Members of the Faribault County Board are pictured above during the long day of meetings.

The last meeting of the 2025 year for the Faribault County Board of Commissioners was a nearly five-hour marathon of three meetings in a row, mainly covering a couple dozen different end of year topics.

The County Board started with their regular second meeting of the month on Tuesday, Dec. 16 at 2 p.m., followed by a Ditch Authority meeting and finally ending at 6 p.m. with the annual Truth In Taxation meeting that lasted until 7 p.m.

At the end of that Truth In Taxation meeting, the board voted to pass the budget and the final levy for 2026. The levy was set at $17,447,891, which is an increase of 3.99 percent from the current year.

The board had originally had the proposed levy hike at 6.78 percent, but then worked on lowering it.

Commissioner Groskreutz was the lone dissenting vote. Asked after the meeting was over why he voted no, Groskreutz said there were several reasons.

“I didn’t like that dollars were not put back into the Health and Human Services reserve,” Groskreutz said. “Or giving funding to the inclusive playground in Blue Earth. It’s not that I don’t think it is a good idea, I just don’t think it’s the proper use of county funds.”

There were nine citizens at the Truth In Taxation meeting and all of them were offered the opportunity to speak about the budget and levy.

Most of them were concerned about their proposed property taxes going up, in some cases going up dramatically.

However, most of them were upset with the valuations of their properties going up a lot.

Kevin Walker, former mayor of Delavan, was concerned about taxes on his farmland and on some vacant lots he owns in Delavan.

“I bought them from you (the county) when they were tax forfeited to the county,” he said. “Now the tax is more than what I paid for them. I’m not going to pay it. You can have them back.”

The board listened to all of the concerns and advised most of the citizens to go across the hall to the assessor’s office and he would explain their situation and try and help them. Almost all of them did do exactly that.

The visitors were also advised that the time to raise questions about the tax valuation of their property is at the Board of Equalization that is in April.

At the regular meeting the County Board heard from several different department heads, mainly with end of the year updates and requests for board action.

April Wellman, county engineer and Public Works director, requested that the board approve designating some funds from this year be spent next year on new snowplow equipment for three tandems. The board approved it.

She also presented four bids/quotes for tractors. The lowest bid was from Ziegler Equipment for $100,500 which includes a loader. It will also have a mower attached. It was accepted.

Brandee Douglas, GIS coordinator, requested approval of the professional services contract with Schneider GIS Support for next year, which was approved.

Kendra Reineking, EDA specialist, asked for the board’s approval for the County EDA’s contract with CEDA for her services be renewed. The contract first had a five percent increase but had been lowered to four percent.

The contract calls for a four day a week schedule at a cost of $92,424. It was approved by the board.

Kelly Hendrickson, county recorder, requested the board approve a proposal to use some of the $11 fee per document recorded to be used to pay an independent contractor to work on back indexing of historical documents. It was approved.

She also proposed a $75 fee for any judicial requests to scrub personal address information from documents. It was passed after some discussion.

Amanda Schoff, Human Resources director, gave an update on implementation of the new state-wide Paid Family and Medical Leave program which starts Jan.1, and asked for the board to approve it, which they did.

She requested that a current county FMLA plan be restarted to zero as of Jan. 1, so the two plans do not overlap. The board approved that as well.

Schoff also asked for board approval for the hire of a new full-time sheriff’s deputy, Michael Sharp, and the board passed the motion to do so.

Wellman, Hendrickson and Schoff, as well as county attorney Cameron Davis and sheriff Scott Adams, all asked the board to approve a three percent cost of living adjustment to all of the wages of staff in their departments.

The board voted on each request separately and approved all the requests, with board member Bill Groskreutz voting no on the request from the county attorney.

Groskreutz said he had heard from citizens who were not happy with some of the ways court cases were handled.

In other business at the regular meeting, the County Board:

• Approved a gambling permit for Pheasants Forever Inc. to conduct a raffle.

• Approved authorizing a credit card with a limit of $2,500 for the county recorder.

• Passed a resolution delegating the authority to make electronic funds transfers to Chuck Schrader, Darrel Boeckman and Karey Daschner.

• Approved training requests from B. Bonin and C. Albers for ARMER CPS Training in Brainerd at Crow Wing Co. Operations Center.