The Wright County Supervisors convened their meeting Monday morning at 9:00 am and got right down to the normal business of approving the minutes from the most recent prior meeting, approving claims for permit, and then opening the forum for public input.
Next the council read the Wright County Recorder's quarterly report for the quarter ending New Year's eve, 2022. Total fees received was $119,264.04. The Supervisors voted unanimously to receive the report as presented.
After hearing from the Recorder, the Supervisors heard from the county Treasurer's office to receive the quarterly revenue report. After poring over the numbers for a few minutes the Supervisors noted that the county's total fund balance, after all outstanding payments were subtracted, was $941,333.17. After a bit more discussion to ensure they understood all the numbers and what they meant, the Supervisors voted unanimously to receive the report.
Then it was time for the Supervisors to make some appointments to the Temporary Redistricting Committee who will be tasked with establishing the five Supervisor districts voters chose to enact in referendum during the recent November election. Up for appointment were Sara Middleton, Shannon Walker, and Jeremy Abbas. After a little discussion to understand how the process would ultimately work, the three appointments were unanimously approved. "
Then came County Engineer Adam Clemons report, in which he gave an update on the Secondary Roads, and discussed a proposed amendment to the Secondary Roads Five Year Construction Program. Clemons explained that the amendment to the construction program was necessary because the funds were not part of the RAISE grant the County has applied for, but rather part of the Five Year Construction Program, which needed to be amended to move the funding from the Fiscal Year 2027 plan into the Fiscal Year 2025 plan.
If this RAISE grant was given to us, to the county," Clemons explained, "that's when we were planning to do it anyway. So I made it realistic that, hey, if this is given we're gonna go right ahead."
"We will use about 550 000 from our FM account and then also 2.2 million we're hopefully getting from the federal RAISE Grant. Now that's 80% of that, up to 80%, it could be lower, could be 60%. So we would just have to influx with our VR, that they might let us use, or FM."
Clemons then filled the county in on the road crews work with the recent wintry weather. "Lot of snow for the blades and trucks," Clemons said, adding that two work orders were done. And then, with full blown winter operations "we went from Tuesday with the wintry mix on the North End of the County for trucks," after which, Clemons explained, they had trucks out every day through Friday. Then, Clemons added, "we had some thawing and refreeze on Saturday," which sent the crews back out Saturday morning as well.
After the board went over a summary of old business and a look ahead at the week's schedule, Duane Asbe gave the county Charitable Foundation's annual update. Asbe spoke at length about the work of the foundation and its plans for grant making going forward. Not only would the Foundation switch to an annual granting process, in order to lessen the workload on partners like the Wright County Economic Development office, Asbe said, "also we're going to maybe focus on trying to get maybe larger, potentially
more larger, impactful grants, rather than maybe the two, three, four thousand dollar grants or whatever it is. To make maybe a bigger bang, so to speak."
Asbe went into great detail about many aspects of the Foundations efforts, noting that since the Foundation started making grants in 2006, they have made over 20 million dollars in grants. "So anyway," Asbe said, "again you can see uh the dollars are becoming, really, quite significant." And, asbe noted, "at the end of December of this past year those funds listed have a total asset value of a little over seven and a half million dollars." Total contributions in 2022 totaled just short of $300,000, and the foundation made over half a million in grants in 2022, Asbe related.
Foundation board member Kevin Cahalan of Eagle Grove then spoke to the Supervisors. "For that 45 4 500 that you're pledging here today, " Cahalan said, "I've seen the impact it makes with people both on the the non-profit side where it's helping them socially. But I also feel you've seen the impact economically, that that 4500 multiplies into. So if you can find it in the budget or your hearts do we have more than that we can make sure that we quadruple that or even add to that even more economically and socially. So if you could find it in your hearts and in your budget to get more than that 4500 we'd appreciate it."
"It is definitely in our hearts," Chairman Dean Kluss replied, "we do see the value. Absolutely, no doubt about it."
Before wrapping up his remarks Asbe took a moment to call out Darryl Steven Carlyle and Kim Demory in the Wright County Economic Development office for all their help with the Foundation's work. Shortly thereafter the meeting was adjourned.
