The Todd County Board of Commissioners agreed to contract with Ottertail County to provide the services of a solid waste director at their May 4 meeting.

Mike Hanan will serve as Todd County’s part time solid waste director.

Hanan has been solid waste director for Ottertail County for several years. Todd will pay Ottertail County just under $2,000 per month in wages and administrative costs Hanan’s services. When the county had a full time solid waste director the position was costing in excess of $6,000 per month. The contract between Todd County and Ottertail County will be reviewed by the Todd County Board every year. Ottertail County already has a similar agreement with Wadena County to provide that county’s solid waste director’s service.

Todd County Administrator Nathan Burkett said the arrangement between Todd and Ottertail made sense because of the two county’s close relationship in overseeing the Perham incinerator. Todd County will continue to have a transfer station manager in Browerville. The manager will oversee day-today operations. The solid waste director will provide to Todd County high-level policy consultation on such things as ordinances, solid waste plan development, education, enforcement, contract negotiation and implementation as well as representing Todd County at conferences and events.

Economic

development

Representatives from the steering committee appointed to reorganize the Todd County Development Corporation gave their report to the commissioners.

The 17-member committee was appointed by the commissioners in January. They have met five times to prepare recommendations for the corporation’s reorganization.

The committee recommended the appointment of a nine-member board of directors. Two of the directors will be county commissioners. The commissioners will not be voting members of the board.

Five of the members will be appointed according to commissioner districts. Mike Thorson has been recommended as a director from District 1, Leyten Fontaine from District 2, Chad Becker from District 3, Victor Carlson from District 4, and Tim King from District 5. Chris Etzler and Doug Schmidt were recommended to be the two at large members to the Economic Development Corporation’s board of directors.

The board of directors will hold its first meeting in late May. In the near future they will recruit and hire an economic development director. Lee Miller, of the Region Five Development Commission, said that to be competitive an economic development director will need to be paid between $65,000 and $75,000 per year in wages and benefits. Miller, along with other Region 5 staff, facilitated the steering committee meetings.

Miller said that the steering committee recommends that the economic development director be an employee of the economic development corporation, and not the county board. The steering committee also recommended the creation of a joint powers agreement between the county and the economic development corporation. Although the county will provide the initial funding for the corporation the steering committee recommends that it locate at least some of its funding from other sources in the future.

Audit

A representative of the Brainerd accounting firm Larson Allen reviewed the county’s annual audit with the commissioners. He called the report good but pointed out that many of the county’s funds have less than the recommended five months reserve available. He said some of that was due to the reduction in Local Government Aid from the state.

Other financial highlights pointed out by the auditor are the fact that county-wide net assets increased 4.7 percent in 2009 over the prior year.

This was due primarily to the county receiving additional shared revenues from the state for road projects as well as receiving some Recovery Act funding from the federal government. However, the audit points out that the county’s General Fund’s fund balance decreased $354,244 from the prior year primarily due to the transfer out of funds to the social services fund for the final South Country Health Alliance payment in 2010.

The county is currently discussing withdrawing from South Country Health Alliance.

One of the weaknesses that the auditor pointed out in his report is that Todd County has too few people involved in the processing of financial transactions. He said that adequate segregation of the accounting functions necessary to ensure adequate internal accounting control is not in place for some departments in the county. The lack of adequate segregation of duties can result in incorrect financial information, failure to detect misstatements or misappropriations, and the lack of adherence to the county’s procedures, according to the audit.

The full audit report will be available at Todd County’s web site.

Public Health

The commissioners directed Public Health Director Cheryl Schneider to begin the process of rewriting the county’s environmental health ordinance. The public will be invited to comment on the content of the rewritten ordinance. The ordinance involves the licensing of various establishments that sell food such as campgrounds.