---

Based a review of other county wages and the general market for management salaries the wages for the top four Chisago County elected and contracted employees were increased unanimously by county board action.  

The salary of county sheriff and county attorney and for the administrator and the chief deputy are set at the end of the year for the following year under state law. (Chisago no longer elects the positions of auditor-treasurer, recorder or assessor.)

The commissioner wages will be acted on at a later date.  Regular staff contracts are still being negotiated and historically the commissioners award themselves whatever percentage of increase  finalized for employees.

Commmissioner Marlys Dunne sits on the personnel committee with Commissioner Rick Greene and select administration representatives,  and she commented as she made the motion to adopt the 2026 pay,  that Chisago County is “behind” in significant areas of these county elected persons’ counterparts’ pay.

The county attorney and sheriff receive the same wage.  For 2026 the pay will go to $202,248 from $169,177 now.  This puts the sheriff more in line with sheriff basic pay in Scott, Carver and Sherburne counties. 

Numbers for county attorney wages were provided, but the list contains counties with  outside contracted legal services, different structures for county responsibilities and other variables, making this position somewhat more difficult to compare.

The chief deputy will advance to $172,998.  This position is recommended by whoever  is serving as sheriff and it is contracted, as he or she is approved by the County Board.

The county administrator is seeing a bump from $172,470 to $207,681 in 2026.  With the exception of Benton County, the Chisago administrator will now be in the same range as most other administrators in similar counties but again, some counties also have deputy administrators which makes it hard to do a pay scale comparison with Chisago, which doesn’t have a deputy administrator.

The Board also accepted the retirement letters from two longtime department heads for Health & Human Services and the county Enterprise (I-T) divisions. 

The pending vacancy created by Robert Benson, head of Health & Human Services,   will circulate as soon as possible,  due to specific issues involved in the process of filling this seat.  

Enterprise Services head Jon Eckel’s retirement is triggering an internal posting initially, the County Board heard.

Also—a Conditional Use Permit was approved for the Hay Days site for applicant Sno Barons snowmobile club.  The motorsports group built a structure that is planned to be permanent and used for events.  It consists of 40 foot long steel containers with an arched steel roof that is 14 feet high, spanning a 30 foot wide space between the shipping containers. The club officials also presented an engineer’s inspection report on the stability and wind sheer capacity.

The shipping containers as a permanent use require a Conditional Use Permit, which is attached to the land.

The organization was acquiring an after-the fact building permit, along with being approved for the CUP. 

In public comment Jack Devlin, who submitted a bid for county-owned property in Rushseba Township that was rejected, reiterated that he is still interested in acquiring the acreage.  He said his offer of about $1,000 an acre, is better than the zero revenue the parcel is generating now.  He was told the bid was rejected and officially is not active,  and the Board was unable to discuss this at this time.

---