Aeschliman to stay put in BP

Blooming Prairie City Administrator Melanie Aeschliman is sticking around.

Last week, she turned down an offer to become Freeborn County’s new administrator, after some last-minute decisions by the BP City Council.

When council members learned Aeschliman had been offered the job, they held an emergency meeting and approved extending a “merit retention offer” as a bargaining chip.

The move increased her annual salary to $150,000, effective March 2, 2025. Her current salary is $115,888 annually.

Aeschliman told the Freeborn County Board of Commissioners on Feb. 3 she was declining their employment offer – which was on the agenda for the Feb. 4 meeting.

The terms of the proposed contract were not public, but the salary range was posted at $122,000 to $171,000.

Counter offer

According to the Albert Lea Tribune, the interim county administrator was directed to reach back out to Aeschliman “to see if she would be willing to reconsider the opportunity (in Freeborn County) if a counter offer were presented.”

The Tribune’s story seems to indicate some confusion among the county commissioners, including Nicole Eckstrom.

“We’re spending a lot of time and money and trying to get an applicant,” she said, “and then when we get somebody who is qualified and we’re willing to make an offer to an applicant and then all of a sudden it’s dead in the water and the rest of the board doesn’t even know why or what the next step is.”

Aeschliman said from her understanding, the commissioners “did not all get the opportunity to weigh in on the negotiation and offer.”

Since the Feb. 4 meeting, she has received a call from the interim county administrator, asking if Aeschliman would “consider giving them the opportunity” to make a counter offer.

“I feel if I didn’t give them the opportunity, then I wasted their time,” she said of the process. “I will entertain it, but I know we have good things here, and good people. My heart’s here; I don’t know if I can … my heart’s here.”

The Freeborn County Board of Commissioners held a closed session Tuesday morning to discuss the issue.

“When they deliberate, they may choose to go a different direction,” Aeschliman said Monday.

The board voted 4-1 to offer her the job initially, with Commissioner Chris Shoff the lone dissenting vote.

He told the other members that considering Blooming Prairie’s counter offer, “he was not optimistic Aeschliman would reconsider” the Freeborn County position, the Tribune story says.

City issues

When considering their options, members of the BP city council took stock of their own situation, “and definitely wanted to try to entertain the idea of keeping her,” BP Mayor Mike Ressler said at the time. “She goes in depth in a lot of things that I think people don’t understand. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes.”

The biggest issue locally is the contamination of the groundwater and soil along the U.S. Highway 218 corridor through town.

The most recent estimate for the clean-up is $4 million – billed to the city of Blooming Prairie.

A problem first identified by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency more than 30 years ago, Aeschliman is the first administrator to tackle a solution, “and not wanting the people of Blooming Prairie to pay for that,” she said.

“It’s a big burden to put on our people, so I’m really fighting the fight,” Aeschliman said the day before she declined Freeborn County’s initial offer.

“We tried last year, going a different route” for the funding, she said, hoping for 75% of the cost to be covered in a bonding bill. It was removed from consideration, despite enlisting the help of Sen. Gene Dornink (R-Brownsdale) and Sen. Patty Mueller (R-Austin).

This year, Aeschliman said, “I thought,  ‘you know what, I’m going to call it out for what it is: It’s severe contamination and if they’re saying we have to spend $4 million to put this in because it’s permeating through our (water) lines, then it’s a critical issue. Why is it on the taxpayers?’”

To that end, she wrote the first draft of a bill for the Minnesota Senate to consider, and has sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “because I’m blowing the horn federally.”

As of Monday, the state senate bill has been “numbered,” and is moving forward. Aeschliman has also contacted Gov. Tim Walz’s office and hopes to schedule a meeting with him soon.

“I’m letting him know we have a bill coming forward; this is what the bonding bill is for – and you passed it over last year,” she said. “This is a very serious contamination issue and it needs to be taken care of.”

The bill calls for the appropriation and sale of $3.9 million in state bonds, allowing for an MPCA grant to the city to address the soil and groundwater contamination.

It would include money “for the removal, replacement and remediation of contaminated soil,” the proposal reads, “and the replacement and rehabilitation of wastewater, drinking water and other public utility infrastructure with the project area.”

Backlash

Aeschliman said her work – understanding and writing legislation, as well as finding other resources – “is I think where (council members) are coming from: What price do you put on that? ‘Offsetting $4 million to the taxpayers, or giving her a $30,000 raise?’

“It’s just unfortunate … I love the city and will fight for it while I can,” she said.

It was “absolutely not” a matter of Aeschliman asking for a raise, Ressler emphasized. “It was literally just her being honest, and telling us she had the job offer,” he said.

They expected backlash, he added, “but the reality is, she can save us so much money by just letting her do her job. If she wasn’t that important to us or to our city, we wouldn’t even think about offering more money, because we could just let the next person fall into place and we’ll work with them.”

Aeschliman appreciated the offer, she said; she’s heard the backlash, too.

“I really value that the council even considered that,” she said. “I know it was a big ask for them, and that they put themselves out there.

“People trust that the government is doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and when something like this comes up, they throw their hands up and are upset,” she said.

“I just encourage people to come to the meetings, and see the work.”

Her salary adjustment will remain in effect until the city’s wage pay scale is restructured, at which time the salary would be subject to a new pay scale and structure.