The county supervisors decided by consensus Monday not to reconsider denying a temporary beer license for Back Pocket Brewing to run a beer tent for RAGBRAI® bicyclists south of Scranton on Highway 25.
Board chair John Muir said he had talked with Steve Linn of the Iowa Craft Beer Association and asked if Back Pocket Brewing would hire its own security for the beer tent. Linn was agreeable.
Muir went on to tell the supervisors that Back Pocket Brewing can appeal the supervisors’ disapproval to the state.
“Once you’ve opened up the can of worms, you’ve opened it up for everyone. You can’t pick and choose,” Muir said about reconsidering the license.
Supervisors Mick Burkett, Tom Contner and Dawn Rudolph all said they’d rather not revisit a decision they’ve already made. Rudolph, who is chairing Scranton’s participation in Scranton as a pass through town for RAGBRAI, said the company had plenty of opportunities to be a vendor in Scranton but chose not to.
Muir said he’d let Linn know the disapproval will not be reconsidered.
Assistant county attorney Thomas Laehn told the supervisors of a conference he attended last week for county attorneys. He came home with ideas for how the county could save money, and how the savings could be spent.
The county will soon start the third year of a three-year contract with the Boone County attorney’s office to collect past due court fines. The money is passed on to the state but the office doing the collection can add a collection fee and keep the additional money to cover administrative costs.
Laehn suggested that the county consider hiring a part-time person to collect the fees, and told the supervisors the fee charged would more than cover the cost of that employee. “We would actually make money as a county if we were to bring that back in-house… If we can make enough money to not only cover the cost of the part-time employee, but also to make money for the county, I think it’s better that we start doing that ourselves,” Laehn said.
He also learned there are grants available to fund a position of victim/witness coordinator. He said a victim/witness coordinator was “invaluable” in the recent trial of James Exline on sex abuse charges. He said one benefit of a victim/witness coordinator is “to have someone there during the course of the trial, meeting with the victim to be sure they have a favorable opinion of the prosecutor and that we’re working with them”
He suggested hiring a part-time victim/witness coordinator. The two part-time positions could possibly be filled by one person. According to Laehn, between the added revenue from collecting past due fines and grant funds, the position(s) could be added without increasing cost to taxpayers.
Laehn’s items were not agenda items and were for discussion only.
