Cass eyes joint drug task force

CASS LAKE - Cass County could start a joint drug task force with Hubbard County if the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Office of Justice approves a $100,000 grant application to fund the program in 2008.

Funding would cover 75 percent of salaries and benefits for an investigator and two deputies, plus some equipment, gas for vehicles and some drug buy money.

Chief Sheriff's Deputy Tom Burch obtained county board approval to spend $112,963 to purchase a sentence to serve van, a prisoner transport van with special fittings and Tasers and handguns for officers.

The Legislature approved, as a part of the special session emergency flood relief bill, a special section Cass County sought to permit county assessing departments to abate property taxes when a building destroyed by arson occurs without the owner having any control over the fire.

In the past, no one whose building burned as a result of arson could receive an abatement. This left victims of arson victimized twice, once by the arsonist and once again by the tax system.

Under the new law, only those who set fire to their own property will be ineligible to receive a property tax abatement.

Cass commissioners have authorized the land department to obtain a land appraisal for county-administered land 100-feet-by-100-feet, which Crooked Lake Fire Department might use to sink a well to provide closer water service when fighting fires in and around Beulah Township.