By Sara Millhouse

In the evening, he’ll start setting up for Valley Daze, his town’s annual celebration. As an Eden Valley Fire and Rescue member, he’ll help throughout the weekend, enjoying the parade, bingo, street dance and fireworks, then help tear down on Sunday.

With his fire and rescue experience, Schmitt thought he’d focus on public safety when he decided to run for county commission in Meeker County, Minn. “It’s not just roads and bridges and parades and cops,” he said. “County government touches people’s lives in so many ways, every day, that they don’t realize.”

Only about 24,000 people live in Meeker County, a beltline county just outside the Twin Cities metro area. The economy in Meeker County is primarily agricultural, with crop, hog, dairy, egg and poultry production.

Turkey production is large here, with more than a million turkeys in Meeker County. “Your Thanksgiving turkey probably came from Central Minnesota,” Schmitt said.

About 1,600 Meeker County residents use SNAP to buy groceries, giving people the nutrition they need and bringing about $300,000 into Meeker County. “At the end of the day, we’re trying to provide the best service we can,” Schmitt said. “We try and run the programs with the highest integrity and efficiency possible, treating everybody with respect and dignity.”

Running SNAP takes people, not just funding for benefits. Someone has to sign residents up, check who qualifies and keep the paperwork moving. In Minnesota, that job falls to counties. County employees in Meeker County are the ones who do this work every day.

For years, the federal government helped cover the cost of that work. The 2025 federal budget law, known as H.R. 1, shifts more of that administrative cost onto states and, in Minnesota, onto counties. A county’s primary tool for revenue is property taxes. That means a tax cut in Washington can translate into higher local property taxes to keep essential services running.

For Meeker County, Schmitt puts the number at around $600,000. “That equates to about a 3.25% increase, so it’s definitely a significant number for a county our size,” he said.

Commissioners like Schmitt are angling for a one- or two-year delay in the shift of SNAP administrative costs to state and local governments. A delay could allow for technological improvements as well as more information on administrative costs in the face of new Congressional mandates.

“A two-year delay would be the most beneficial,” he said. “But even a one-year delay gives us some time to get our equipment up to par and develop a plan of attack for this moving forward.”

Meeker County had its largest levy increase in decades last year, triggered in part by the infrastructure needs of the larger populations that surround and regularly travel through Meeker County. “If we have to include that $600,000 into our numbers this year, we’re looking at an 8% levy increase again, on top of a 9.16% last year,” Schmitt said. “We’re compounding the problem. That’s why we’re asking for a delay and some time to get our toolboxes in order.”