The repaving of County Road M12 from Highway 10 to Highway 18 has been under consideration for several years. At the July 25 board meeting County Engineer Scott Rinehart updated the supervisors with the planning stage of that project. As transition at his position approaches it was made clear that this discussion is the current plans only. This project is a federal aid project of 6.9 miles of M12 near Sutherland. Other parts of the M12 project are not part of the federal aid financing. Details with the local governments still need to be worked out. Rinehart recommended getting a 28E agreement with all of the entities on this project. The project also includes a short part of M22 shared with Clay County. Rinehart said that if you put together 18 miles (of a concrete project) “you’d get just about a good a price as you’d get anywhere.” He went on to say that the annual report had just been completed by Darla Negus, Office Manager. It shows that the O’Brien County Secondary Roads carry over “picked up another million (dollars). He added, “It went from $7 to $8 million now, so we need to have a big project to get that tapped down.” The federal aid agreement was passed unanimously.
Crack sealing has already begun on L36 north of Highway 18 and the Oak Hill Road (Germantown Road). He note that neither had been done “in forever.” This project is being done by Siouxland Commercial Sweeping, Inc.
The review of applications for the O’Brien County Conservation Board (OCCB) position were on the agenda. The item was tabled. County Attorney Katie Morgan had not answered if a discussion of volunteer board positions could be done in a closed session or not. The deadline to submit an application was July 21. At the July 25 meeting 3 applications had been submitted. Board chair Dan Friedrichsen said, at this time there would be no more applications accepted for the position.
A collector agreement with Northwest Iowa Landfill had been requested to be updated. There is an apparent hauler who is paying tonnage but is not a member. There was also concern for individual interests bringing electronics separately from contracted haulers. The non-member activities were causing concern for Northwest Iowa Landfill. The chair was authorized by the board to sign that agreement.
The 28E agreement with Sioux Rivers Regional Mental Health was made available to the supervisors. The resolution to adopt the 28E agreement to provide mental health care for O’Brien County residents through Sioux Rivers was approved and Dennis Vanden Hull was chosen as the O’Brien County board member. The size of the board has been reduced. Supervisor representation was cut in half and now represents 49% of the votes. There was discussion about having an alternate or two board members. Currently, state law does not allow an alternate to cast a vote, but a board member can vote by proxy.