FAIRMONT– The Martin County Board of Commissioners heard a progress report from Jonathan Loose of Wold Architects on the proposed Martin County Regional Public Safety and Justice Center during its meeting on Tuesday.

Loose said they finished the schematic design in September and presented it to the core planning group. The site analysis is expected to be completed in November.

Several user group meetings with department staff have taken place with the last one happening this week.

Loose showed the board of commissioners an overview of the site and the proposed design.

“We’re looking to prepare an updated cost estimate with ICS, the construction manager, toward the end of November. From that point we’ll make some decisions about how to move forward into construction documents,” Loose said.

He said then they would issue the project in February and go out for bids in March. However, Loose stressed that it’s all predicated on the funding piece. He said they anticipate more discussions about that with the core planning group as they get into the construction documents so the building can be modified as needed, depending on what plan forward the county wants to take.

“Again, we’d love to bid it sometime in the spring as long as everything continues forward and really have it complete by the end of 2024,” Loose said.

He said they’ll be back sometime after the first over the year to provide the commissioners with another update.

Moving to other matters, the board appointed several people to the Auditor/Treasurer’s Office.

Following the resignation of Auditor/Treasurer, Jessica Korte, last month, the board appointed several interim Auditor/Treasurer’s to run the office. However, due to health reasons, one of them, John Thompson, needed to resign. The board accepted his resignation with regret.

Commissioner Elliot Belgard said they needed to consider the appointment of a new interim Auditor/Treasurer.

“As we know, we need to have an Auditor/Treasurer in place by next Tuesday (election day). We can’t not have an Auditor/Treasurer. We need to have one,” Belgard said.

The board authorized appointing Mike Forstner, current drainage systems manager, as the interim Auditor/Treasurer to fill out the current term.

Belgard said there are currently six open positions in the Auditor/Treasurer’s Office. The board approved the hire of Kim Mraz as Land Records Technician with the start date of Nov. 14. It also approved the temporary hire of Jean Prochniak to assist the office. Prochniak is the former Auditor/Treasurer for Brown County.

“We were fortunate that last Wednesday we had an AMC district 7 meeting in Fairmont. The meetings are for the counties to help each other out and we put out a call for help. The Brown County administrator was there and he contacted her (Jean) and she contacted us the same day. She’s from New Ulm, recently retired, and willing to come in and help out. We are very fortunate,” said Belgard.

In other action, the board:

— Recognized Pam Flitter, Planning and Zoning Director, for receiving the Tina Rosenstein Outstanding Service Award.

— Approved Commissioners Kathy Smith and Belgard to be on the canvassing board for the general election.

— Accepted the resignation of the Youth Intervention and Prevention Coordinator.

— Set a public hearing time and date of 5 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 8 to consider abatement to Darin Pesta of property taxes to be levied by the county for new construction of a single family home in Nashville Township.

— Approved tax abatement to Douglas and Kristine Fuller for new construction in Elm Creek Township.