Panel recommends keeping county board size the same

Spokesmen for a Marathon County task force on board size on Thursday recommended the board continue being the second largest in the United States with 38 members.

County board vice-chairman Craig McEwen, Schofield, and supervisor John Robinson, Wausau, told board members that a thorough study, informed by a public hearing where 118 citizens offered comments, showed the advantages of being the largest county board except for the one in Albany County, N.Y., which has 39 members.

The pair said dropping the county board’s size from 38 to 27 members could save the county $67,000, but added this was a pittance in relationship to the county’s overall $181 million budget. The savings, they said, would cost the county having a diverse membership, which includes rural members and urban minorities.

The supervisors said the Marathon County board was inarguably large. The average number of supervisors on county boards statewide is 22.2. Each member of the Marathon County board represents 3,600 people. That’s middling in a state where each supervisor in Florence County represents 369 people and a Milwaukee County supervisor represents 52,652 people.

The task force spokesmen said the public supports keeping a large board. Seventy- eight percent of comments from the public in a community meeting favored staying with the current large board. The top reason given for this viewpoint was to maintain good representation.

Robinson told supervisors they will be asked at a February meeting to vote on the board size at a February meeting. The vote will direct the districts that will be drawn with data from the 2020 U.S. Census. New districts will be announced prior to county board races in November. Officials elected that month will start serving their new terms in 2022.