Kandiyohi County approves higher daily fee for work-release GPS monitoring

The Kandiyohi County Board of Commissioners voted to increase the daily fee for work-release participants from $16 to $22.50 to fund GPS-enabled ankle monitoring, Chief Deputy Kent Baumann told the board during the June meeting.

The change matters because it shifts the monitoring method from periodic visual checks by staff to continuous GPS tracking; the county said the increase covers equipment and monitoring costs and provides more information about participants’ locations while on work release.

Chief Deputy Kent Baumann presented the request while Sheriff Tolleson was at an out-of-area conference and said the county’s current checks “is one of our staff leaving and kinda tracking them themselves and making sure they go where they need to go, kinda very, you know, seventies and eighties kind of a thing where you're just doing a visual check on them.” He described the new system as a “GPS enabled, ankle bracelet that's rechargeable … it also tracks to wherever they're at all the whole time that they're outside of our facility. It gives us some more security and some safety.”

Commissioners asked technical and operational questions. Baumann said the devices alert staff if someone tries to remove them, and acknowledged the system is not foolproof: “It's not foolproof that if you have the time and the desire that you couldn't cut it off, but you're alerted if that does happen.” He also said the ankle units will be rechargeable and that the monitoring addresses situations when work release jobs are located outside the immediate city where visual checks are impractical.

The board moved and seconded the staff recommendation and approved the request by voice vote. No roll-call vote or abstentions were recorded on the transcript. The motion approved the fee increase and allows the county to implement the GPS-enabled monitoring described by staff.