2021 - Covid and Annual Meetings - Click Here
NDTOA advice on Township Annual Meetings and Covid

Do your best to hold the township annual meeting on the third Tuesday in March as NDCC currently has no allowance for holding at another time. Postponing or rescheduling often results in a poorer turnout than if held on the initially designated day. In order to lessen the worries of the Covid issue, hold the meeting in the largest meeting room you can find in order to allow distance between attendees, such as a community center or other large meeting room in the township or an adjacent township, or in a large farm shop, or even outdoors (isn’t the weather usually nice in March in ND?). Wherever it is held it should be announced that state guidelines for Covid at the time will be adhered to. If you are unable to hold the annual meeting on the prescribed day, a special meeting will need to be called (see NDCC 58-04-02 and 58-04-19). There is talk of allowing participation via electronic means but that is not legally allowed, yet. It may be possible for someone to listen in via speakerphone and provide comments to the meeting, but would not be able to vote on an issue that requires a secret ballot, such as the election of officers. Remote electronic attendance may not be so easy to set up in many locations.
 

2020 - “NDTOA 54th Annual Meeting ONLINE only” - Click Here

2020 - “Meetings by Conference Call” - Click Here

2020 - Covid-19 Concerns, Township Meetings - Click Here

2020 - Open Meeting requirements during Coronavirus (COVID-19) National Emergency - Click Here

2020 - “Equalization Meeting Dates” click here

2020 - Road Needs Survey - UGPTI click here

Equalization meetings April 8th, 2019

2019 Annual Meeting of the Township-March 19th – NO EXCEPTIONS!

Click here to Nominate an outstanding Officer For Grassroots Leadership Award

“Payroll Record Requests” - Most all Townships in North Dakota have received a request for payroll information.  This request is from Open the Books which is a "cost of government" website.  While nobody needs the extra work of digging up and producing this information, this is a legitimate request and it cannot be ignored by any Township.  The request asks that any fees be waived but you do not have to do this without charge!  The template link below shows that you can charge $25 an hour after the first hour spent gathering the information. The template kind of gives you a check sheet to help you get through complying with this information request.  For one thing, you can fill in the time it will take to find all the information and compute the cost that will be involved. The request says they have to approve any cost in writing before any cost is incurred. So fill out the template with the cost and send that to the email address provided. They will have to pay for the search before you have to do it. If it will take 5 hours to dig it up because your township doesn’t have computerized records you can charge for 4 hours at $25, they may not want to pay $100 to find out what you pay your officers.  Be careful that no personal data such as Social Security Numbers are released.  Here are a couple of items from the Attorney General to help you comply with the law.  Attorney General's page on Open Meetings and Records:  https://attorneygeneral.nd.gov/open-records-meetings/manuals-and-guides
Template to Use When Responding to an Open Records Request:
https://attorneygeneral.nd.gov/sites/ag/files/documents/Open-Records-Template-For-Response-to-Request.pdf
The Open Meetings and Record laws are in NDCC 44-04 and are found on pages 108 to 118 of the 2018 edition of the NDTOA Township Officers Handbook.  When you have put all this information together, keep a copy, this may not be the only request for this information we will see.

NDTOA Bakken Oil Tour - Because of unexpected delays for the printed Grassroots Report, the Bakken Tour notice did not get out in time for the sign up deadline so this tour has been canceled. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. NDTOA and the ND Petroleum Council are working to set up a tour for a future date.

All Annual Township Meetings - March 20, 2018

January 5, 2018 - Township Officer compensation is a W2 item. 1099 is not the correct form and the W2 must be filed for any amount, even if the compensation is less than $600. There is a $530 dollar fine for each W2 you fail to file. The deadline for giving W-2 to employees and filing the IRS 941 or 944 is January 31. Jan 31 is also the deadline for filing 1099 MISC to unincorporated entities/individuals that the township paid $600 or more for services during a calendar year.