By Mari Radtke
A Level B road in O’Brien County won approval be the board of supervisors for temporary closure. The level B road will get a significant grading. 470th Street between McKinley and Monroe Avenues will be closed until construction is complete. The grading project is expected to take about a week.
The supervisors also approved waiving the comment period for the Tanner Matthews swine confinement application.
Appointing a replacement for Royd Chambers to the Conservation Board received a great deal of discussion and drew a crowd. Three nominees were presented for consideration: Jack Schreurs of Sheldon, Jan Snyder of Sanborn and Tom Konz rural, west central O’Brien County. Tom Konz was selected on a 3-1 vote. Sherri Bootsma opposed.
In other Conservation news and in the immortal words of Paul Harvey…
And now, the REST of the story.
Original documents will be available in their entirety on our website, www.belltimescourier.com.
Last week, we released a communication written by the (then) newly promoted Assistant Director of Conservation, Amber Wetherell. The two organizations have enjoyed a long and previously highly cooperative and successful relationship. Since then additional documents have been obtained through public records requests. The documents lay out a timeline until the announcement of Terry Boltjes’ retirement. Nothing provides a clear indication of a relationship to that decision.
The first identifiable distribution of the communication was emailed to each board member of Little Sioux Valley Conservation Association (LSVCA) on Friday, September 11, 2020 at 11:25am by Wetherell. She sent the same document to all of the O’Brien County Conservation Board (OCCB) members that same day almost an hour later at 12:13pm. On Tuesday September 15 a text from Chairman Royd Chambers to Sherri Bootsma at 6:48pm indicated that (then) Director Terry Boltjes had not authorized the sending of the communication. It also stated that Chambers had authorized Boltjes to seek legal counsel.
Nearly an hour later at 7:46pm Chambers sent all of the OCCB members a more formal notification that Boltjes did not approve release of that document to LSVCA and that it was intended for OCCB members and for the county attorney. He characterized the release as “an error.” Chambers continued that public records had been requested. Authorization had been given to check with Micah Schreurs for services with these matters.
The following day at 12:52pm Boltjes emailed all OCCB members that he had dropped of information to Schreurs. Chambers’ letter from the night before was included.
Thursday September 17 at 11:30am shows and apology sent from Wetherell went to Darin Johnson and Bruce Morrison, LSVCA board members. The county attorney had been blind cc’d in on that email.
At 7:36 am on Tuesday September 29 Wetherell sent a letter to all OCCB members she says she Boltjes asked her to send. That email explains that the letter says, in part, he did direct Wetherell to send her communication to LSVCA and to “say the contents of it at the last OCCB board meeting (which would have been September 9, 2020) in front of newspaper, Dave Stoll, Denise Steffen, our board members, and whatever other visitors attended that evening.”
Boltjes submitted his resignation and notice of retirement on October 1, 2020.
The next regular OCCB meeting is scheduled for Wednesday June 9 at 7:00pm The location is to be announced.