Curbside recycling agreement ready for approval

Due to a lack of a quorum, the Lyon County Board decided to set a special meeting to approve an agreement with Southwest Sanitation for curbside recycling collection services.

Commissioner Rick Anderson was absent and Chairman Gary Crowley and Steve Ritter will abstain (due to conflicts of interest), so a special meeting was set for 9 a.m., Tuesday, Oct. 22. The new agreement would start November 1 and run through April 20, 2021.

The agreement worked out with Southwest Sanitation is on an every-other-week schedule to provide collection of recyclables for all Lyon County residential dwellings.

Recycling collection will be on the same day as regular garbage collection. Southwest Sanitation will collect recycling for all apartment buildings on a regular basis.

Lyon County will be responsible for managing inventory of approved recycling carts and parts.

The county and Southwest Sanitation are expected to agree on a collection contract with the following costs:

—Bi-weekly curbside recycling at $28,588 per month.

—Apartment recycling collection at $2,128 per month.

—Total base monthly cost of $20,716 per month. Southwest Sanitation will provide a monthly summary to Lyon County of the materials collected.

Recyclable materials include: corrugated cardboard, home, school and office paper, newsprint, printed materials including magazines, books, phone books and junk; paperboard; plastics; container glass, metals and other recyclables designated by the county.

Sheriff’s office to help combat human trafficking Lyon County’s Sheriff’s Office will be joining the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) to help fight human trafficking. The BCA offered a grant to counties to partner with them to combat human trafficking crimes.

Sheriff Eric Wallen said, “Lyon County was eligible for grant dollars to partner with the BCA.” The county board’s approval allowed the sheriff to apply for funding.

“The sheriff’s office will be a participating member of the Human Trafficking Task Force,” said Sheriff Wallen. The plan is to combat human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children, along with prevention, education and enforcement.

“This is a prevalent thing in our area so I would be in favor of joining,” said Commissioner Charlie Sanow.

Members of the task for are able to be active as desired, as long as they investigate cases within their own jurisdiction.