County Board Notes-Oct. 9, 2012

A part of the OACCT's Public Policy efforts for 2012 is for volunteers from the Public Policy committee attend both City and County meetings and report back on items that are of interest/concern to business.

Committee of the Whole-3 PM
Commissioners are trying to grapple with distrust, the turnback approach (project vs lump sum) and MnDOT's lack of incentive to negotiate with Steele County.

The County Board continues to find frustrations with the Highway 14 turnback negotiations with MnDOT. Distrust, phantom documents and deadlines, inconsistencies in the agreement leaves the Board discussing the best approach, and wondering how far to push the issue with limited positive results for the county.

Commissioner Kubicek asked the Board if the county is willing to go to court?  If taken to court, the best result that could happen would be the removal of limited access to turnback funds; the county would still have to negotiate with MnDOT, leaving all commissioners realistically wondering if negotiations would improve at that point (after having been to court) and MnDOT could still choose to cut the county out of the turnback money, which would be a hard hit for Steele County. Also, a consideration is any ill-will or push back from MnDOT on the completion of Highway 14 from Owatonna to Dodge Center.

One option  the commissioners discussed is to accept MnDOT's turnback agreement, with the stipulation of using a mediator with a final completion date. The turnback agreement model the commissioners would like to use/agree to would be a recent 2011 Chisago County project based model (totals are tallied when the work/project is complete), not a lump sum model (with estimates of cost that MnDOT is currently proposing).

The latest word from MnDOT gives the Board until Oct. 17 to respond to their latest proposal.