The Ramsey County Commission held a regular meeting on Tuesday, July 2. Here are some highlights from the meeting.
Beau Cummings, state’s attorney, spoke about the 2025 budget. Salary costs in 2024 was 93.82% ($439,951.32) of the state’s attorney’s office budget and the remaining 6.18% ($29,600.00) went to administrative costs. There were proposed step increases for the employees at the state’s attorney’s office that were eligible. Salary costs would account for 93.60% ($472,012.20) of the 2025 budget. The remaining 6.40% ($32,250.00) of the 2025 budget proposal is $28,250.00 in administrative costs (5.61%) and $4,000.00 of statutory line-items (0.79%). Cummings did say there were hiring challenges for positions in the office such as assistant state’s attorney’s due to other areas offering more pay.
Brad Barth from Forward Devils Lake, talked about childcare issues in the region. “We’ve done a lot to support child care centers.” He said they provide incentives for childcare directors incentive for per head. For Ramsey County, if a childcare center has 70 kids they can get $3,500. He also announced that he will be retiring from his position at Forward Devils Lake. He also talked about the Workforce Retention Program, which would help pay for their college cost in return for working in the region for at least 3 years. He also said the city approved $30,000 from the growth fund for a marketing campaign for talent attraction and retention program.
The commission will have a meeting on July 16 at 3:30 to vote on the budget proposals for 2025.
Channel A will have a culvert replaced and there is enough in the budget to fix that.
The new terminal at the Devils Lake Airport has been finished and there are plans for a ribbon cutting ceremony TBA.
