TO THE EDITOR:

In answer to JoAnna Fancherís letter in the Sept. 6 Post Review regarding the Nessel Township boardís vote to put on the November ballot for the residents to vote on: ìContracting out for services.î I am not even sure that she is a Nessel resident, or that she went to the special hearing that discussed it, but she has a lot of wrong information. Sounds to me like she gets it from a disgruntled supervisor who voted against putting it on the ballot. There have been other false rumors put out there like Shorewood would not be plowed, etc.

She says the savings would only be $5 or $10 per household, but the committee figured we would save about $75,000 to $100,000 over a year and Lee Olson, the county treasurer, put out a letter for the board using the figures $99,750 showing the savings on a $100,000, $200,000 and a $300,000 home. Those numbers were $36.78, $89.02, and $140.33 just for the township part of your tax.

She says when the savings got too small the committee started leaving things out. Not so, the township board spent, in 2005, $297,000 of $300,000 of the road and bridge funds. Out of that, as near as we could figure from time sheets, only something over $12,000 was spent on plowing and grading. A contractor charging $75.00/hr. for the same time would be $31,500. The items we eliminated come to $240,000.

The committee members talked to about four different townships who contract out and they were all happy with their contractors and the way things get done.

She says Nessel is bigger and has more roads, more dead ends than those that contract out. Some yes, still how is it that Fish Lake Township is approximately the same size as Nessel, has lakes, approximately the same number of roads, people, etc., does not contract out, yet every year they have a budget about $100,000 less than ours?

How much of our budget is waste? Well, make a date with our clerk and look back at the 2005 time sheets. They are public documents. State law, statute 366.20 requires that ìall accounts must be itemized before payment can be made.î The Nessel board policy manual says, ìDaily time records must be completely filled out each workday, no exceptions. Wages will be calculated on daily time records following approval of a personal committee member.î Most of this has all been ignored.

I believe our chairman, Dave Christensen, who is up for re-election, came on the board in 2003 and appointed himself to the personnel committee. There are about 25 time sheets for 2003, only five weeks out of 52, that are incomplete or illegible. In 2004 our employee just put down eight hours every day, no itemization. In 2005 they were finally itemizing, but in many cases the sheets showed less than eight hours work, but the employee was paid for eight hours. In one instance the employee put down four hours work, at $22 per hour instead of paying him $88 our chairman paid him $176. Add to that the full-time of $8.95 an hr. for benefits or $71.60 for the day and you come up with $247.60 or $61.90 an hour. There was one time sheet with just one hour and we paid $247 for that hour. Something like 350 hours were not accounted for over that year. These are conservative numbers. I have not included his helper, a full-time employee. So over a three year period, conservatively, $100,000 was paid out with no record of what it was for. By the way, when the State Auditor did the books, he reminded the board that the time sheets must be signed by a supervisor. In 2003, one time sheet was signed and there were many more over the three year period.

Also the board received a letter from the Chisago County Attorneyís Office stating that they do not consider this criminal at this time. The County Attorneyís Office has three other statutes that cover this subject, 609.45--609.455--& 609.65.

If you want more information on the subject, contact one of the three members of the committee who were on it from the start. Ron Peltier, the chairman, (320) 358-3670, Jim Ronning, (320) 396-2900 or Jim Rechtzgel, (320) 358-4749.

Thomas L. Hennemann
Rush City