- Roll Call: ALl commissioners present
- Approval of Agenda
- Approval of Minutes – Regular Meeting – August 11th, 2026.
- SHERIFF’S OFFICE: Jesse Thomas
- Radio Boosters at Rice County Government Services Building.
- Approved Approve quote from Berk-Tel Communications for installation of I-BAND radio booster at the Government Services Building
- for $79,440.00
- Peters: Does the contract include the wiring and install?
- A: My assumption that includes everything except going to the roof.
- Peters: They had to go into the IT room?
- Purfeerst: Does the courthouse have the same issue?
- A: Yes, but I don’t see it as important, because we have the checkpoint and have it manned with staff, and if something happens we have it all on camera, and it will be taken care of next year.
- Underdahl: The tower is up on the outside of Faribault and most of downtown is shielded from the signal, so this is not our unique problem.
- A: It’s part of firecode to have this system put in. It needs to get done.
- Purfeers: What kind of range will you have?
- A: Ability to talk to anyone in the state.
- ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES: Julie Runkel
- Approved all of the following unanimously
- Conditional use Permit/The Towers LLC – Section 32, Walcott Township
- Interim Use Permit/Gedicke – Section 28, Walcott Township
- Final Plat/Johnson – Section 8, Wells Township
- Final Plat/Franek – Section 15, Wheatland Township
- CHILD AND FAMILY: Chris Sammon
- Unanimously approved Child Support NextGen grant acceptance
- Rice County, on behalf of the nextSTEP multicounty partnership, has been awarded a three year federal grant to provide Employment and Training Services to non-custodial parents with Child Support orders.
- This program provides opportunities for participants to build work skills and establish long-term employment and financial stability, and ability to meet their child support obligations. Funding for this program comes from the federal New Generations Employment Services Grant awarded to Minnesota late 2024. This program has been in planning and design for two years and is ready now to roll out to counties.
- Rice County has been awarded $24,615 annually for three years (totaling $73,845) which will be contracted to Workforce Development, Inc., our local employment services partner. A contract has been received from the Child Support Division at Department of Children, Youth and Families and has been reviewed by Rice County Attorney’s Office for signature. With the Board’s approval, when the contract has been fully executed, a service agreement with Workforce Development Inc.(WDI) will be prepared, reviewed by Rice County Attorney’s Office, and executed to implement these services. No new positions at Rice County Social Services will be needed to administer this contract nor the pass-through service agreement with WDI.
- No new positions will be needed to implement the program.
- This is a pass through contract for services.
- Would serve 43 non-custodial parents over three years. Focusing on cases where the parent has contempt orders, have exhausted unemployment, and have made partial payments.
- Services would include job search and readiness training, job development and placement services,and things like transportation assistance.
- Purfeerst: The prevailing wage will kick in from the state after the grant ends?
- If we’re talking about staff, that would be passthrough to WDI and they will determine what is being paid to staff.
- Prevailing wage does not apply because it’s for construction contracts and this is a passthrough.
- Peters: 40% of participants reside in Rice county?
- A: Someone, one parent, could reside in Dakota county, while the other resides in Rice. So 40% of the eligible people live in Rice County.
- COMMUNITY SERVICES: Rick Gieseke
- Community Services: Legislative, funding, and budget updates
- The volume of their work is increasing. Being asked to do more with less.
- One goal: Use motor pool and have less personal mileage.
- Also looking into AI in social services to help field a large volume of calls and take the calls for people applying for public assistance and AI reads the rights and responsibilities. We have about 35,000 calls per year and a lot of employee time is spent reading those rights and responsibilities.
- The cost of placing juveniles has increased dramatically in the last few years. And we’re having fewer placements because of it. Will be trying to see if there are any reimbursements we are missing.
- Last focused on employee retention to save costs on staff transitions.
- Child and family services has received some grant funds
- Special One-time Funding $129,302 for Implementation of MAAFPCWDA (Minnesota African American Family Prevention and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act)
- Regional Child & Adolescent Mental Health Initiative Grant
- And in general, allocation of recurring grants in this division have been fairly stable.
- Adult Services
- In the coming legislative session there is a lot of potential impact on Rice County. Cost shifts – maybe about 3.5% increases in 2028 for the counties. And that will change every year. DHS did not accept any recommendations from county adult services advocacy groups in 2026. So the stakes are high and this year will be a last ditch effort.
- Potential impact of LTSS (Long-Term Support Services)
- Increased complexities of people served with less resources
- Staff are extraordinarily stressed as they work to staff more complex cases with fewer resources.
- Increased demands of programming changes
- MnCHOICES
- CFSS (Community First Services and Supports)
- IHS (Individualized Home Supports)
- One recommendation from the state to address gaps in services is to provide “remote supervision” for adults with disabilities: A camera would supervise them instead of a person. This does not seem likely to work, based on the staff assessment.
- PFML (Paid Family and Medical Leave)impact to units. When you have 2 people out of a 6 person unit, it becomes very overwhelming very fast. Their case load had been 60, but now it goes up to 120 to cover for people using PFML, it is too much.
- Underdahl: So there’s program reductions but there’s not a mandate to provide more?
- A: All of these are mandated. The revenue is going down or cost shifting from state to county. When they redesigned MNchoices, which doubled the work, CFSS quadrupled the work. The restructures all move the work to the counties, without financial support. And it is all mandated.
- Folsted: Some counties are hedging that the legislature that will do something and we won’t have to handle the costs. Rice County is putting this increase in our budget, some other counties are not.
- Peters: This will add 1% to our levy?
- Hoisington: How many adults are we serving?
- Hoisington: How does in home services work?
- A: Eg: someone was living at home with mom and dad and a provider was coming in to teach independent life skills (cooking, budgeting, etc) People with disabilities don’t always know how to do this. It could also mean someone living independently with Laura Baker who was receiving services to help her remain independent. Not everyone can remain home alone.
- Malecha: How does Laura Baker home navigation work?
- A: Laura Baker is billing families for that services.
- Malecha: Is it paid by the government?
- A: I don’t think so — I think the families pay for it. They help those families work through that process.
- Malecha: We don’t bill for it?
- A: No. It starts with our intake social worker, and it might go to MN Choices. Those are not billable services until we start doing the work.
- Hoisington: Rick, you gave us a number of calls you get in social services, yearly, 35,000?
- A: 35,000 calls come to a direct main line. We also have a confusing phone tree that goes up to 10 options.
- Hoisington: That is a big number.
- Family supports
- SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) – 4,000 individuals served in Rice Co
- Administration Cost Shift 2027 (full-year) $400,096
- SNAP Error Rate Cost Shift 2027 (Quarter 4) $163,553
- Medicaid Work Requirements vAdded Six-Month Renewals
- Legislative changes: Big Beautiful Bill shifted funding from federal gov to county, including costs to administer SNAP program. Was split 50/50. It shifts to 75/25 county/fed. Was $25k to admin SNAP. There will be a $400k shift of costs to county for the year 2027. MN’s error rate is 13%, so for one quarter that would cost $163k for Rice Co.
- This also includes increased workload for staff administering medicaid due to work requirements and six-month renewals. This will significantly increase work for staff.
- Purfeerst: Those 2,000 SNAP cases: Is that household or individual?
- A: We serve 4,000 individuals.
- Peters: What does this do to our levy?
- Folsted: All of these individual pieces add up, and we’ll sum it up at the end. $400k is a 1% levy increase.
- Hoisington: Error rate – but our error rate is lower in Rice Co?
- A: Often we have a 0% error rate, but the state quality control review may only review 4-7 cases for Rice co, so it only takes one of those cases having an error to bring it to 20% or 25%. It doesn’t take much when there is such a small sample of cases tested. MN has traditionally had a lower error rate than the rest of the country. We’re up to 13% and a lot of that has to do with the software we use — it’s very outdated.
- Hoisington: This 13% error rate is shared by all of our counties?
- Community Corrections
- Funding: Revenue Impacts
- CCA Subsidy decrease anticipated for FY 2028 – $83,000
- Decrease in supervised population, ICOTS (Interstate Compact Offender Tracking System) charge
- New Court Funding – Judicial Branch – Mental Health Court +$121,000
- MN DPS Crisis Response Grant –fully funding COMPASS program +261, 000 (18 months)
- FY 2022 COSSAP grant 12-month extension +$140,000 balance
- FY 2023 Smart Supervision grant – 12-month extension request – +293, 000 balance
- Mandated versus Non-mandated services
- Juvenile Out-of-Home placements
- Staff Development and Retention
- Hoisington: What percentage of increased need?
- A: It arose through COVID, isolation – ballooning needs at the same time there are shrinking resources, fewer psychiatrists — 60-90 day waiting period to get care. And then there is a lot of collateral damage in that intervening time. And those with severe and persistent mental illness, and they’re not getting care, new behaviors lead them to interact with law enforcement, and there become multiple offenses that compound. There’s a snowball effect.
- Purfeerst: You’re the second person who has taled about paid family leave. Are you running consistently at about two out?
A: We have had three out consistently since January and one on intermittent leave.
- Peters: All four of these departments are very important.
- ADMINISTRATION: Sara Folsted
- Consent Agenda
- Extra Time/ Over Time Report 07-24-2026
- Payment of Bills
- Personnel Appointments
- ADJOURNMENT
