The Polk County Commissioners met Tuesday morning at the Polk County Government Center in Crookston.
FINANCE STATUS UPDATE/2024 AUDIT EXIT REPORT
Polk County Finance Director Stacy Grover took over the job in May 2025 and has been improving the finance department with new financial/accounting programs and working with Hoffman, Philipp, and Martell to streamline everything for the county. “We’re making some significant changes in our protocols, our processes, and really trying to streamline and then also add in internal controls so that we’re making sure we’re safeguarding those public assets and public funds that we’ve got going on,” said Grover. “And getting staff more training. We’ve got a lot of software initiatives going on right now, as well as working on getting the 2026 budget out, determining the levy, capital improvement. So really a lot of great things, just a lot of things moving really fast at the same time. So it’s been a great few months.“
Grover and and three members of Hoffman, Philipp, and Martell PLLC presented the 2024 Audit exit to the board. “We’re going to make some great changes going forward on kind of payroll. We’ve talked about the payroll pieces of what needs to change and new systems, new processes, internal controls on that. We’ve got some other findings that will come off in the 25 audit because we’ve already addressed them, which are great in terms of putting in our internal controls,” said Grover. “There’s a lot of parts of it because we have some very large departments that I may not necessarily control, but I do still have some oversight and influence on. And so that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing for the taxpayers. It’s a good thing for the county to have clean audits. It impacts our bond ratings. It does have a significant impact on a lot of stuff.“
RESIDENTS SHOULD INCLUDE PAYMENT STUBS WITH PROPERTY TAX PAYMENTS
Grover would like to remind Polk County property owners to send in the payment stubs or property parcel numbers when paying property tax payments. “We’re really just asking the taxpayers to bring in their parcel, their tax statement stub, the pay stub, or come in with a list of the parcel numbers when they come in to pay their taxes in person because our system, we just really simply can’t look up a person’s name because there’s different variations of how that name has been put in,” said Grover. “There’s different variations of how the name came to us from the deed company, co-ownerships, people who own properties and a lot of sub-properties. So if we don’t have that parcel and that information, we have the potential for missing the property and getting the payment applied correctly. It also speeds up the counter for them. So that makes the process go better for both of us, for the counter and for the taxpayer. But that makes sure that we get the payment to the right parcel is really the big piece.”
DITCH CLEANING APPROVED
Polk County Highway Engineer Richard Sanders came before the board and had two ditch projects approved. The first project was State Ditch 61 in Section 12 of Gully Township. The county will survey the ditch, and the landowner will do the work. The second project is County Ditch 30 in Section 34 of Fanny Township. The county will survey, and Grant Plante will do the work. “The first one was in section 12 of Gulley Township, State Ditch 61, our new combined State Ditch 61, and so the landowner requested that it be cleaned, and so the board approved us to survey and clean it as necessary. The second one was County Ditch 30, the north side of section 34 of Fannie Township. It’s about a half mile long, and the board approved surveying and cleaning that one as well,” said Sanders. “Sometimes landowners have their own equipment, and it’s easier, probably even less costly for them to do it themselves, because under the normal process, they’ll petition for a ditch to be cleaned. We’ll go out and survey it. If it needs to be cleaned, we’ll hire a contractor. The contractor has to mobilize up there and then spend money cleaning it, and then that gets spread out over the entire benefited area. So the landowner will get billed one way or the other, and sometimes they just feel, I’m here, I have the equipment, I’ll just do it myself and save us some time and effort. And so we have had landowners do that in the past.”
Sanders said they are trying to keep the roadways clear of mud and preparing for snow removal. “Right now we’re just in the process of scraping mud. We’ve gone through the first couple of weeks of October, some dry, some wet. Harvest seems to have gone well, but you have muddy roads. And so our snowplow operators start driving their routes, scraping mud. We can only do it so often, so we ask the farmers to make sure that they’re out there scraping their mud as well, because the worst thing that could happen is to have that mud cause a crash on the roadway. Then lawyers get involved. So we don’t like that,” said Sanders. “Right now, they’re making sure all their equipment is workable and getting their plows put on their trucks. And so whenever we do get measurable snow, hopefully not till after Thanksgiving, then they’ll be ready to plow snow.”
SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT MONTHLY REPORT
Polk County Sheriff James Tadman gave his monthly report, and the department had 843 calls for service in September. The top 10 calls in September were –
1. 256 traffic stops
2. 143 civil process
3. 120 school patrol
4. 21 welfare check
5. 20 POR (Protection order registry) checks
6. 19 public assists
7. 17 motorist assist
8. 16 information/tip
9. 15 assist other agency
10. 14 animal complaint