BLUE EARTH– “We are on track to sell $6 million of bonds in December,” county auditor Darren Esser informed the Faribault County Commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday morning.

The discussion on bonds occurred while Public Works director Mark Daly was updating the board on projects for 2022 and 2023.

Currently the county will seek a $6 million bond before the end of this year and then $8-$10 million in additional bonding in January.

“If we do this bonding, we will take care of the worst roads in the county,” Daly commented.

Daly laid out his plans for the next two years.

“We would like to use 90,000 tons of product in 2022 and another 85,000 tons in 2023,” he explained. “We will push back doing the roads (now known as County Roads 17 and 23) until 2024,” he noted. ”When we did our road tour we found the one-inch overlays were holding up quite well so we believe we can delay those for one year.”

Board member Bruce Anderson wondered if the traffic on CR 17 would cause it too break down earlier.

“Isn’t it one of the most-traveled roads in the county?” Anderson asked. ”I know it gets a lot of semi traffic.”

Daly answered that other than streets in some of the municipalities, it is a well-traveled road.

“County Road 16 is the most traveled,” Daly said. ”After that, County Road 29 is next with about 1,200 vehicles on it per day and County Road 17 would be next with 1,050 vehicles per day.”

Daly also told the board 2022 will be the last year the county will be asking for Federal Aid advances for the forseeable future.

“We should not need to have money advanced unless there is some unforeseen incident which would change things,” he commented.

The board also:

— Approved signing a contract with Beacon for a one-time set-up cost of $4,320 to connect to the new Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) system with Vanguard. This will allow Beacon to pull data from the new CAMA system.

— Voted to renew a joint powers agreement with the South Central Drug Investigation and Tactical Team Units. The members of the agreement include the cities of Albert Lea, Blooming Prairie, Blue Earth, New Richland, Janesville, Owatonna, Waseca, Wells and Winnebago along with Faribault, Freeborn, Steele and Waseca counties.

— Set 9 am on Dec. 17, as the time of the next public landowner and tax forfeiture auction. It will be held on the east steps of the Faribault County Courthouse unless the weather is bad, then it will be moved inside the courthouse.