Clay County Commission

Dan Haglund

About $74,000 in new budget requests for 2024 were presented by the information services, technology services and human resources department heads to the Clay County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday in Moorhead.

First up before the board was Mark Sloan, Clay County Information Services director.

Sloan advised that a name change for Information Services is coming, and will be known as the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Communications Department.

Sloan said his department is not asking for any new requests and staffing is sufficient.

“However, like most people have noticed, things are costing more,” Sloan said. “There’s some increases in some of these line-items specifically driven by the cost of goods and services. I end up with about a 6 percent increase in my overall budget. About two-thirds of that is salaries, but the rest is just driven by the cost of what we’re doing.”

Clay County administrator Stephen Larson pointed out that a 3-percent increase has already been built into the salary portion of department budgets for 2024.

Sloan added two logistical updates for the board as well. He said the county surveyor services RFPs are due next week, after which his committee will review them for a future recommendation to the board. The other item is a website redesign rollout date for early August.

For technology services, county director Rory Schmitz hit on a few points for next year’s budget.

One updated budget item will be the courthouse clocks, reducing from $181,000 to $160,000 after the upgrade costs have been satisfied.

But there’s also a new $85,000 joint request for Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) security requirements. This also includes requirements for increased multi-factor authentication for secure facilities within the U.S. criminal justice system. The proposed timeline for this from the BCA is October.

“But this number will likely go down,” Schmitz said.

Schmitz mentioned that his department hosts a Social Services Solution for 20 other counties which brought in a little over $61,000 in miscellaneous revenue for next year, the highest annual amount to date.

Regarding salaries, Schmitz said due to step increases and COLAs (cost of living adjustments), his budget will increase just under $33,000 for next year. Overtime salaries will be reduced, he said, from $6,500 to $5,000.

Association dues and memberships will be reduced from $4,850 to $4,000. Schmitz mentioned his department hasn’t used the full amount recently, so dropping the budget expectation would reflect that trend. The gas and oil budget will remain the same.

Schmitz said his training budget will be reduced by $2,000 as well, and equipment repair and maintenance will drop by $10,000. Data processing supplies will also be lowered by $5,000.

There is a request for $25,000 additional in internal services for upgraded computers and monitors.

In human resources, no new official requests were made, but HR director Darren Brooke make note of a $25,000 market study in his budget, which is about $1,000 more than a similar 2019 study, but said this expense could eventually be moved to another budget category altogether. It is presently housed for accounting purposes in “other professional services.”

Going over the department budget requests, Brooke pointed out a positive note.

“You’ll see that my health insurance (budget) did go down a little, which is surprising,” Brooke said. “Because only one of my employees went from family to single coverage.”

Brooke added that some training seminars and retreats had gone virtual during Covid, and that his department has started returning to these more normally now, adding back those normal costs.