Sadly last year we had a a real surge of West Nile virus in Minnesota. We had our highest levels ever and we had 16 residents of Henipin County who were confirmed cases. Nine of those were actually hospitalized with neuroinvasive disease as a result of Westnile virus and unfortunately one of those patients did pass away of Westnile last year.

West Nile is a mosquitoborn disease and really highlights the important public health mission that Metropolitan Mosquito Control District carries out.

The idea here is we want to target the specific mosquito species that are causing a public health concern by spreading disease or just a high annoyance concern that can really affect people's quality of life in the summertime.

In addition to mosquitoes, we have mosquitoes in our name, but we have other services as well. We do control for blackflies or biting gnats which emerge from moving water and rivers and streams. And also we do monitoring and surveillance for t the tick population and communication with local public health when tick numbers are elevated.

The big stories from 2025, Dan already mentioned this, but it was a record year for West Nile. In the district, we had 45 human cases, more than double that statewide outside of the district. And then we had an 18% positivity rate of the mosquitoes that we collected and tested, which is over 25,000 mosquitoes, which was very high compared to the average.

The safest, most effective way to control mosquitoes is to target them when they're in standing water.

Waste tires is a big problem, not only just for the environmental impact, but also they collect standing water that becomes a habitat for some of the more dangerous mosquitoes that can potentially spread diseases like West Nile virus or lacrosse and sephilitis.

The most common active ingredients we use are laral control materials which are very specifically targeted to laral stage mosquitoes in standing water. So they're materials that are safe to handle. They don't harm non-aquatic insects. So bees and butterflies and things like that, they don't harm fish or other animals that are in the water. They have a very specific strain of bacteria that disrupts the alkaline gut of a mosquito larvae. If you're not that specific type of animal with that specific type of gut, it's not going to harm you.

The board action you have before you is for agreement PR 0000007893 with senior community services for the provision of digital readiness training during the period of February 1, 2026 through January 31, 2027 in the amount not to exceed $30,000.

The contract will ensure that more seniors across Henipin County have the digital tools, confidence, and support they need to stay connected, access services, and fully participate in today's digital world.

The funding comes directly from our department, which is taxpayer funded.

It is not mandated.

Henipin County was the leader or putting something forward that we then made to be required for the region because you had blazed that path and shown that it could be done and the results of the of those and the benefits that resulted from it.

As we move further to the left, there are greater environmental benefits, economic benefits, and social benefits as we handle waste or materials in this way.

The first is looking at waste prevention, reuse and repair as a whole across the whole sector whatever the materials are looking at those opportunities as we move forward.