying a lot more per linear foot. The landowner is paying a lot more per linear foot of pipe installed. And if a lot of these swaths are getting close to failing, it made a lot of sense from an engineering standpoint to repair slightly more in these areas that were going to be worked on anyway to restore that functionality. So essentially the map we're looking at right now was the option that we talked about and ultimately pursued for a final repair report. Capacities are identical to existing. There's a couple areas where there'd be a slight upsizing where that tile size is no longer readily available. There's one spot where a 14 would be upside to a 15 as it comes to branch one and sub-lateral A. We've got an example of one of the plan and profiles that we developed here. This is along Branch 2. So for example here, there's a collapse under 542nd Avenue. We would solely replace that tile under the road. There's a small stretch in here of about 200 to 300 feet. that county drainage staff did a spot repair on just a couple few years ago. That would not be redone. Very, very specific on this option just to repair what needs to happen. And then repairing upstream of that where we saw fractures and a heavy level of sediment in the pipe. Again, following installation, the old existing tile would be abandoned for some of the smaller spot repair areas. It would be physically removed as we'd be installing tile in the old trench. We did generate a multi-purpose drainage management plan. I won't spend too much time on that, but there are good opportunities in this system to look at restoration storage basins if that's something that landowners want to look at at some point. Getting into cost, if we remember all the options we talked about earlier, that subsidence or full system repair was about $1.15 million to repair the vast majority of the system with subsidence. Option two, which was repairing just a small portion of some of those upstream branches, was about $600,000. or 608 as we estimate. Solely doing spot repairs, just repairing the actual collapses is approximately $160,000. Again, we've estimated slightly inflated prices per linear foot on this option. And then finally, the option that we were kind of proposing today, which is that kind of hybrid spot repair, reduced repair option, is estimated at just short of $400,000. So it's kind of a blend of those options two and three, taking care of the worst of the worst in a slightly more economical way long term. There would be temporary damages if the project were to proceed. These would be paid at a per acre rate and measured by staff on site. But all in all, this system has been extensively televised due to the lack of profile records. So we did that again to generate that so we could design these potential repair efforts. Through all those efforts, we found a general nature of deteriorating tile, specifically located in the north half of the watershed. We did have several landowner meetings, didn't get a lot of feedback, worked with drainage staff, and kind of came to this hybrid repair option to repair the system in an economical way. Just taking care of the worst of the worst, but slightly more cost-effective than spot repairs. So the engineer recommends proceeding with the hybrid spot repair option to restore those portions of the system. But ultimately, if there's an opportunity for landowners to provide input today, we'd love to hear that and see what their goals and desires would be. That would ultimately, it's their system, so we'd love to hear anything about that. So that's kind of all we got. So thank you very much.

Thank you. 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. There's 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. Anyone wishing to make comments?

Good morning. Good morning. Dusty Riley, 11512 532nd Avenue in Amboy. I own a couple pieces, one that just gets clipped and another that's straight east of Mud Lake on Sublateral B. I just had a few comments and questions maybe. It was noted that the main line was in decent shape for its age. just was curious about future repairs, how quickly we potentially would be looking at replacing more of the system and what that could look like tying this new tile in. It was mentioned about landowner involvement. I can speak to just myself at least. Some of this ground was purchased by me three to five years ago and the notices still go to the previous landowner at times. So sometimes I'm not even aware these things are happening unless the previous landowner is gracious enough to, you know, forward the packet on to me or reach LV email and say hey I got this I think it's for you. So sometimes it's not that we don't want to give our input it's we don't know about it or we have to find out through other landowners that maybe potentially got the notice. And I know we had talked a little bit, Kip and I had, about just if we were able to be involved a little quicker with these things. Sometimes there's televising going on and inspections being done that we're not always aware of, and sometimes large sums of money are already spent before we are aware that these things are being looked into. And lastly, just... It seems like a lot of these systems were put in 100 years ago, and that was about their lifespan. So a lot of them are coming due at the same time. And we are not huge landowners by any respect, but I think currently we're involved with four different either maintenance or improvements on ditch systems. So it's maybe not necessarily this system or the next one, but it's a culmination of multiples that it's kind of a death by a thousand cuts. So I just wanted to give my thoughts and make everybody feel. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else wishing to make comments? Morning.

Good morning. Jay Peterson, 53898 State Highway 30, Amboy, Minnesota. Like Dusty said, I think being aware of these projects sooner and letting us know you're out digging in our fields, and we know nothing about it. I think we should be made aware so we're, as landowners, able to make good decisions and work with our county agents like you guys. So, thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Anyone else wishing to make comment? Anyone else? All right, I'm going to close the public comment portion of the hearing. Any questions or comments from the board?

And a clarifying question, probably for ISG. You talked about putting it back, replacing it back in the old trench. Is that because it's a Repair, I mean, we hear it consistently. We want to move it over to be in virgin ground to eliminate problems. We're putting it back in the old trench because we don't have any options in what problems Could there be?

Yeah, so I think we're very selective in our designs when we put tile in old trenches. And really the only cases where it happens is when we're replacing less than around 100 or 150 feet of tile. I've got an example up on the screen. I don't know how visible it is, but this is the end of Branch 2. So the furthest north end, we're not going to be digging. We would not propose to dig in the same trench, as it's kind of a long swath. Conversely, where we cross the road, it's really only 100 feet of tile. So to repair that extents, to dig in a new trench, we'd essentially have to start at both ends, offset, and then come together. Essentially, in a case like that, nearly doubling the length of tile for a very, very small repair. So in spot repairs, generally when we're installing in the same trench, when it makes sense to reduce the totaling, our design specifications calls to totally encase that pipe and rock. When we really can't count on the the level of compaction and stability of the adjacent trench, we kind of design that functionality around it or furnish that stability in total . And that's generally more economical than installing more tile to get away from that old trench. So that's generally the reason that that's done.

So we are doing some preventative stuff to alleviate those potential.

Yep, absolutely. So that's kind of the goal there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Chair? Yes. Jacob, could you just touch a little bit on Dusty's question about the main line, and is that in pretty good shape? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, let me just pick up the full map. Adam touched on this really well. I really appreciate the comment, because it is true, a lot of these systems are like 100-year-old. They put in a lot of them at around the same time. There was a lot of initiative to do it back then, and it was a lot of the same materials, so a lot of them are, you know, between the last 15 years and probably the next 15 to 20, a lot of them are gonna come due. The main is in really good condition for being 108 years old, especially the larger portions of it. The larger portions, which are the most expensive portions. As to say how long it'll be, when it'll fail, It's really hard to say. Concrete's tough. I mean, if I had to give a recommendation, I'd say regular inspection maybe every five, 10 years. Really, the best indicator of when a tile needs to be repaired is input from landowners. If Mr. Caldwell would be a great indicator of the main failing. If he was saying, hey, I'm getting a ton of ponding. North of the highway on my property and the ditch down there has all but drained down. Something's wrong with that tile. That's a really good indicator. Yeah, I guess I can't give a good estimate of a timeline, but probably within the next 10 to 20 years, I would definitely expect it and somewhat plan for it to be done.

Yeah, I don't expect you to give us a time that'll last, but just kind of your own opinion on the shape of it now. And it was televised. I've heard that a couple times.

Yeah, no, so from our televising, it's in good condition. There's some cracking, some fissuring, but it's far from significantly impacting flow. It'll serve the landowners for... at least some years to come. Thank you. That's good to hear. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? So can I get a motion and a second to accept the drafted findings and order approving the engineer's report for Judicial Ditch 23? So moved. Second. Motion and a second. Any more discussion?

I don't have any more questions, Madam Chair, but I would like to just bring up a point that Commissioner Papp and I have been working on different procedures that we can do to get landowner involvement earlier, and so has ISG, our staff. But we are aware that these projects are getting expensive, and they're getting expensive just to even look at to see how much they're going to cost. So we are putting some... procedures in place to help get earlier involvement. That's all I have, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. So resolution to finance. It's our practice to pass a resolution to financing in case we wish to bond for the drainage repair. Any discussion? I need a motion.

I'll move it. Second.

And a second. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. This concludes the Judicial Ditch 23 repair hearing.

Thank you, Jordan.

Thanks, Jordan. Thanks, everyone, for coming. Thanks, Jane.

All right.

We'll move on to Human Services. Bill. Good morning.

Good morning, Phil and Janet. Good morning, everyone.

Chair O'Connor, I have no action items for today, but I do have child protection data that Sarah Johnson provided to me. She wanted to be here. She's at a conference. So you're stuck with my version of this. Lots of hard questions. Yeah, that's right. Prepare your questions. I'm going right into the slides of child protection to start with and then we also have a slide or two on out-of-home placement. Maltreatment interventions, so when somebody does report, you'll see the number of actual engagements we had. The big number, 349, is family assessment. You want my word to describe family assessment as we come alongside courts usually not involved and we try to work out a plan together. So I personally think that's good that that number is high. We do get a lot of pressure to do full family investigations from the state from a quality perspective, which I understand. But between working with Pat's office and the courts, it does take an awful lot more time and energy. So we try to be selective about which route to take. And then there's also facilities. If something happens in a facility, the state is usually the one that does those investigations. The second chart is a percentage of where children who experience maltreatment, how that presents. And neglect is always the highest group here, which it is again this year. And then you'll see the breakdown, physical, sexual, threatened injury and mental injury as also very represented in our community. The notes, just that the percentage of child victims are generally stable over the last few years. Slight increase in physical abuse and neglect in 25. 81% of the reports use the family assessment. And just some staffing updates from Sarah as well is all vacant positions have been filled, which is really good. And the team is now fully staffed. Most of the staff members are new, so that is one concern, but we do have training coming because of the act, which is her final bullet. The third bullet, though, is a few staff have more than 10 years experience, so we do lean on them.

Starting route to Bemidji.

Where are you going? A few staff have more than 10 years and we're just saying we really lean on them and Sarah as well has been working in this area for a long time so we appreciate her tenure as well. And then the MAPA CWDA or the ACT as we refer to it is definitely expected to increase our staff's workload so we are very concerned about how that will play out, and as I suggested, there is training specific to that shift, and so staff will have to go through all that as well. And it does, we've had some questions about, you know, are there specific targeted roles that certain staff play for MAPFA, and the answer to that is no, everyone will be responsible to kind of be equipped to do the full gamut of the services we offer. Out of home placement, next slide. Number of children placed out of home was also consistent from 24 to 25. Neglect, again, is most common, but the physical abuse and parental chemical abuse are always well represented, and so those, again, are stable findings year over year. Reunification of children back to their parents is how they most often exit out of home placement. And then when we do place, we try very hard to get children into family foster care. And we've seen an increase of children placed into correctional facilities as well, and you'll see that in the next graphic. Very important to note on the asterisks that correctional facilities are how they're licensed, so a lot of those are placements, but also some from corrections. 62% of all children that were placed in foster care were with relatives or kin, and that is really important to us as well. Finding placements for high-need children is a challenge as always, and that is the one that has historically caused us at times to send kids out of state. I think we've curbed that some but I think that reality is we just don't have a lot of resources and we have more in our community than other smaller counties so we're grateful for that but we do get stretched very thin and end up being in some desperate spots at times to assure safety. And then yeah many placements require submitting multiple referrals across the county and elsewhere and even out of state at times and so staff can spend a whole day just on the phone trying to find a good appropriate placement. And then the final graphic before I turn it over to Shanna is the number of reasons children exit out of placement and that's just a breakdown of the percentages The biggest one, reunified with parents, which is of course what we hope for. Sometimes the next one is at 10% residing with non-removable parent. So the other parent might get involved or living with relatives. The finalized adoptions are a bright spot in all of this, just that what we refer to as permanency is a really good outcome. So we're always glad when we have some adoptions pushed all the way through. So that's a good thing. And that's all I have, Chair, unless there's questions for me before I share. Go ahead.

So, Phil, let's just back up to the act again. And I know your staff was in for a work session a while back. We talked about that. And if my recollection is correct, we kind of have two different levels of staff that deal with that department, and if I heard you correctly, they're all going to have to be the higher. Am I on the right page or not?

Probably not quite because if this could fit for you, it might be a different question, but we do have two different kinds of staff. You're right. We have intake and assessment staff, so they do the front end. Okay, there we go. And then they hand off to ongoing workers. And what I was saying, and maybe I didn't say it clearly, but all those ongoing workers will have to be trained, all of them. So it's not like we have a specialty person that just does MAPFA in the ongoing work.

So the intake people won't necessarily be at that.

No, and so that's different. And I don't know if they'll have a specific training for that, but I would say it's pretty common that counties are split the way I'm describing it, but that is the two-tiered kind of jobs that we have. and then the ongoing, everyone will need to kind of follow the new rules.

So it will be more staff driven?

Absolutely. And you know, the big one, and I've shared with the board openly, I think it's appropriate to say, I think there's a line where we are being asked to provide a lot more specific services chosen by the families, yes, but it will require a lot more transportation, it will require a lot more coordination because we're trying to match resources with culture and other issues. And then the thing that I struggle with just coming up in the chemical health world is I think there's also a line that if we are the surrogates trying to kind of plan all those specific things, will those parents pick up those skills and that commitment to do all those things? Because that is part of child protection historically is that we really work with the county attorney's office and the courts to make sure that they're up at a grade that we can all say, yes, you're parenting your kids well. And if we start kind of filling in those gaps, my only concern is, will we go too far? And kind of caretake, if you will, or we call it enabling in my world. And so there's a balance of health in that. There's a healthy way to support people and wrap around. And then there could be this responsibility that gets pushed onto the government, if you will. some feelings about that, that we have to be careful where that line's going. And we just don't know yet. Is it a reasonable line in the sand, or is it something that we'll go, whoa, that's way too onerous with all the transportation, different pieces that are going to come.

Well, that's a concern that I have, and I think I echoed that at the work session or somewhere. I'm not an expert at this. I don't understand all of it. But when you're coming in and you're kind of taking control of a situation of a family that only needs a little bit, in my mind, that would frustrate me. Why are you forcing me to take this? I'll understand I need this little bit of help, but I don't need you giving my kids rides. I don't need all that stuff. And so, again, I don't know a lot about this, but that is alarming to me.

It could be, and Chair and Commissioner, I... my hopeful comment and a good place to leave it is we are really looking very hard at, you may have heard us talk about family group decision making where you bring in all relatives and if it's blood relatives or this is Aunt Sally who's not really my aunt, we don't care, come to the meeting and let's rally all the people that could support and wrap around this family. And I really like that solution. So I hope we're allowed to use that kind of a model so that we kind of, the hybrid ditch solution, I'm saying this is a hybrid solution of what we're talking about is, We do more, and we're not resistant about doing more if it works. But what will work if we can hand out to family members and have a whole team of people supporting a hard circumstance, that prognosis is much better. All right. That makes me feel a lot better. Yeah, it is a good thing. I hope we can do that.

That makes more sense to me.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, and Phil, just with that, as we've talked through this budget process, that is one of the reasons when we look at that is that we are adding staff. As we've been reducing staff the last year, we are adding staff to child protection to the tune of we're looking at with just for employee expenses for that salary benefits, around $350,000. And so there's that, but as Phil mentioned, we also did add in some funding for family group decision making to try to find those places to keep them in the community, keep them at relatives or friends or things like that. So those are items that we're pushing up. And I also just want to touch on, you talked about the kind of differentiation. What we talked about in that work session was that legal standard of active efforts versus reasonable efforts. And this is really where that change is for this, is to move a lot of people up that spectrum to active efforts. Whereas Phil's staff, they typically a lot of times in reasonable say, here's a number, we expect you to do this, to let them have some ownership, but now it's changing a lot of it for being active, so the social workers have to do that hand-holding of what Phil talked about, is that fine line of enabling versus them doing it. And so that's going to be the challenge for the staff, is that even if the numbers would stay the same on the caseloads, there's more work and responsibility for each one of those cases.

And I think that's my concern. I don't know why it's getting to me so much, but it just seems alarming. I'm sure you guys will do a good job trying to figure it out.

Well, yeah, I think there is some tension or nervousness about it because we don't quite know where the lay of the land will shift. But I hope it's a balanced thing, as Josh kind of outlined there. And yeah, I think the family group decision-making... I feel that way about that.

We can keep kids out of trouble. It's way more beneficial for all of us at the end of the day. For sure. Thank you, Phil. Thank you.

Phil, can you remind me where that went? that direction is coming from again with the state?

Yeah, it is state-run. The legislation was passed last session, so it is in law now from the state. Well, DCYF is actually, I think, the one for it. I'm not sure if it tips over to DHS anymore at all.

Hello, everyone. Good morning. Shanna Hood, Chair of the Blue Earth County Board. Our Blue Earth County Human Services Advisory Committee coming to the board. Nice to see you all again. I'm going to piggyback off of what Phil said first. I know that we are all sitting here together. Even with this one topic, we are feeling the impact of what other people are mandating us to do. More complexity is more staff and more time. We need simplifying and not more complicating. And I think that you can feel that across all sectors, not just human services. And so when we are, I feel so much for Phil and his staff and then also you guys in these situations where we are all being told we need to be doing this, this, and this. My ask to you is when you are working with people at the state, or also even looking at things at the county, what can we do to simplify processes and not add more layers of complexity? And just continuing that process. while still not getting rid of the good things that we do, right? Because there are some things that we know a dollar here saves $5 down the road, right? And so we want to make sure that we keep that. And I've been really impressed that Phil has been really thoughtful about that and his staff in continuing those processes. So I really like also another thing I heard, reasonableness test. Does this make sense? So thank you for having those conversations. With that, some of the things that we've been talking about at the Human Services Board, for example, we talked with our financial assistance supervisors in April about HR1's impact on things. And just Minnesota benefits are state supervised, county administered. Blue Earth County does a darn good job. We got to look at some data compared to some other counties and we do a very good job with the resources that we have and do better with the amount that we are that they are given. But something I've been continually impressed by over the past 10 years on this is to see how well we really are doing. I'm going to point out one small thing that stood out to me from the conversations with some of the changes that are making with hr1 just as a heads up for you uh is actually with the error rate conversation i didn't tell you at all um one um so for counties administered for snap benefits um snaps SNAP is reimbursed by the federal government for all administrative costs up until a couple weeks from now, right? I think it's October 1st is when it switches to only 25% of administrative costs for SNAP benefits are going to be reimbursed to the county. And that is a big disappointment federally. Again, you need to do this, but we're not going to... provide that funding no longer for that. One of the concerns, though, from the, this is beyond the county, but just so you're aware, the new error rate could affect Blue Earth County. Blue Earth County's error rate on our SNAP benefits was 0% this last year. But they only look at seven out of 3,000 cases, okay? An error can be that the client reported things incorrectly. And so I want to make you aware that in the future, if there is an error, that could be the clients reporting things incorrectly, and that can negatively affect Blue Earth County, but it could also negatively affect the state because if the state of Minnesota is over a 5% error rate as an entire state, not just our county, it will cost our state and counties, too, upwards of $43 million in SNAP benefits. So hopefully that doesn't come down the road, but just know that there are things that will be outside of our control make sure that we're nudging our people up in the cities like Hennepin County to do what they can. But I have to say, even when they were talking through the processes, I'm very impressed with how our workers are communicating with people, trying to double-check things very quickly so that we have that 0% error rate. That's something to applaud, actually, that we have a 0% error rate. But hopefully that doesn't change in the future. So, again, simplifying, not complicating. I know you guys know that, and I appreciate you guys having those conversations, even when we're talking about human services or other pieces. Continue on that. I just want to continue to say let's I hope that we can continue doing things that are working well I know that we have had a lot of shifts and a lot of Cuts in the system. I would like to acknowledge that maybe you know Phil's last day is coming up in the next couple weeks and I And I have been very appreciative of the conversations and his leadership. I also would like to publicly say, from an outside perspective, I don't know how you did both your and Angie's job this past year. I would expect from an outside perspective that that would probably change because I would like us to keep somebody in this position in the future and to be able to financially manage things, continue that good financial management. On a last note, public health was one of the pieces that our committee is tasked with is conversing with public health once a year, and so the public health sector is doing a community health survey. I also brought some of these. I'm going to like to give them to each of you. I'd like to give them to each of you so that you can also take it. It's less than a five minute survey, but I want to make sure that all areas are represented. And because it is, how is our community doing? What are we all thinking about as primary tasks? Is there anything that we're missing? Because getting that dollar prevention sometimes can save $5 down the road, or also where are areas that we need to maybe simplify or look at assistance differently. So thank you very much for your time. Do you have any questions for me?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

I'll just say before we break up just that Shannon has been just awesome as our chair and will continue for another year, I think, and then she rotates off. But she's been just, you know, endless in her enthusiasms and representing the community voice. And we were talking last meeting that sometimes the conversations before the meeting and after the meeting are just as telling. And yes, and I expressed how the board is very open to hearing from our community. So she's just done a great job of it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Phil, for your service of all these years. And did you plan this not to have any action items? Because this will be your last meeting.

Actually, we were just stunned, like paralyzed by this because it's happened several months and I can't imagine what's going to happen at the end of the year. But if I can exit before that happens, I'm fine with it. But yeah, no plan, just...

luck of the drive yes thank you so much for your service for all these years you and I have had a lot of good conversations offline and appreciate all your dedication and hard work thank you thank you okay moving on to administration first we have the approval of the minutes for the September 8th meeting

Do I have a motion?

So moved. Second.

And a second. Any discussion of the minutes? All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Carries.

Next we have the bills for the week of September 3rd through September 9th. I'll move the bills. Second.

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

Next, we have the human resources agenda, all informational for this week. Just a few items. First, we have the employment of a part-time correctional officer, and we have the employment of a public works operations and parks supervisor, and then a resignation of a deputy sheriff, and then the recruitment initiated for replacement of that deputy sheriff. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer those for you.

Looks like we're good to go.

All right, next item we have is for the 2027 proposed levy. Whereas Minnesota statutes 275-65-1 require that the proposed property tax levy for the coming year be certified to the county finance director by September 30th, and whereas the county administrator has prepared and the county board has adopted the proposed year 2027 county budget, including the property tax levy. Now therefore be resolved that the following year, 2027 proposed property tax levy of $55,483,099 be certified to the Blue Earth County Finance Director. And just wanted to state that that is a 6.9% levy increase over this last year for that proposed levy.

Move to approve.

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

All right, next we have the 2027 proposed budget. Whereas Minnesota Statute 375A06 sub 4 parent E provides that the county administrator shall prepare and submit to the county board a proposed annual budget and long-range capital expenditure program including detailed estimates of revenue and expenditures and enforce the provisions of the budget when adopted by the county board. And whereas the county administrator has prepared such documents and the county board has met in regular sessions for the purpose of adopting the adequate proposed budget for the maintenance of the administrative agencies of county government for fiscal year 2027. And whereas the county board has come to the conclusion that the budget so prepared is adequate and according to form prescribed by Minnesota statutes. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the preliminary budget of $160,074,428 be adopted and certified to the county finance director. The meeting date and location of the subsequent meeting in which the public testimony will be allowed and the final levy and budget will be discussed is on December 1st, 2026 at 6 p.m. here at the historic courthouse in this boardroom located at 204 South 5th Street in Mankato, Minnesota.

Thank you. Do I have a motion to accept?

I'll move approval.

Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion?

I don't have any questions, Madam Chair, but I would just like to send a thank you to the staff, Josh and his team. I started working on this several months ago. We've had many, many discussions and work sessions, as noted in the packet here, and I think we've got a good budget. So thank you, Josh.

I can add on to that. I know there's many counties across the state that are going over 10%. We actually started at 9. 9.9. 9.9. And you and your staff were able to cut that down. Obviously, we'd all like to see it lower, but in the state of the world that we're in right now, I don't I can't proceed that, but thank you very much for all your hard work.

And Madam Chair, and just to share, as we've talked about several times over the summer, as we've talked earlier about some of those pressures of the mandates, unfunded mandates, the shifts. Yes, there is cost, there's inflationary increases that would be there, but when we look at the snap shifts that are coming, which is over $600,000, we look at the cost of MAFPA, which we're looking at over $350,000. the pressure that's going to be coming from the changes of how Medicaid is done. There was a lot of work done this summer to try to really reduce that budget. We've done a lot of work over the last year reducing our staffing, cutting by almost 17 FTEs when we're looking at the mandates that we're doing. So I agree that we would love to be a little bit lower if we could, but I'm hoping that this is reasonable as we go forward looking at those shifts and mandates that are coming to us.

All right, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Well, on to committee reports. Well, it's been, what, a whole week since we've met? Kevin.

After our September 8th board meeting, participated in the Good Counsel Tour. On the 9th, they had a CD41 meeting, as well as the NACO RAC meeting. September 10th, I attended the Drainage Work Group and the SWCD meeting. 12th participated on the Burger King ribbon cutting. 13th was breakfast on the farm. Yesterday, the 14th, I attended the Minnesota One Watershed, One Plan Policy Committee, as well as met last night with Judson Township on some different concerns they've got as town board members. And this morning, we had the JD49 meeting. That concludes my report. Thank you.

After the last meeting, the good council tour was already mentioned. Mark and I made it up to Micah in person through the construction. Nathan is doing a great job up there with that organization. I tell you, that guy is pretty sharp. He keeps everybody in line and got a lot of stuff going through that afternoon for the meeting. I was also at SWCD. Mark and I also attended the breakfast on the farm. Good turnout out there at the Duncanson Farm. And then JD 49 this morning and just some calls and questions about some gravel roads and county ditches for some projects I got going on this week.

Thank you. Vance.

All right. Well, I also attended the tour of the Good Council property. The next day I zoomed in on the NACO BRAC meeting I also attended the Burger King grand opening. It was nice that we were invited. Also went out to the breakfast on the farm. Was fed well and toured the farm and it was very, very informative and fun with watching all the kids helping out down there. Yesterday I had an executive board meeting for MRCI, and then I had a board meeting for Detox in Nuon. Detox hired a new director a couple months ago, so they were going through some learning experiences for her, and there are some costs that are rising, very much state laws and stuff on how Detox is run, We can expect that the cost per day is going to go up pretty drastically over the next few years for counties. And that's the end of my report.

Thank you. Mark.

Okay, we had on September 8th, we had the tour of Good Council, and September 9th, yes, Kip and I did go up. to Micah, and it's a really good organization, do a lot. And then, did have the reopening of the Burger King on the 13th. Yeah, that's what they like to call it, is reopening, because each, anyway, it was interesting. And then we had the drainage, drainage was this morning at, joint joinage with Faribault County this morning.

Busy guys. I have not too much to report. You all went to good counsel. I went to negotiations with Region 9. The next day on the 9th I attended the RAC monthly meeting and then back to Region 9 for the board and staff conversation and then the executive board meeting. And that was my week. So the end of my report. Move to adjourn. I have a motion to adjourn.

Second.

And a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. We are adjourned.