(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson county board of supervisors today (Tuesday) again tabled action on a proposed month-to-month contract with Season’s Center for mental health and case management services.
The supervisors took the action after Assistant County Attorney Lonnie Saunders reported there are still some unanswered questions surrounding the proposed agreement, adding that more work needs to be done on it. He says the goal is to get something ironed out by August 1st.
In other business, the supervisors approved the hiring of a part-time intern in the County Attorney’s Office to assist in collecting delinquent fines and fees; and they approved a slurry seal project for a county road. Only one bid was received for the project in the amount of $122,008. It came in under the engineer’s estimate of $133,804.
On another matter, the supervisors directed county staff to assemble a list of county-owned lakeshore land, including not-used right-of-ways, along with descriptions and maps of it. The information is to be presented to the county Conservation Board at an upcoming meeting to see if it would be interested in maintaining those as public accesses in the future.
The issue stems from a request the county has received to sell some excess right-of-way along a portion of County Road M-56 that’s along East Lake Okoboji just east of Spirit Lake (near the Fodness farm).
Supervisors today (Tuesday) seemed reluctant to sell the land to a nearby property owner who wants it for lake access. It was the concensus of several that public accesses around the Iowa Great Lakes are getting harder and harder to come by and that what’s currently available should be preserved for future generations.
