After hearing from Dakota County’s sheriff that it doesn’t charge cities for boarding prisoners at its county jail, the Austin City Council’s finance committee requested to rescind its vote that set the daily boarding fee at the Mower County Jail at $65 effective May 1.

Tuesday, May 22, 2001

After hearing from Dakota County’s sheriff that it doesn’t charge cities for boarding prisoners at its county jail, the Austin City Council’s finance committee requested to rescind its vote that set the daily boarding fee at the Mower County Jail at $65 effective May 1.

According to a letter sent to City Administrator Pat McGarvey, Dakota County does not charge municipal police agencies for boarding of prisoners. According to the letter, the entire cost of the boarding of a prisoner for felony, gross misdemeanor or misdemeanor charges are picked up by the county.

"We were paying $10 a day and now they are requesting us to pay $65 a day," Councilman Dick Chaffee said.

"It is in the statutes that if you are a first-class city, the city can be fined for prisoners. We are not a first-class city," Councilman Wayne Goodnature, a former sheriff, said.

City Administrative Services Director Tom Dankert said, "We paid $9,500 to the county for the last three years."

Mayor Bonnie Reitz added: "It is reasonable to ask for this money back, ask for an accounting to the county. It appears we have been overcharged. We are sending a letter to the county and we also want to include in it that they do accounting on what we have paid all together."

Additional funding for staff was requested by the Mower County attorney’s office of $40,000 for staffing and this was rejected by the finance committee.

Councilman Dick Lang said before the voting: "We have to address this situation. The county is gouging is. We would like to work hand and hand with the county, but we pay 50 percent of the county’s expenses."

Goodnature added: "The community of Austin is not being gouged as the services are rendered back. We get upward of 80 percent services back. But I felt at the joint meeting of county and city we were treated poorly."

Lang said: "Percentagewise, I don’t want the city of Austin to be the highest for taxpayers. It is unacceptable for taxpayers to be doubled in taxes by the city and county. The city is paying more taxes all the time, I feel this is unfair."

Reitz commented, "When we asked the county for justification for this fee, they did not give us any. You just don’t throw another person into work with the staff and not account for it."

In other business, a 150-page annual financial report was presented to the finance committee by Darwin Viker of LAWCO. The city of Austin looks good, according to the finance report. There has been a backlog in the city engineering department as they have not had a full-time engineer for a year and there needs to be more staffing to cover this area, the report said. A lot of major projects have been going on in the city and the City Council has been overloaded and reports haven’t come in, the report adds.

Viker’s overall advice to the city was: "The city has to be careful the next four to five years on capital report. There will be a big change in capital accounting. There will be more financial reporting added to a single report, this will collapse into one entity. The city will have to look back on buildings and say how buildings have depreciated. The city will have to prepare a statement set by the general accounting standards. Infrastructures will have to be evaluated."

Viker finished with stressing that the city has to be cautious to not overextend itself.

One issue facing the city is the cost of health insurance for employees that rose considerably this year. In a typical year, health insurance would cost $1.2 million and this year it cost $1.6 million.

"The rates for city workers is high," Dankert said. "More workers went to the doctor this year. We need to act on this as we are under contract."

Retirees now have to pay high premiums, too.

Goodnature said when he left office as sheriff for the county, he didn’t get a full package.

"After a certain amount of time, it isn’t going to fly," Dankert said. "When people retire, the health insurance to the city goes up. We have to confront the reality that we won’t have a self-preserved system."

Call Sheila Donnelly at 434-2214 or e-mail her at newsroom@austindailyherald.com.