The Polk County Board of Commissioners met on Tuesday, July 15, at the Government Center in Crookston.
Karen Warmack, Director of Polk County Social Services, asked the board to approve Social Services’ finding a replacement for a Family-Based Service Provider and any subsequent positions made vacant by filling that position. The board unanimously approved Social Services’ hiring for the position.
Sheriff Tadman’s monthly report for June was included in the board’s packet. For document service statistics for June, there was a total of 72. The transportation log for June had a total of 5881 miles, which remains pretty consistent with the rest of the year so far. There were 2,699 Calls for Service, 797 of those being Emergency and 1902 being Non-Emergency calls. The top call for service categories for June were: Civil Process (182), Traffic Stop (133), Public Assist (34), Info/Tip (19), and Assisting other agency (18).
Finance Director Stacy Grover provided the board with project updates and some items that are yet to happen in July, including the July Audit and Financial Report from Abdo. “I’m starting to kind of have conversations with the board about Fund Balances, best practices on budgeting, and trying to roll in some of those aspects so that we are talking about similar terminology,” says Grover. “We are on day four, I think, of Questica. It will be good once we are all comfortable with it, but it’s a very robust system. I like it from a budgeting standpoint and visibility. I hope the departments will too, after we give it a little bit of time to get used to it. It will be good.” Questica is budgeting software that the county will be using to get ready for 2026.
Director of Property Records Sam Melbye also requested the board approve of filling a vacancy in his department. Due to a recent resignation, there is a vacant Appraiser position. The board unanimously approved Melbye’s hiring to fill the position.
County Administrator Chuck Whiting gave the board a few updates during the meeting. The first was a meeting with the Marshall Polk Rural Water System Representatives. “At the last meeting we had we had some of the appointees to the Marshall Polk Rural Water System in to address some of the concerns, that really fall to the Polk County Board regarding the formation of the West Central Regional Water District which will end up having a common boundary line with Marshall Polk and how to resolve issues with that as far as service area,” says Whiting. “The concern with Marshall Polk, obviously, they have been around since about 1970, and feel maybe that the new district limits their ability to expand. The Polk County Board position has always been whoever can service an area, have at it.”
There is a court process, though, Whiting says, that needs to be determined when a new district is being formed, and that is the case with West Central. Whiting says that he let the appointees and their director know how best to ensure them that Polk County hears their concerns and will deal with them fairly and appropriately into the future. “We are working on a resolution. There is a memorandum of understanding that has been drafted for Marshall Polk and West Central, and this will kind of be Polk County’s blessing on top of that,” says Whiting. “I’ve just kind of worked on a draft and given it to Marshall Polk, and we will see what they say on the resolution, and we will bring it back at a future date.”
As far as the budget update, Whiting is feeling encouraged at where things are. “Most of what we are doing right now is how we are doing the budget. Since we have some new software on both the HR and the Payroll side and the budget formulation itself,” says Whiting. “We are all kind of excited about it because it does some things we haven’t been able to do in the past, and we rolled it out to the department heads last week, so they are working on entering their preliminary budgets for 2026, and we will see how it goes here as the weeks go on.”
During the County Board Members Issue Forum earlier in the meeting, Board Chair Mark Holy (5th District) announced that he would be stepping down from his Chair position for health-related reasons. Holy is not resigning from his position with the board at this time, but is stepping down as Chair so he can concentrate on his health.