The Greene County Board of Supervisors met Tuesday, due to observing the New Years holiday on Monday.

The meeting started with appointing John Muir to continue as chair and Dawn Rudolph as vice chair. During reports, County Recorder Deb McDonald mentioned that the 2022 calendar year had $131 billion of land transfers in the county, which was $35 billion more than the previous calendar year. 

County Attorney Thomas Laehn laid out his top civil priorities for this office. He wants to update the courthouse building and grounds policy, as well as the general assistance policy. He also wants to discuss with the Supervisors abandoned railroad property and how that property was reverted back to the landowners, who are currently not being charged property tax. Finally, he wants to create 28E agreements for all entities that request funding from the Supervisors that are not county departments.

The Board then approved the December 30, 2022 cash count as presented and heard a 2024 fiscal year funding request of $10,000 from the Bell Tower Community Foundation. The Board took no action on the request, as they will discuss all requests during budgetary time. 

Next, the Board conducted its organizational meeting. They approved to continue having regular meetings on Mondays at 8:30am in the boardroom of the Greene County Courthouse, as well as establishing official depositories and newspapers for the year, along with making one change to the board committees, with Supervisor Dan Benitz now serving on the Central Iowa Juvenile Detention Center in place of Supervisor Pete Bardole who stepped down. They also appointed Assistant County Attorney Laura Snider to the Greene County Animal Shelter Board. 

They also discussed the 28E agreement with the City of Jefferson for the new animal shelter. County Attorney Thomas Laehn said the agreement was updated in 2020 that the county would contribute $6,000 to the shelter and had intended to increase that amount to $15,000 once the new shelter was built. However, the increase of $15,000 was never formalized in the agreement and will continue to discuss that with the City.

Finally, the Board approved funding transfers of $50,000 from the general fund to conservation reserve, $8,000 from the general fund to the bike trail fund, and $5,000 from local option sales and services tax to the bike trail fund.