IVANHOE — Lincoln County commissioners Thursday voted unanimously to increase rates on commercial and rural recycling pick-up by adding a $50 monthly fee to commercial accounts and adding half to rural accounts, going to $82.50. Environmental Administrator Robert Olsen said this would actually be saving the customers money.

Olsen reminded the commissioners about their earlier discussion on a couple of variables in their commercial and rural recycling program where they would ask participating businesses to pay 50 percent of the cost.

“They all received a letter we sent out,” he said. “There was only one individual who said they would not pay it because it was too much for them to afford, and they would just haul their own.”

That was about the only negative response, he said. Everyone else understood that 50 bucks throughout the year wasn’t necessarily unfair. He had explained to them how it could much more if they were billed directly from the solid waste company and had added handling and administrative fees.

“I would ask that you go ahead and approve the rate change,” Olsen said. “We will contact the appropriate businesses and will match the containers to their needs. We can give them a period of months, say three months, to satisfy the bill rather than have Waste Management bill them.”

Olsen’s plan is to bill the businesses once a year.

“The other side of it is the rural garbage program where we make no recommendation of any increase to the solid waste assessment across the county,” he said. “But where folks are coming from outside the county, we had sent 40-50 letters to those we know of explaining to them about the taxpayers contribution to the program.”

There are some of them that are participating and some that aren’t. The county is subsidizing to some degree. but when they’re coming from outside the county, there’s no subsequent subsidy from their population. Increasing their rates by 50 percent, going from $55 to $82.50 per month, Olsen said, brings them into alignment.

“The bulk of our residents around Lake Hendricks. We had several calls,” Olsen said. “One of the most unusual communications was that while we did not ask for them to send in checks at this time, we have been receiving checks for $82.50. I guess that’s somewhat of an approval.”

That in turn will help to cover the cost of the additional pickups in Hendricks, he said. Then he said he hopes the board was ready to vote on the rate increase.

“We’re getting by awfully cheap,” Commissioner Mic VanDeVere said. “I think it’s fair.”

“I’m fine with it,” Commissioner Joe Drietz said.

The vote in favor of approving the new rates as recommended by the environmental administrator was approved unanimously.

Another topic that Olsen broached was asking the board to approve a work order of sorts for ditch projects going forward.

With the issue that sprung up with the Persoon family farm this fall, everyone seemed to agree that a one-page work order should be in writing to avoid misunderstandings and to hold contractors liable for warranty work.

“Having a ‘ditch repair request’ (work order) came out of the last meeting,” Olsen said. “If it’s OK, we’ll have this run off in duplicate with the specifications of what has to be done, one for the county and one for the contractor. We’ll take them to the field with us and everyone there will need to sign off on it.”

Of course there would be a $5,000 limit on project cost before it would need board approval.

“Can we have the property owner sign off on it too?” VanDeVere asked. “At least acknowledge that the work is going to be done.”

“We don’t typically have property owners approve work orders,” Olsen said. “I don’t want the landowners to have any approval authority. As we saw with the Persoon brothers it can get very complicated in a very big hurry.”

Olsen didn’t have a problem with sending landowners a copy. They could make the work orders in triplicate and give a copy to the landowner after it was signed.

“Yeah, but aren’t (landowners) the ones requesting the work be done?” VanDeVere asked.

“We don’t go in to do something without letting the landowners know what’s going to happen, but for them have approval authority, then, the materials and the way it gets done can be a great controversy,” Olsen said. “To give them approval authority would be a big mistake and not serve the purpose well.”

He then compared it to doing a road project and having to get every landowner’s approval for the entire stretch of highway; it would be a mess.

Olsen was then questioned about how his department oversees each ditch or tiling project.

“We go out and meet with the contractor when they start the project,” Olsen said, “but we can’t be out there watching all the time.”

“If you’re never out there, how can you say how it was done?” VanDeVere asked.

“What I can tell you is that it’s not so much the supervision checks, but more about how to assess the responsibility if something goes wrong,” Olsen said. “There’s a disclaimer we can put on (the work orders) that with any deviation from the contract, the contractor will do repairs under warranty. In cases where there have been problems, we call the contractor and hold them to their agreement.”

This document will hold the contractors completely responsible for all the work agreed upon, he said.

“Two years down the road and something happens, it gets dug up and we find it was done wrong,” Drietz said, “the contractor is responsible — there should be no dispute.”

“There could be a sign-off line that the contractor has to sign indicating they state they did the work as requested and have to present it in order to get paid,” VanDeVere said.

Olsen said he would make the additions to the work order and present it to the commissioners at their next board meeting.