The Murray County Board of Commissioners met on Tuesday, December 14 in a session delayed by one week to allow the members to attend the Annual Meeting of the Association of MN Counties.
Open Forum was used by the Slayton Driftbreakers snowmobile club to talk about funding sources for trail maintenance. No tax dollars are received. The club maintains 107 miles of trails and receives $33,000 for doing that. The monies come from licenses and fees paid by snowmobilers. For $101 every three years they purchase a license and a trail sticker.
Tobacco licenses for the coming year were approved for Carlson’s Corner, Ruppert Oil, Pete’s Corner, Chandler Coop (Lake Wilson) Avoca Liquor, Jaroskelly, LLC (Trail’s Edge), and DG retail (Dollar Store). These were all granted licenses in 2021 with the exception of the new ownership of Trail’s Edge.
The ditch levies were set for 2022 as published and reviewed previously.
Luke Schryvers, CEO, Murray County Medical Center presented his monthly report. The Jackson Search Group has toured the facilities and interviewed staff to get a feel for MCMC as they market it to potential providers. There are potentially three candidates on their list. Schryvers would like to establish a ten-year Facilities Plan to determine areas to house any expansion of services, if needed. Training continues with implementation of EPIC set for March 1. Testing continues for COVID with 15% positive cases. Vaccine mandates have been delayed. Staff is at 99% vaccinated. Cash on hand was up $130,000 for the month of October. All of the $2.9M in Covid funds have been spent and claims submitted. More monies are expected in the coming months.
Jason Walker spoke to the Board in regard to Regional Trails Strategic Planning. Recreational trails need to be connected and marketed to promote tourism. Tourism brings dollars into an area for food and lodging. Each of the nine area counties are asked for $3,000 as local input. The State will fund $167,000 of the cost of planning.
Jakob Etrheim requested the repayment of $3,000 of the $10,000 grant funds received from the MN Historical Society grant and not used to assess the security of both End O Line Park and the Murray County Historical Museum. The report indicated a lack of cameras and security at both sites. The reports will be used for applications for funding for those projects.
The final discussion was consideration of the salaries for elected officials. Included were: Commissioners, Auditor Treasurer Heidi Winter, County Recorder Karen Brown, County Attorney Travis Smith and Sheriff Steven Telkamp. All of the salaries fell below the average of eleven neighboring counties. All non-elected personnel had previously been given a 5.5% increase along with a step increase following a satisfactory one-year review. The Board agreed to wait until the following week when they will have a full Board.
The last item the Board discussed was the ventilation and mold issue that is still on-going in the sheriff’s office. At previous meetings they had approved to move forward with the replacement of the system which had been suggested by a number of different companies. They had expected a call regarding this topic during the meeting today but that didn’t happen. Commissioner Thiner feels that spending $1 million dollars is not the right answer and another option is out there. The other commissioners agreed that saving money would be nice, but the health of the county employees is the priority. Tom Burke explained that the Board will need to rescind their motion prior if they want to take a different direction to correct the issue. The Board will discuss this topic again at the next meeting when they have a full Board.
