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Wednesday, February 1, 2006
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Budget, policies highlighted at planning session CASS COUNTY BOARD By MONICA LUNDQUIST Cass County Correspondent WALKER - Cass County Administrator Robert Yochum highlighted budget and policy decisions the county board faces in 2006 during Friday's annual Cass County Strategic Planning Retreat.
The federal government has made and is expected to make health, human and veterans services funding cuts, Yochum said. Local governments will have to decide which programs are important enough to fund with local taxes in the future.
Commissioner Jim Dowson said he believes many of those federal cuts will affect senior citizen services. The board will have to quantify the human impact, Yochum said.
The Environmental Services Department needs guidance from the board on how to find a middle ground for its customers in the winter, Yochum said.
One half of the public complains because the board of adjustment does not consider variances in winter months. Those people want to obtain their variances year-round and be ready to build by spring, Yochum said.
Other people wonder how good decisions can be made when no one can see the lay of land under snow or where some things have been installed, Yochum said. ESD gets complaints both ways.
The board needs in 2006 before the new Crow Wing County Jail opens in 2007 to develop an inmate transportation plan between that facility in Brainerd and the courthouse in Walker, Yochum said. Transportation and jail operating costs will rise when Cass begins using one wing of Crow Wing's facility, he said.
Other counties want a Cass board financial commitment before talking more about adding parts of the county to their public transit systems, Yochum said.
If the Minnesota Legislature approves additional funding for demolition at Ah-Gwah-Ching and gives the necessary waivers to permit building a community hospital there or within 20 miles of it, the Legislature will expect the county board to make a final decision on whether to accept that state property in 2006, the administrator said.
With out-of-home child placement costs exceeding the 2005 budget by $600,000, Dowson suggested it might be time to look again at an in-county facility to house some of those children.
Yochum, looking at the financial struggle Crow Wing County and other neighboring counties have had with youth facilities, suggested that encouraging a private provider to place a facility inside the county might make more sense than for the county to do so.
The impact the federal Indian Child Welfare Act has had on out-of-home placement costs is significant, Chief Deputy Auditor Larry Wolfe said.
Commissioner Jim Demgen suggested the board should lobby both the full Legislature and Congress more actively in person, not just contact local representatives from here.
Yochum said the county has successfully obtained federal road funding for many years, partially because a delegation from the board and highway department annually makes a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C.
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