BLUE EARTH– 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 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.

The board approved it.

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 schedule at a cost of $92,424. It was approved by the board.

Kelley 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use some of the $11 fee per document recorded to be used to pay an independent contractor to work on back indexing of historical documents.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.

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.

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.

At the 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. Commissioner Groskreutz was the lone dissenting vote.

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.