BLUE EARTH– After hearing from many members of the public on Tuesday, the Faribault County Commissioners eventually opted to not adopt a resolution which dealt with the issue of using voting machines or doing hand counting of ballots in the upcoming General Election on Nov. 8.

The County Board members had previously discussed the issue at their last meeting, and had heard from some members of the public who requested hand counting of the ballots.

County Board chairman Greg Young allowed any and all who wished to speak to the issue to address the board. Several did; some who supported hand counting and some who prefered to leave the voting machines in place.

County commissioner Tom Loveall said he believed the machines did an accurate job, but in order to show they did, he made a motion to do both machine counting and hand counting at the next election, with the machine count being the official tally.

His motion died for lack of a second, and no other motions were brought forward, so the voting machines will be used in this next election as usual.

In other business, the County Board:

— Approved the hiring of Sara Hauskins as the new Planning and Zoning administrator.

— Took a vote whether to forgive a Small Cities Development Loan that had been requested by Kelly Joseph on behalf of her mother, Mildred Sailor, of Wells. The motion to do so failed to pass on a 2-2 tie, with chairman Young then braking the tie by casting the deciding no vote.

— Heard a report from Saxon Warmka, Buildings/Facilities director, and approved the purchase of a new trailer from Yeager Implement at a cost of $5,124. It will be used to haul various pieces of county maintenance equipment, such as mowers and snowblowers.

Also learned from Warmka that an old buried tank, which was thought to be 2,000 gallons in size, was actually 10,000 gallons and will take special equipment to remove.

— Approved the payments to various construction firms in the amount of $427,527.55 for work done on the courthouse HVAC project. Also authorized payment of $72,780.10 to Kraus-Anderson for constuction management costs dealing with the courthouse project.

— Authorized Brandee Douglas, GIS coordinator, to pursue a grant for participation in the USGS 3D Elevation Program.

— Authorized County Auditor Darren Esser to pursue the purchase of new property tax software for the county.