A hiring committee comprised of County Commissioners Bruce Martinson and Jan Hall, Engineering Technician Bill Parish, Maintenance Supervisor Russell Klegstad, and Personnel Director Janet Simonen agreed unanimously to offer to a licensed engineer named David Betts the county highway engineer/ agricultural inspector job recently vacated by Shae Kosmalski.
Four candidates were interviewed out of a field of eight applicants.
Personnel Director Simonen talked about the reference check she conducted and said Betts is familiar with municipal engineering and skilled at dealing with people. “He’s a very good engineer,” she said, “very detailed.”
If Betts wants the job, Commissioners Martinson and Hall will negotiate a salary with him that will be similar to what Kosmalski had been paid.
All the candidates they interviewed were good, Klegstad said.
In other news:
. The board voted to award the lower of two bids for gravel crushing to Edwin E. Thoreson Inc. in the amount of $121,850. The other bid, from Hardrives Inc., was for $151,700.
Only $90,000 was budgeted for gravel crushing this year, but $50,000 was left over from gravel crushing that a contractor did not complete last year.
Commissioner Jim Johnson asked Maintenance Director Russell Klegstad to thank Edwin E. Thoreson’s Inc. for making a bid.
. The board accepted a grant for the county’s Emergency Management Department in the amount of $18,106 from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division. This is an annual grant that totaled only $13,884 last year.
“This was a significant increase,” said Auditor-Treasurer Braidy Powers. The grant requires a 50% match that is satisfied by the time Emergency Management Director Jim Wiinanen spends running the program. . At the request of the board, Auditor- Treasurer Braidy Powers will be seeking quotes from engineering firms on evaluating bids the county might receive for updating its heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system and making it more energy efficient. The Cook County Local Energy Project (CCLEP) has assisted the county in applying for a grant that would help pay for such a project.
The county would not be required to solicit multiple bids if a bidder provided a guarantee that the cost of the project would be made up in a certain length of time by energy savings. One company had originally told the county their system would bring a six-year payback, but now they will not guarantee that, Powers told the board.
The county could solicit “best value” bids, looking not just for the cheapest systems but also for the ones that produce the best payback. Evaluating such bids requires technical expertise, however, which could be provided by the engineering firms Powers will be contacting.
Commissioner Jim Johnson said the St. Louis County maintenance director has incorporated numerous energy-saving technologies that use renewable forms of energy in county buildings.
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