Lincoln County discusses $10K lien settlement

The Lincoln County Commission met Tuesday, August 27 in the Lincoln County Boardroom. Commissioners heard agenda items including lien compromise negotiations, job reclassification and the 2050 Comprehensive Plan.

Commission Recorder, Alicia Carafo requested board action regarding a request for Lien Compromise/Settlement from Evan and Nadene Roelfsema. 

“The auditors office received a settlement request from Evan and Nadene Roelfsema in the amount of $10,735.17 for various court related fees, rental and utility assistance, etc.,” she said. 

Evan Roelfsema was present to discuss the matter with the board. 

“I’ve been sober for nine years now, I’ve been working on my credit report and went in and got approved for a home loan and this stuff never showed up on my credit report. When the title company did a search on me, that’s how this stuff came up. I didn’t know it was there, and I’m not in any kind of position to pay this. I’ve been working on this for many many years, I didn’t know it was there and I’m hoping it can go away,” he said. 

The commission congratulated the Roelfsema’s on their sobriety and discussed the possibility of a payment plan for after that date. 

Auditor, Sheri Lund told the board that the sum needs to be paid off before the closing of Mr. Roelfsema’s home. 

“There was a substantial amount of property tax money that went towards compensating these people for some issues that you had in the court system, and I think we’re all behind that now, and everybody wants to support you, but I think I see the way forward is to pay $50 a month until it’s all paid off, I think that’s fair,” Commissioner Joel Arends said. 

Commissioner Jim Schmidt discussed with the other commissioners that Mr. Roelfsema will always have a loan against him and it may be difficult to get another home loan or car loan in the future with only a $50 per month payment and $10,000 loan. 

Commissioner Arends made a motion to compromise the lien amount in the full dollar amount as listed in exchange for Mr. Roelfsema to enter into a contract with the County to sign a promissory note and pay $50 a month with the option to come back and petition the commission at any time to modify the payment plan. 

Commissioner Tiffani Landeen stated that it is not the appropriate time for a motion and the note needs to be signed and in front of the commission first. Arends agreed to withdraw his motion and move to table until the next meeting, seconded by Landeen. Motion carried 5-0.

Human Resources Director, Traci Humphrey joined the meeting for board action to approve the reclassification of the current Lead Maintenance Worker position to a Senior Building Maintenance Technician position. 

“We do have this already in the budget, but John gave a reasoning for the request basically stating that we currently have six personnel and one department head our current lead maintenance worker is going to be retiring, so the Superintendent and I have been working and reviewing the department needs and updating the job description. Previously the lead maintenance technician was housed out of the 4-H Event Center and they handled primarily a lot of the event set up and challenges, and worked with our building maintenance technician to take care of county grounds, snow removal and things of the like. Looking to the future, the department head has identified the need to have a crew that can do those same projects, but also have a more specialized position that’s why we’re asking for the senior building maintenance technician to have a higher level of HVAC and plumbing maintenance,” she said. 

With the retirement of the previous employee and it being a budgeted item, the pay scale level will be cost neutral. Motion approved

Planning Director, Toby Brown presented the 2050 Comprehensive Plan Update Presentation. The Comprehensive Plan first started in 1971 as a plan that called for commercial, residential, industrial, and public uses throughout the unincorporated areas of the county. 

“As we’re updating the 2050 Comprehensive Plan, we had one main goal, and that main goal was community engagement because the one thing that was pretty prevalent with the first three comprehensive plans was there wasn’t much engagement with the public. With this comprehensive plan we had a survey, public outreach, listening sessions, stakeholder groups, a story map, so we introduced some new concepts to get some public engagement,” Brown said. 

From the public engagement, Brown learned that the public is wanting two main things, one is the county to communicate and cooperate with municipalities better and the second request is to keep rural places rural and urban places urban. 

“The first one was easy, staff is already trying to work towards those issues to keep everybody informed. The second part of it though, we are a very diverse county, we’re a very dynamic county, it’s hard to say basically that we can have one policy that’s going to fit all areas of the county,” he said. 

The current future land use map for Lincoln County identifies primarily agricultural areas and then identified urban expansion areas which are meant to be preserved for City expansion. Meetings will be held throughout the rest of the year to have a meeting in December of this year or January of next to move forward with policies that have been approved.