County Board looks at legislation, crews

Waseca County Board chair Doug Christopherson opened the June 17 regular meeting with a moment of silence for legislators attacked on June 14: State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were killed. State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were wounded and are recovering.

 

Said Christopherson, “Waseca County tolerates no violence in politics.” He went on to say all parties recognize that elected officials are in place to serve the people they represent, and that leaders are meant to work collaboratively while listening to all voices.

 

District 19B House representative Tom Sexton attended the meeting to provide an update on his first legislative session. He described that it is part of the budget setting process that committees are given a “target” amount for their respective areas and are then meant to work toward meeting that. He suggested a large part of the reason a special session was needed is that the committees did not receive their respective targets until well into the session, making it very difficult for groups to finish their many tasks within the time frame.

 

Once a special session is called, Sexton said, upper level leaders and the governor meet to iron out details. 

 

“I want you to know, we did our best to meet that deadline,” said Sexton. “But it just wasn’t possible.”

 

While Sexton said he would have liked to have helped designate funding toward Waseca’s water tower plans and inflow and infiltration problems, the best that was accomplished was creating a sort of open forum under which communities can apply for desired funds. He warned that competition would be strong, however, since water infrastructure is a pervasive problem all around the state, with some communities not even able to produce the water pressure needed to make fire hydrants functional.

 

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he observed.

 

County emergency management director Denise Wright and sheriff Jay Dulas summarized a change in the county’s procedures for notifying the public regarding severe weather. The practice will now be to activate all sirens in all county communities whenever any part of the county is under a tornado warning. A separate article in this week’s Pioneer provides further information.

 

Also on June 17, county court services director Jon Schiro continued sharing news regarding what it will take for Waseca County to operate its own Sentence to Serve (STS) program. As was reported in an earlier edition of the Pioneer, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) is pulling away from the work it has formerly done coordinating and supervising STS work crews. The county was left with the options of either allowing the program to end or creating its own.

 

Commissioners had asked Schiro to acquire additional information regarding likely costs and typical numbers of participants. Schiro provided data indicating that, from 2021 to 2025, it has been typical for 40 or more Waseca County residents each year to be remanded to the STS program, providing roughly 400 hours of work. The crews have included participants from both Waseca and LeSueur counties; there were typically either 2 or 3 from Waseca, according to numbers provided by the DOC.

 

Tasks have included mowing or shoveling snow on county controlled property, splitting wood to help clear deadwood from county parks, providing customer service assistance at the county recycling center, mowing and cleanup at the county fairgrounds, highway cleanup, and more.

 

Schiro suggested costs would include staff time to coordinate work crews and to supervise them, as well as insurance, staff training, and the need for a vehicle to transport crews.

All present, including commissioners, county administrator Michael Johnson, and county facilities director Brian Tomford, shared ideas about ways these tasks and costs could be accomplished.

 

No action was taken, but Schiro and others committed to carrying out conversations with other staff members regarding  approaches to beginning a county-operated STS program.

In separate business, Public Health Director Sarah Berry provided a summary of two programs she said her department is excited to deliver.

 

The first is a new medication management program under which public health nurses will be available for home visits to review and answer questions about people’s use of medications. Berry said her department sees the program as especially valuable for people who have received a new prescription and want to know more about its side effects or how it interrelates with other medications or supplements they may be taking. For those with numerous prescriptions, or perhaps people returning home from a hospital stay, the nurses can help organize the medications and offer suggestions.

 

“This is an exciting opportunity to get out and work with the public,” Berry said. Anyone interested in finding out more about the program or scheduling an appointment is invited to contact public health nurse Lacey Cords, BSN, RN, at 507-461-7766 or

lacey.cords@wasecacounty.gov.

 

Berry also expressed gratitude for a contribution of 195 children’s books from the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation (SMIF). She said the public health staff will distribute the books, a portion of which are in Spanish, to children and families. “Having parents read to children is a very important part of early literacy development,” commented Berry, “so we’re glad to be able to contribute to that.”