By Melanie Stegner

news@pctribune.com

Discussion at last week’s county committee of the whole meeting centered around the annual probation report, topics from the highway department, the coroner’s report and membership to Western Prairie Human Services.

During 2022, Pope County court services supervised 206 adult supervision probation cases, 114 pre-trial release cases and 39 juvenile cases. By the end of 2022 there were 159 adult offenders with 170 open cases being actively supervised. There were nine juvenile offenders with ten open cases on supervised probation. 

“The court system in this country continues to work through the backlog of cases which have been in a holding pattern during the pandemic and those more recently charged. I do not anticipate a complete return to in-person court, which is unfortunate, as although convenient, attending a court hearing over Zoom does not bear the same level of accountability,” stated Terry Jaworski, Director of Probation Services for Pope County.

Offenders with DWI topped the list of cases in all levels of offenses with 107 adults on probation supervision and 40 adults on pre-trial supervision. Five juvenile cases were attributed to underage drinking. Topping the list for juvenile offenses is tobacco related crimes with 14 cases.

The probation services department currently runs several programs for offenders including an awareness panel for impaired drivers, pre-trial supervision, intensive supervision, drug testing and bail evaluations.

“This past year our caseload numbers appear to have stabilized from previous years; I believe they were a bit in flux due mainly to the pandemic which has adversely affected the operation of the entire criminal justice system. Typically, our caseload size has risen slightly from year to year, which has been fairly easy to predict and anticipate the needs of the department. These last couple of years in dealing with the pandemic have made it difficult to anticipate or plan for any sort of trend in the operations of probation,” Jaworski added. 

“The pandemic brought about the most difficult years of my career working in the field of probation and presented an abundance of challenges which we worked through and the staff in the probation department performed their jobs without question. I cannot stress enough how well the staff of this department have performed through these difficult times of change. I’m so proud of the people that I work with here as they continue to eagerly show up to work and assume all challenges that come before them. I’m continually impressed by their positive attitudes and willingness to chip in as needed,” he stated.

Next, the board began discussion on the Highway Users Tax Distribution Funding formula from the state for county highway purposes and the impact the funding formulas have on projects and priorities. The total amount in the Highway Users Fund statewide is $2,573,017,000. These funds are distributed at a rate of five percent to town bridges, roads and a flexible highway account. The other 95 percent of funds goes to a trunk highway fund, county state aid highway fund and municipal state aid street fund. The HUTD funding is used to support more than 143,000 miles of roads statewide and is comprised of fuel tax revenues, license fees, motor vehicle sales tax revenue and interest.

Discussion turned to the Local Option Sales Tax for county roads that is a funding mechanism available to counties only if elected. There was no directive to pursue any future action at this time. The county engineer was directed to consider bringing forth an informational session on the County Road 17 project at a future meeting. The first meeting in May is the target date for that with additional provision for an evening informational session for the public.

Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office at Anoka County has been acting as the appointed coroner for Pope County and presented the annual report. As the ME’s office assumed the role in September of 2022, the report only includes cases from that time period. They took on two cases from the county for external exams. 

Traverse County recently inquired on its contractual relationship with Western Prairie Human Services, the joint powers agency consisting of human services offices in Grant and Pope Counties. Traverse County would like to join as a member of WPHS. Since this was a work session, no action was taken.