LOST money set for smaller grant pool, ECO Center

A smaller amount of the county's Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) revenue will be available for grants but $150,000 has been set aside to build a learning center at Hillview Park.

The Plymouth County Supervisors spent part of Tuesday's meeting to decide how to use about $1 million in LOST revenue collected this year.

The LOST money is collected as a one-penny sales tax within the county.

Approximately $320,000 of that will go to payments this year on the Plymouth County Law Enforcement Center, which was part of the reason the one-penny sales tax was started in 2002.

In the past, the supervisors have set aside a portion of the LOST money for grants for community projects throughout the county.

Last year, $225,000 was given out in grants. This year they cut that back to $180,000.

The supervisors also marked $150,000 to help pay for the Environmental Conservation Opportunities (ECO) Center, a center for learning and gathering planned for Hillview Park. Originally, the board had looked at giving a total of $450,000 over three years to the building project, planned by the county conservation board, in conjunction with a $400,000 REAP grant.

That grant did not come through.

The county supervisors decided to trim their offerings to $150,000 of LOST money this year with the intent of giving the project another $150,000 next year.

County Conservation Director Dennis Sohl said the conservation board is also seeking donations to help build the center.

"We've gotten some minor pledges of about $10,000," Sohl said. "All I'm hearing is that (this year) grant sources are going to be very difficult to come by."

The supervisors also set aside $200,000 of LOST money for courthouse space needs.

"I'm pretty sure we could get the modulars (temporary modular buildings to expand courthouse space) done if we so choose to do that for less than $200,000," Supervisor Don Kass said. "If we vote against that, we still have this (money) set aside as a contingency for a future project."

Along with that, the supervisors designated $25,000 of LOST money to begin a project of scanning documents at the courthouse, eliminating paper, which takes more storage space than electronic files.

Another $71,880 remains in the LOST fund for contingencies.

The county's LOST fund already has about $1 million in it, carried over from the last budget year. That money was held as a reserve to cover the bond on the Law Enforcement Center as well as the purchase of the Winter Feedlot and work in that area including paving Keystone Avenue.

Those two items will continue to be covered with a reserve balance of approximately $1.6 million in the LOST fund.

The one-penny sales tax will expire December 31, 2016. It was voted into existence by county residents in 2001 with the primary goal of constructing the new jail and Law Enforcement Center. Funds not used for the new facility were to be used for county infrastructure and county improvements and not property tax relief according to the ballot.