Dodging raindrops, the usual congregation of citizens and elected officials met for the weekly Supervisors meeting Monday morning. The meeting began with a long discussion between the supervisors and Economic Development Director Katherine Ollendieck.

The discourse on the future of the Department of Economic Development covered continuing budget cuts and job expectations, among other issues. Both sides attempted to proselytize the other on several matters, ultimately searching for a middle ground. One of the topics the supervisors expressed interest in for the future is more of a public/private partnership with the business community. They agreed to have more meetings on the subject. In working on the problem, Ollendieck expressed eagerness to move forward outside of the frustrating state of limbo.

The supervisors also spoke with and heard from Darcy Maiden-Parks about mental health and substance use disorder services from Prairie Ridge Integrated Behavioral Healthcare. Maiden-Parks explained the services that are provided by Prairie Ridge, including having a clinician come in once a week at their Tama County office. The Substance Abuse Treatment Unit of Central Iowa (SATUCI) recently merged with Prairie Ridge; they now have approximately 135 employees. As Center Associates in Tama, which provided the services of three therapists, recently shut down, the supervisors are looking for ways to fill the possible gap that will be left in the county and may request more services from Maiden-Parks and Prairie Ridge.

During the public comment section, Board Chairman Mark Doland spoke about both topics, saying, “If we can’t keep just a main infrastructure item like mental health, that’s an economic development issue. Cause if we don’t have resources for people to come to who are struggling with mental health, that’s thousands of people in our county that are struggling with mental health. If we don’t have services for them, you can’t live a productive life. There’s no production coming out of that. And so, a very basic infrastructure need is mental health services, substance abuse services. If we don’t have that, there is no economic development.”

Tama County Engineer Ben Daleske reported that they’ve been working on the dust control lists, along with blading and rocking. Shoulders are being retrieved and sprayed, and they will be replacing the cap on the 340th Street bridge this week. The tanker cars are in on the G Avenue wooden culvert replacement, and the project should be finished this week. A regrade was done on 180th Street. Depending on the weather, they will start a grade on K Avenue North of the shop to 270th.

A moratorium on Community Solar was approved.

Next week’s meeting date was changed to Thursday, May 29 at 9 a.m.

Supervisor David Turner’s committees were reassigned to the other supervisors as Turner will be out of the country for the next three weeks.

The supervisors approved the hiring of the new Tama County IT Director, Michael Jackley.

The ongoing agenda item of the POE phone options was reassigned to the new IT Director.

Andrew Batcheller was appointed and sworn in as a new Tama County Sheriff’s Deputy. A reassignment of a tax certificate was approved for Bill Davis.

Claims totaling $240,718.55 were approved.