Commission denies change order for server closet

By Anna Jauhola
The Kittson County Commissioners reorganized for the year during the first meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 6. Loren Younggren was re-elected as commission chair and Ryan Swenson was voted in as vice chair.
“I appreciate that you feel I can handle it,” Younggren said. “But everybody really should take a turn doing this, just because it should be a part of the process to run meetings. But I’ll accept it one more year.”
The commission considered and rejected a change order to the courthouse project. Adam Thomas, project team lead II for Johnson Controls, presented the change order to install a minisplit cooling device in a server closet in the social services department. This server is a federal server and has to remain separate, so it can’t be moved from that department, said Aimee Sugden, county administrator.
“We didn’t even know it was being used as an IT closet. We poked our heads in there and it was quite warm,” Thomas said. “It’s a suggestion that we add a minisplit in there. Once we got into it, it was a little more difficult than what we planned.”
To install a minisplit in this closet, Johnson Controls would have had to run lines up the wall and to the roof line, and mount it to the side of the building. The estimated cost was $25,112.
The commission did not like the price tag and asked whether there had been problems with that server before due to the room being too warm. There had not been any issues with the server.

To read the whole story, see the Jan. 14, 2026, edition of the Kittson County Enterprise