Frequently Asked Questions

Grant County Sheriff's Office, Social Services, Veteran's Service, Public Health and Human Resources.

The short answer is limited office and storage space along with safety and security concerns. For a longer overview of these issues. click on the link.

In 2013, the County Board had an office space needs assessment of multiple county agencies conducted by Leo A. Daly Architecture(Mpls). As part of this, Daly looked at the old hospital building and assessed what type of space and amount of space needed to fit the meeting room and office space needs of the proposed county offices. Daly also looked at the hospital building in terms of codes needs, asbestos removal, conversion needs and condition of the building. There was a strong desire by the Board not to consider building if we could renovate something within the community. Unfortunately, based upon these professionally conducted assessments, it became apparent that it would be cost prohibitive to utilize the old hospital building. (See Facility Planning History Chart-Options A thru E) This decision was also reinforced by the fact that Prairie Ridge built new rather than renovate the old Hospital.

The vacated Social Services building would become the future home for Bargain Bazaar, which will lose it's present location if the new Office building is built. The vacated Land Management/Public Health building would be up for public sale.

There is money set aside within the Pre-Construction Costs of the Project Budget for land acquisition and demolition.

There is no need to remodel the existing Sheriff’s office to accommodate the Grant County Land Management office staff that would possibly move into the existing Sheriff’s office space contingent on the bond referendum passage. The Grant County Courthouse is on the national register of historic places and any architectural renovations would have to be approved by the State Historic Preservation Office before going forward. We believe the existing floor plan can easily accommodate any future tenants, as is, without any expensive remodeling or renovations.

The cost of the highway addition is being funded 63% state gas tax funds from our annual state aid construction allotment and 37% from a combination of road and bridge fund balance reserves which a few milder winters have helped with and from the prioritizing of this addition in our budget over equipment purchases. There will be no tax increase resulting from this project.

The tax impact of this project on an average home with an assessed value of $50,000 is between 50 cents and 75 cents per month or $6 to $8 per year. Even if agricultural land prices declined to the point that the tax impact of this project were to shift from agricultural land to residential property years into the future, thereby causing the tax impact of this project on residential homes to double, the residential property tax impact would increase by an additional 50 to 75 cents per month for a total residential property tax impact for this project of $1 to $1.50 per month. The tax impact of this project on agricultural homestead property valued at $2.5 million(County Average) is between $278 and $382 per year based on a 30 and 20 year bond respectively. The tax impact of this project on agricultural non-homestead property valued at $2.5 million(County Average) is between $480 and $658 per year based on a 30 and 20 year bond respectively. To find how out how it affects your taxes, please go to the link below or go to the County Brochure and look at Tax Impact Chart.