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Votes at a glance: Blue Earth County Board of Commissioners, March 25, 2025
Summary
Summary of formal actions the board took on March 25, 2025, including bid awards, hearing dates, grant/MOU approvals, policy adoptions and contract delegations.
The Blue Earth County Board of Commissioners took several formal actions during its March 25, 2025 meeting. Below are the items recorded on the meeting record.
Votes and formal actions
- Breckenridge Path landscaping phase 2 bid award: The board awarded the landscaping Phase 2 quotation for the Breckenridge Path project to Chambers Excavating and Trucking of Mankato for $8,804.50 and accepted facility staff's recommendation. (Speaker: Luke Peterson, City of Mankato facilities division.)
- County Ditch 56 Branch 3: The board accepted ISG's engineer's advisory report and ordered plans and bidding (covered in a separate article).
- County Ditch 5: The board set a final hearing date on the petition to add additional acres into County Ditch 5 for April 8, 2025, at 9 a.m. The petition, viewers' report and engineer review were received and the board set the hearing date as requested.
- Spending resolution (bond cap): The board increased the bond spending-resolution cap from $20 million to $30 million (non-binding marker to preserve reimbursement rights and future borrowing flexibility).
- Human services: The board approved several items presented by the Human Services director, including renewal of a Cherry Ridge memorandum of understanding (MOU) covering rental assistance and supportive services for eight households with county and HUD funding components, adoption of a county housing development priorities policy (tiered priority approach for development), and advisory committee appointments for named district representatives (Paige Durnberger, Janelle Sipe, Kristen Net, Vanessa Jones). The MOU term was Aug. 1, 2024'July 30, 2025; county share of rental assistance listed in materials and staff packet.
- Poor Farm parcels: After sealed bids came in below expectations, the board rejected all sealed bids for the six Poor Farm parcels and authorized the county to engage a broker and delegated authority to the county administrator to accept or reject offers after consulting the board.
- PACE loan revision: The board approved a revised PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) assessment request from the St. Paul Port Authority revising the assessment amount from $1,500,000 to $1,750,000 and noting a lower interest rate; the board acts as a conduit for the assessment in its role.
- Bassett Road joint powers agreement: The board approved a joint powers agreement with the State of Minnesota to share design-costs (county's half of $70,000 design) related to the Bassett Road extension tied to the planned Bureau of Criminal Apprehension facility; the road will ultimately be turned over to the City of Mankato.
- Employee recognition policy: The board approved a new employee recognition policy and directed staff to form a cross-section committee to develop recognition activities within budget constraints.
- All Seasons Arena change orders: The All Seasons Arena Board-approved change orders totaling $61,514.42 were approved by the county board; staff said the changes reduce the project contingency to $18,171.12 and described plans to replenish contingency from operating reserves or asset sales.
How votes were recorded
Most motions were adopted by voice vote; where a roll call was not recorded the chair called for ayes and declared motions carried. The transcript records multiple motions with seconds and voice votes but does not provide roll-call tallies for those items.
Ending: Board members closed the meeting after committee reports and a recess; many items will require follow-up from county staff, consultants or partner agencies.
