Medford to shut down another TID

The city of Medford is continuing to whittle down the number of active tax incremental districts (TIDs) in the city while working to increase housing options.

At Monday’s city council committee of the whole meeting, council members recommended closing TID 11, which includes the area of Alter Metal, Enerquip and Melvin Companies.

TID 11 was created in September 1999 and was originally set to end in 2022, but had been extended to a maximum life of 2030 as a “donor TID” in order to help pay off the debt for TID 6 and TID 8 which were located elsewhere in the city. Those TIDs along with TID 12 have been closed in the past year.

According to city coordinator Joe Harris, TID 11 has paid off all of its debts and he recommended the city begin the process to close it.

See COUNTY on page 4 property tax revenues jumped 10.55% for the budget year bolstered by $690,000 increase in state shared revenues.

According to finance director Larry Brandl, the shared revenue amount will stay at that amount and is projected to increase over time under changes in the state shared revenue formula.

“That surely helps with the revenue limits,” said board member Mike Bub.

The local levy increase was largely driven by a jump in cost for providing ambulance service. In September, Aspirus notified the county it would not be renewing the existing contract. Since then the county and Aspirus have looked at options and are negotiating for a new contract. The new contract, when reached and approved, would be set to begin in January 2024.

While not formally accepting any of the proposals, last month, the county board and the budget writing committee approved placing the approximately $1.9 million in the ambulance service line item, which would be the projected price for the option that would provide for full time staffed coverage at the Rib Lake and Gilman stations and have the inter-facility crew cover 9-1-1 calls in Medford during the day and have on-call ambulance crews at night. However, negotiations are continuing between the county law enforcement committee and Aspirus.

About the only thing that is settled on the contract is formal direction by a unanimous vote from the county board that the committee will be working with Aspirus to develop a contract for the coming year. This takes off the table, at least for now, the consideration that the county may want to go on its own with running the ambulance service.

After finance director Larry Brandl questioned when a new contract could go into effect, it was clarified that the current contract will continue through the end of 2023. In a letter to the county from Aspirus in early September they exercised the 90-day termination notice language. However in further communication between law enforcement committee members and Aspirus representatives, the intention is to have it go through the end of the year when the current contract is set to end, rather than having the current contract end on November 30.

Law enforcement committee chair Lynn Rosemeyer said they confirmed that with ambulance director Bob Kirkley, who said they would rewrite the letter to clarify that if the county wished them to.

Board members voted to formally set the parameters for the committee to negotiate with Aspirus for ambulance services.

Committee changes

A series of resolutions from the strategic planning commission to alter the committee structure and makeup received a mixed reception from the county board.

The recommendations came from a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis done as part of the strategic planning process. Board members and department heads were surveyed about their perceptions in those areas and the committee brought forward recommendations to address the issues identified.

Strategic planning committee chairman Scott Mildbrand explained that it was the committee’s intent to present these now for full implementation in April 2024 when the county board holds its reorganization meeting following the spring election. All county board members are up for reelection in April 2024.

The first recommendation was to split the finance and personnel committees back to being independent committees. The proposal would keep the personnel committee as being made up of the chairs of the oversight committee of the five largest county departments. The county had previously merged the two committees in an attempt to streamline the committee structure because many items must be approved by both the finance and the personnel committees.

Bub spoke out against the proposal because it keeps the powerful personnel committee in the hands of the chairs of the major committees. He said this excluded the majority of the county board.

“It is the same structure I have been frustrated with all the years I have been on county board,” he said.

Board member Rollie Thums supported splitting the two committees. He noted that some people are better at finances than others and that while he is chair of the human services committee and is currently on the finance and personnel committee, he said he felt there were others more qualified than himself to deal with county finances. “Yes, we have 17 people, but are all 17 qualified to do finance?” Thums asked.

Bub noted the personnel committee had significant authority to change things like workplace rules. “I think all 17 county board members should have an opportunity to serve on that,” he said.

Rosemeyer said she believed it was the intent to not have the same people on both committees, which would increase the amount of board member representations on those areas.

Mildbrand agreed. “If there are 10 different people on finance and personnel that is 10 different people at county board,” he said, noting that will go to 11 if they include the county board chairman.

Mildbrand said the vast majority of surveys of county board members wanted the separation. “It wasn’t even close,” he said.

In the end, the resolution to separate finance and personnel committees passed 14-3 with Bub, county board chairman Jim Metz and Diane Albrecht opposed.

A proposal to rotate committee membership every two years met strong opposition among board members. The proposal called for having a board member removed from the committee every two years as a way to give newer members a greater opportunity for leadership roles. This proposal failed on a 15-2 vote with only Bub and Lorie Floyd in favor of it.

Board member Chuck Zenner said he was troubled by the idea of changing committees all the time, noting there is a significant learning curve when people get on a committee. “I don’t think this is the right way to do this,” he said.

Floyd said the intent was to give all board members an opportunity to learn about different areas of how the county functions. “It will force us to learn,” she said. “If I am never on finance, how will I learn finance,” Floyd said.

Board member Tim Hansen noted that all county board members have the opportunity to attend meetings at any time regardless of if they are on the committee. He said he did not think forcing committees to kick off good people was a good idea.

A resolution to require all committees to have a vice chair met more positive reaction. Under this change committees would appoint a vice chairman for each committee to run meetings in the absence of the chair.

Floyd said she saw this as a way to provide leadership training in those areas between the current chair and someone who could take over that position.

“Once again it is voting on foolishness,” said board member Bud Suckow who said it should be governed by common sense and not require the county board to set a resolution. He said rather than wasting time, the committee chair could just pick someone to run a meeting if the chair isn’t there.

Board member Jim Gebauer agreed saying that the current system has been working fine. Metz said he felt every person serving on a committee would be capable of taking over running a committee meeting and that in that regard they were all vice chairs.

This change passed on a nine to eight vote with Lisa Carbaugh, Hansen, Metz, Albrecht, Suckow, Thums and Gebauer opposed.

A resolution seeking to evenly distribute supervisors to committees after they have served two years failed on a 5-12 vote with just board members Sue Swiantek, Mildbrand, Floyd, Brooks and Rosemeyer in favor of it.

Hansen questioned what the resolution meant and if people would be forced to be on committees to even out numbers even if they asked to serve on only a few because of their personal schedules.

Swiantek said the intent, as she saw it, was to prevent committee assignments from being “monopolized” with some people serving on 10 committees while others might be serving on two.

“To me this is what the committee on committees and rules is supposed to do,” Thums said. He said the goal would be to look at the surveys each board member filled out about their interests and try to match them to the committees while keeping it fairly equal.

“It is sad we had to write this up in a resolution,” Floyd said, remarking on perceived inequity of how committee assignments are currently divided.

A resolution calling for a regular schedule of committee meetings was ultimately tabled after a lengthy discussion with concerns expressed that the change would lock committees into meeting on set schedules.

Mildbrand said it was an issue brought by the department heads wanting a schedule of committee meetings. The resolution also included language that the goal would be for most committees to meet early in the month so that issues could go to the finance and personnel committees or county board which typically meet later in the month.

Rosemeyer said having a schedule of meetings would be beneficial when setting her personal schedule for things like doctors appointments and not finding out a few days ahead of time that she has a meeting to attend and needs to change them. Floyd supported the measure saying it would also be a benefit to citizens who might have an interest in attending.

Bub objected to crowding all the meetings into the first two weeks of the month. He said while some people on the board are retired, others, such as himself, have full time jobs and need to be at work to keep those jobs.

Floyd said the idea is to have a master schedule so that people aren’t scrambling to get people together when they need to have a meeting.

She said the proposal came from the department heads. “They are jumping through hoops to get their job done. They feel this is cumbersome. If we are going to listen to them, we should listen to them,” she said.

Other board members suggested this could just be done by asking the committees to have a general schedule of when they meet, which was noted several committees already do in regard to having regularly scheduled meetings.

In the end, the resolution was tabled, with no date set on when it may come back for consideration.