The Murray County Commissioners met in regular session on Tuesday, December 3rd. Amongst the items on the agenda were the commissioner warrants along with the ditch bills – which were all approved.
Administrator Tom Burke added an annual agreement for 2020-2021 IV-D Child Support between Southwest Health and Human Services, county attorney and sheriff’s office. These services are primarily federally funded and was approved.
Elected officials were on the agenda and asked to share information regarding their department as part of the salary consideration for 2020.
First up was county attorney Travis Smith. He informed the board his office continues to be very busy. Statistics over this past year include over 125 criminal cases and 75 felony cases. Smith said several of these cases were quite complex and often times spanned several counties. He added that things seem to be going well with the new case management system, but things don’t appear to be slowing down. His request was that the board take into consideration the quality of work he and his office provide for the county and do what is fair.
Next up was Evey Larson providing a review of her office and what they do. She said that recording and copy fees are up almost $5,000 from this time last year. Larson explained this is largely due to the office recording more documents. In addition the office has signed on one of the wind tower companies to the offices Tapestry and Lorado system at a rate of $220 a month to access the county’s records. A portion of this fee is, however, paid to Fiedler each month. She explained they are down four passports from last year at this time, however, they have had a few come in this first week in December. She said they are continuing to back index their records amounting to almost 15,000 from January to present. The computers are being replaced in their office as part of their five year cycle which, according to Larson, is a good thing because they do need to upgrade to Windows10. “It’s been a really good year. Our costs are about the same and we have more income coming in.” Larson went on to give kudos to her deputy. “She does an awesome job and I can’t enough good things about her.”
Heidi Winter appeared sharing her thought on her office and staff. She shared her office statutorily handles taxation, drainage, parts of budget and levy, audit and finance as well as preparing for the new presidential primary election that will be held in Minnesota in March of this coming year. Winter explained elections have almost gotten to be full time – not necessarily every day but duties need to be done throughout the year. This special election will have once every four years.
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