Armstrong requests share of county sales tax

Armstrong Mayor Marv Dailey Tuesday asked the Emmet County Board of Supervisors to help - if it can - in making up a budget shortfall for the city's sales tax.

Armstrong and Ringsted both lost a substantial portion of their local option sales tax when the tax went countywide a little over a year ago, changing how the tax was distributed for the two communities. To help the community's compensate for the shortfall, the supervisors gave $30,340 to Armstrong and another $12,000 to Ringsted.

This time, Dailey named no specific dollar amount in his request.

Dailey came before the supervisors again Tuesday to ask the supervisors for help again. The board is now in the middle of its annual budget planning. Dailey asked for help for one more year "and then I think we're out of the woods."

Dailey also asked if Armstrong's share of dispatching fees could be eliminates or reduced. He said the city currently pays $900 a month. Dailey said that rate was based on Armstrong having two officers - the situation when Armstrong inked its dispatching agreement with the county. Armstrong now has one full-time officer and pays the county $12,000 a year for on-call time with no specified number of hours.

"I just wanted to see if we could get some more help," Dailey said.

Supervisor Bev Juhl said she didn't want to tamper with dispatching fees. "We went through court with the City of Estherville and everything" over the issue, Juhl said.

In other business, the board approved a consulting engineering agreement with Calhoun-Burns and Associates for hydraulics and preliminary design for the River View Golf Course bridge. County engineer Roger Patocka said the county's share of project design costs would be $48,800 which would come from the secondary roads budget. Federal and state money would pay for most of the $680,000 project.

Bids would be let on the project December 2011 with construction in 2012.

Patocka said it would be good to have the project shelf-ready if stimulus money should become available. He said part of the county's share could be paid from this year's budget with the remainder in the next fiscal year.

Patocka said he would also be bringing the Ellerston bridge project before the board. The bridge is just west of the intersection of A33 and N52 That project would be let by this coming December and built in 2011.

In the road report, Patocka said crews had been sanding and then plowing after Monday's storm. He said crews were pulled off the roads about 10-10:30 a.m. Monday due to visibility. Crews were back at work 7 a.m. Tuesday.