Editor’s note: Warren Jensen read this document during the public forum at the March 17 meeting of the Freeborn County Board of Commissioners meeting.

Thank you for allowing me to speak to you this morning. May I say that I am appreciative for your service to the county. I admire your devotion to your duties. I realize that you chose to serve; however, I do thank you for your service!

I am dismayed and unable to understand some of the results of your pondering and discussions. May I speak to a couple of them.

As I understand it, the county will be dealing with a deficit in our budget of approximately $1 million next time around. This is of course due to a cutback in state aid. I am worried about the methods you will entertain to erase this deficit. I have sent each of you a letter with my suggestions, and I am taking this opportunity to publicly request that you begin, NOW, some no-nonsense efforts to deal with the deficit.

One of the items that probably a very great percentage of your constituents would applaud would be the immediate freezing of all salaries, commissions, bonuses, perks, allowances, and whatever other titles exist for payment to employees. Freeze these amounts. Now, as Commissioner Dan Belshan proposed in December. At that meeting. Commissioner Glen Mathiason was absent with a medical condition, and Commissioner Linda Tuttle had been elected but had not yet taken office.

The economy has gotten exponentially worse since December, and two members of this board were not given an opportunity to vote on the freeze. This board should revisit the freeze to stop the automatic July step increases.

Gentlemen and lady, I really say in all honesty that I am not at all sure that you “get it.” If you are aware of the media to even a very small extent, you certainly must realize that we have very dire economic circumstances surrounding us! Our state has frozen salaries. Our national employees salaries are frozen. Yet, Freeborn County moves along with, in my opinion, well over a 6 percent increase in salaries this past 12 months.

I ask you, as representatives of my residential status, to take action NOW to correct this. Again, I am certain that if you were to poll your constituents, you would find nearly 100 percent of them agreeing with my request. As I move about the county, I hear over and over again that we must take a more common sense approach to the budget deficit. I trust that you won’t rely on increasing taxes to handle the budget deficit.

As my letter to you pointed out, with verifiable facts, local property taxes are much higher than our peers in Austin, Faribault and Owatonna. I think the only source you have for the deficit is cutting spending. The first thing you can do is to stop the step system of advancing salaries. At least until the end of the present problem. I think that is a very basic “no brainer” and the sooner you accomplish it, the better.

I am frankly amazed that you, as a board, would pass a resolution to recognize employees longevity with a rather generous gift program. The program is split into nine categories with a total of one each of $810. I mention this just to emphasize that this is, of course, an item of a large expenditure. For some reason, we are not given the number of employees entitled, under the policy, to the various gifts. It would be extremely interesting to know these numbers. I am sure that the total involved is many thousands of dollars — dollars that the county does not have under the present circumstances.

If you commissioners want to recognize the employees for their years of service, fine, as long as you are paying for the gifts. If you feel that strongly about it, you should consider a personal gift. Doesn’t that make sense? I just have a hard time understanding how only one commissioner would vote against this spending at a time like this. I just do not understand it.

You all need to read Gov. Mike Huckabee’s book titled “Do the right thing.” There are many suggestions in my letter to each of you dated Feb. 26. I ask you to please read it again and consider the offerings of a concerned citizen. Once again, I ask that you take time to consider carefully the manner in which you will account for the deficit. You should not spend money that you do not have.

Thank you.

Warren Jensen is a resident of Albert Lea.