If you haven’t already listened to the audio from Thursday’s townhall meeting, please do.
The audio above is a follow-up to the townhall meeting.
Below is the AI generated transcript of the interview:
Dustin Gawrylow 0:00
Daryl is not going to be here after all, and nor did he tell me who was coming in, if I would have known that we were going to have county auditor, Mark Splonskowski, who has probably the only name that's harder to spell than mine in Bismarck to talk to us. We're going to open up the phone lines for anybody that has questions for Mark. Uh, I'm guessing people will, but who knows, Mark, how you doing today? I'm doing alright. How are you doing? Dustin, not too bad. Uh, still recovering from last night. I was up till two in the morning working on audio. Oh,
Mark Splonskowski 0:44
maybe if I wanted to talk so much, it would have been easier for you. Oh,
Dustin Gawrylow 0:47
it was okay. Well, you know, it's a good thing that I had two systems recording at the same time, because the live stream was going out on the sub stack, and then at the end, somehow I pushed the wrong button and deleted it. And so I had to go into my backup and clean up the audio and piece together something. And it didn't get the audience very well, but it got you, got me and Daryl. So the bulk of it got, got cut down to about 54 minutes of solid content. So if anybody wants to go listen to that, go to watching nd.com and it's right there at the top. We'll leave the paywall off of it for a while here so citizens can listen to it. Because I think that it was probably the the longest and most wide open opportunity that you've had to get your side of the story out so far.
Mark Splonskowski 1:39
Yeah, for sure. No, and I appreciate you and Daryl putting it
Dustin Gawrylow 1:42
on, yeah. So you know the on on Wednesday, the Burleigh county commission set the dates for the hearings on this resolution regarding the Well, first I should ask you, is there anything that you want to bring up that is other county business that should take priority.
Mark Splonskowski 2:04
Well, you know, I guess right now, you know, we're past that 5% discount date, and we're just getting getting things tied up. Most of our, most of the property taxes are typically collected by this time. Obviously, we have some more to collect throughout the year as as people choose to pay it. But so yeah, I guess right now I'm just, I'm just here to hear the people and answer their questions. Yeah,
Dustin Gawrylow 2:30
okay. So, so March 3, March 17, and April 7, as of now, our regular county commission meetings where there will be public comment on this resolution to convert your office from elected to appointed. Has had there was discussion of maybe doing a Saturday meeting or a meeting in wing or Wilton? Has there been any clarification on that yet?
Mark Splonskowski 2:58
So to my understanding of the motion, yeah, they want to have a one Saturday where they have two different meetings, I believe, one in Wilton and one in sterling. I want to say, then they direct the staff to find locations for that. I believe that the emergency manager, Sanger will be, will be setting that up, but I'll be verifying that to make sure it gets done. Okay.
Dustin Gawrylow 3:22
For now, we know that March 3, March 17 and April 7 will definitely be in stone as opportunities for the public to come and speak. Right? That's correct. So we've got a call already. Let's just jump to that caller. You're on the air with Burleigh county auditor Splonskowski, just put me on hold. Put you on home. Okay, yes, that happens occasionally. So yesterday, when, when, when we had our, our, oh, there's another caller. Let's grab that real quick before we stumble our way through this color you're on the air.
Caller #1 4:06
Hello, yes, hi. Question for Mark, yes, and I'll ask a question and then hang up and listen to his response. Mark, what do you believe is the commissioners, what are they afraid that you're going to uncover? What are they hiding? I guess that's probably two questions, but I'll hang up and listen to your response. Thank you, sir.
Mark Splonskowski 4:33
Well, I guess, to be honest, if I knew, I'd tell you by now. So right now it's, it's really, I haven't seen anything illegal going on. Obviously, I have my disagreements with the Commission. I brought those, those concerns forward and had discussions with them. Unfortunately, they never, really, they never got any traction, or were, were heard to an effective level. Um. Yes, but you know, every day we're I'm trying to, trying to make sure that the government's running that the way that they're supposed to be running, legally, responsibly and and ethically, and then also the way that I would like to see it ran if I was a citizen. Because I am a citizen, I'm a citizen of burly County. I've just been elected by the rest of you to be your represents, great representation within the office. So if there, if there are issues, I'm definitely going to do my best to find them and bring them forward and get them fixed. As far as right now, I I can't say I've seen anything illegal going on yet, concerning. Yes. Would I disagree with them? Yes, but nothing illegal as as to this point.
Dustin Gawrylow 5:46
So you know, a lot of the accusations from the commissioners that are concerned about you come down their qualifications, whether you're you're doing your job in their their eyes, and then you know that just the some process things i What I've noticed is that a lot of this stuff comes down to things were not, probably not being done the way they should have been prior to you taking office. And even if there, in their view, was somebody qualified, it would have been very difficult to get things up to speed to where they were supposed to be. Are there any processes or issues at the county that you've experienced that that would fall in the that sort of category that you can talk about?
Mark Splonskowski 6:38
I don't want to go into details right at this moment, but absolutely, yeah, you know there's, there's processes that I've that I've been finding that that were done in the past, that weren't done correctly, that need to be improved, and that we're literally in the process of of improving right now. And so, yeah, you're you're right, especially when you when you have the type of turnover in a position or in an office that this office has experienced in the last several years, there's going to be things that that either change or fall through the cracks or that were just done incorrectly from the start, and you can't fix it all at once, and you have to fix them one at a time, and You have to make sure that they don't happen again. And so yeah, there's definitely things that that were going on before, before I showed up, that were not correct. And as we find them, not only do we try to address it, fix it now, but then also create processes so that doesn't happen again, and that's really a thing that's been my goal. One of my goals for this office is to be able to have staff, first of all, be able to have great staff, and to retain the staff and to have the cross training within the office, so that we all can feel comfortable doing most all the different jobs within the office, because that has been a concern with my. Concern of mine throughout the years within the auditor office is the cross training, the the the great work environment and all those things and the great work environment I can I can tell you right now, I've been working very hard, and I would argue, very successfully, to make a great work environment for the for the for the employees there, and to develop a great team. And that's definitely been accomplished. And the next thing is to be able to get everybody trained in extremely well, extremely diversified, so that we can continue to serve the county better.
Dustin Gawrylow 8:44
We've got open lines right now, if there are any callers that would like to discuss otter splunkowski situation or Burleigh county situation, 7012580550, one of the specific issues that consistently comes up is this issue of the investments, and whether the investments were done on time and being put into funds that were generating the maximum potential return without being too risky. Do you know before you took office, if those things were happening the way they should, or the way that the commission is expecting, and has been expecting you to do it
Mark Splonskowski 9:28
well, the the first, the first target when it comes to investments is to be able to reach the budgeted goals for The investments. So every year, there's a certain amount that we we figure into revenues for interest returns on our investments. That's the first goal, if at all possible, unless something crazy happens. The first goal is to be able to meet that those budgeted goals, because that's what. Budget is based on and for 2024 I can tell you right now, we exceeded that budget by well over a million dollars. We exceeded the budgeted investment amount. And then so for past years, you know, it was, it was a lot different. There were years that they were lucky to get one and a half 2% interest return on these investments. And so in past years, were they done to the to their absolute top level? I don't know that they were. I can't say that they weren't offhand. But also, the investments have to my knowledge, have never been under this much scrutiny to my to my knowledge for the foreseeable, foreseeable past. And so anybody can come in and say, Hey, hindsight, 2020, you should have done this, this, this or this. Anybody can come in and say that when you're actually in there and doing the work and doing the daily duties, as well as overseeing all the functions of the office, there are certain things that come that become priority, and that's following state law is priority, making sure that all the meetings are noticed correctly. And I know that that's an issue that you had Dustin with the previous auditor was with concerns about meetings being noticed properly. That's something that I've been definitely, very adamant about, and and have been developing procedures to make sure that that's always being being upheld. And so there's a lot of things going on. And yeah, maybe we could have made some more money. But again, anybody can look backwards and start pointing fingers. And if you look at other counties, which I did, I talked to several other counties, as far as how they invest, and almost, almost all of them invest in the same type of investments that we do, is almost all of them do the same things that we do. And so if you look into that, like we're the outlier, where the redhead stepchild state, we're not we're investing very similar to what everybody else is. Yeah, were there funds that sat uninvested for a little while? It did happen, and that's unfortunate, but again, that first goal every year is to make the budgeted amount of investments that was calculated into that year, and especially for 2024 we far exceeded that amount.
Dustin Gawrylow 12:27
Has there been any looking back to determine whether previous investment strategies were maximizing returns or just looking to hit the target for budget purposes. Like before you were there, they've looked at going back to 23 maybe even 22 but even further back, we've been in a very low interest rate environment for the last 20 years, mostly. And you know, investment strategies have have required being creative to do that without putting money into things that are overly risky in the process where they're they've dug into this, this investment return issue, and have been a critical view. Have they looked back further to see if previous implementations of that investment policy were doing what they expect you to do or or matching the policy that they expected at the time?
Mark Splonskowski 13:27
Well, I believe that the finance director has done at least some of that. To be honest, I don't have the staff time to be digging in the past what our focus is, is on the future, on the now. And I believe the finance director has been digging into those things. He's reported some of that stuff to the commission. I don't want to say what I remember him saying, because I don't want people saying that. I put words in his mouth at all. But like I said, my goal, and goal of my office right now is we got to move forward. We have to maximize returns to the best of our ability right now and and looking back, it doesn't help anything. It's done, it's passed, it's gone. We have to focus on the now and the future
Dustin Gawrylow 14:13
and looking forward. What? What is it that you would like if you could just wipe the slate clean today, what would you ask the Burleigh County Commission and the commissioners, whether they like you or not, what would you ask of them?
Mark Splonskowski 14:30
I would ask of them the same that I've required of myself, work together for the serving and the betterment of Burleigh County and its citizens. This, this fighting is pointless. It's extremely damaging. And at the end of the day, the taxpayers pay the price. I have a lot of what I think are great ideas to improve this county, a lot of things that I would, I would like to see implemented. And, yeah. That I would, I would love, I would relish the idea of being able to wipe the slate clean and say, hey, you know what you said, some things. I said some things, let's put on our big boy pants and work for the burly county citizens. And let, let's make Burley county the best county in the state of North Dakota. And I think we can. We can't. We can put make Burley county a the best County, the best run county in the state, but we got to put our differences behind us. We have to work together as a team, and that's what I've been I've been hoping for and praying for ever since I became auditor.
Dustin Gawrylow 15:39
And what what would be the first one or two things in that vein that you would ask for specifically? Do you have any specific action item requests that would help you get to that point?
Mark Splonskowski 15:54
Well, basically, for starters, would be something that I've been asking for for the last year. Give me the resources I need to do my job. I've been, I've been asking for the those resources for the necessary staff ever since they re they changed the finance director position description right from the get go, I told them, please don't do this. This is going to damage my office. Is going to damage Burley County, and then also to to change the the intent of the finance director and his position. Because I've said it before, I think he's a brilliant man. I think he's highly intelligent. And it's unfortunate that the commission, and they've said this at a public meeting, they want him auditing me. So basically, I'm, I'm functioning with this, with this spotlight on me at all times, and that that's not productive. In fact, it's highly damaging. Whereas if, if we could work together as a team for the betterment of Burleigh County, there's a lot we could do. And so that would be that would be my first request. Hey, that this that basically go back the way it was. Now we can actually analyze it, look at it, and see what we can do to effectively change it. Because the system worked for 30 years. Was it perfect? No, but it worked, and it worked well, and let's go back to that rather than dumping the baby out with the bathwater, and see how we can tune this engine to really run smoothly.
Dustin Gawrylow 17:29
Why do you think it is that they Is it a matter of they just don't want to for fear of looking like they're growing government, per se? Or is it that they just don't feel like they should put the resources in, because they've decided that you can't do the job
Mark Splonskowski 17:49
well. As far as growing government, I told them from the beginning. So for 30 years, the finance department was a department of one. It's now a department of two. So they've doubled that the size of that office. The auditor's office hasn't the auditor Treasurer's Office has not grown, has not added, added staff for probably 15 or more years. And so we've, I can tell you right now, in my time, was working in tax equalization, and the auditor's office, we run lean, we run lean, and we are conservative. As a tax assessor, I drove, I believe there's a 2005 Impala, which they still drive because it works well and it's cheap, and that's the way those offices have been functioning. And so as far as not spending money there, their choices have actually cost a lot of money so far. And so I can't, I can't come to the conclusion that their their goal is to save money. What their goal is. I don't want to say, I know I can't say for sure, but I know that saving money doesn't seem to be one of them.
Dustin Gawrylow 19:06
Does it seem like there, even if they if you took your situation out of the equation? Are there cases where it seems like we have elected officials that confuse being cheap with being conservative at the cost of getting the job done?
Mark Splonskowski 19:25
Yeah, you know, I would, I would say that that is definitely entirely possible. I think there's three different categories. There's there's cheap, there's truly fiscally conservative. And in my my opinion, a true fiscal conservative knows when to save money, and no one knows when to spend money. And then there's the the conservative in name only those who actually spend a ton of money and but say that they're not spending a ton of money. I'll leave that up to the voters just to decide what youth. Think I am, and what you think the commissioners individually are, but it definitely those, those, there's those three categories, and some of them, some some people who say they're conservative are, in fact, just cheap. And I think it's, I think it's necessary to to know when to wisely spend money and know what, and know when you can wisely save money. Yeah,
Dustin Gawrylow 20:22
that gets back to the old penny wise, pound foolish concept, where you can save money today, but if it costs you, you know, down the road, you could cut $100,000 in your budget today, but if you gotta spend 2 million later on because something didn't go right then you're going backwards fast, and you don't have any control over that at all. But I, I'd like to thank you Mark for joining us today, and thanks for coming down yesterday for Our Town Hall and and, you know, I'm hoping that people get out to these public input meetings that that the county will be doing. And just as a reminder, March 3, 17th and April 7 at the regular county commission meeting, and keep an eye out for other announcements on that. So thank you for joining us. Mark, thank you Dustin. I appreciate it absolutely. It's been a long and hectic week, and I think Daryl will be back. Well, maybe we'll find out what happened. Maybe not, but once again, check out watching nd.com if you want more information, check out that video or the audio of our town hall yesterday. With that, have a good day.
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