Changing management

Taylor County will be switching to having its housing grant funds managed by Spooner-based Northwest Regional Planning Commission. At the June 12 county finance meeting, committee members approved moving away from working with the Taylor County Housing Authority over concerns about the authority not being aggressive enough in getting the funds used. The full county board will vote on the change later this month. The county currently has a community development block grant that is used for housing and home improvement assistance for income-qualified individuals. Taylor County House Authority (TCHA) is a quasi-governmental organization that manages the local housing office. While the county board has representation on the TCHA board and the TCHA office is located in the courthouse and gets some annual funding from the county, the TCHA is an independent organization from the county. County board representatives to the TCHA expressed concern about how the office is being run. Changes in state and federal rules have the county under the gun in wanting to get the revolving loan grant funds spent before the county is ordered to return the unspent amount to the state. NWRPC Executive Director Sheldon Johnson said the county has about $200,000 in CDBG housing funds. The goal he said should be to get the money out and expended before the state takes it back. “They are planning to take it back,” he said of the Wisconsin Department of Administration. He encouraged the county to be aggressive in working with municipalities to get those funds out to projects and help people with them. NWRPC would charge the set administrative fee currently set at 17% of the project amount. On a $100,000 project, NWRPC would receive $17,000 to administer the grant, the same amount TCHA charges for administration. “We will do it for as long as the CDBG funds are available,” he said, noting there is no additional cost to the county. When the county board has discussed switching in the past, there has been concerns raised about not having adequate local service since NWRPC does not have a physical presence in the county. It was noted that other county offices have offered to help people coming in needing housing assistance. Committee members also noted there could be additional room vouchers made available to human services if people come in for crisis housing needs. A switch in management of the county CDBG funds would not mean the TCHA will go away. TCHA also maintains rental units and administers its own grant-funded program. It would be up to the TCHA board if it wanted to continue with those programs or transfer them to county or NWRPC control. Johnson explained that NWRPC also administers those programs through Northwest Affordable Housing. The major impetus for making the move now, is that county representatives to TCHA are concerned about the money not being expended, noting that so far this year there has only been one project while typically by this time of the year there would be more than a dozen. Faced with the knowledge the state is looking to take back unspent funds, the county wants to maximize their effectiveness and benefit for local residents and felt NWRPC could better ensure that. ADRC Taylor County is taking a cautious approach to a partial reimbursement of money owed by the ADRC of the Northwoods, which was a multi-county consortium to provide aging and disabilities resources. Several years ago, the county board approved lending $75,000 to the ADRC of the Northwoods to help with cash flow as the organization would see long delays as state and federal reimbursements came in for services provided. The intent was always that if the ADRC of the Northwoods ceased to exist, the money would be returned to Taylor County as similar repayments were made to other participating counties. The ADRC of the Northwoods was dissolved at the end of 2024 and it has been replaced locally with the ADRC of Taylor County. Taylor County board members have been waiting for the $75,000 to be repaid after the bills were settled. At last week’s meeting, it was reported the county received a check for $52,000. At the advice of the county’s attorney, the county had not yet deposited the payment because they did not want to send a message that they were accepting the lower amount. Committee member Mike Bub suggesting having the county’s attorney write the ADRC of the Northwoods a letter thanking them for the partial payment and letting them know Taylor County looks forward to receiving the remaining $27,000. The county is intending to use the funds to help offset part of the cost of remodeling and expanding the multipurpose building located at the corner of Hwy 13 and Hwy 64 to accommodate the additional local staff that was needed to support ADRC services in Taylor County. Bub said he felt the county should go after the remaining funds but noted there were limits. “I don’t want to spent $30,000 to get the last $22,000,” he said. In other business committee members: • Approved adding a Grade U to the county’s compensation chart. This is the grade level on the compensation matrix that the county’s consultants recommended for the new job description for the administrative coordinator/ human resources director position. The county previously did not have that grade level. • Formally approved new funding guidelines for county’s Power Line Impact Fee grant program. The program is funded by impact fees paid for from the Arrowhead to Weston high voltage transmission line. The county grants these funds out to community projects with emphasis on recreation and outdoors projects. Impact fee funds are declining and in the wake of a number of larger requests, the county is looking to make changes to allow the grant program to exist into the future. Last month, a county committee proposed a number of changes narrowing grant eligibility, improving accountability of how the funds are used, and limiting the amount any one project could receive. The recommended changes will go to the full county board for final approval. • Received a report from finance director Tracey Hartwig addressing conversations she has had with auditors about the county’s carryover funds. She said she is working on changes to bring a recommendation to the committee next month to potentially make changes to the departmental carryovers. Some suggestions were to pool all carryovers and have departments come to the finance committee to ask for the funds to be spent. Bub expressed concern and said they don’t want to be “handcuffing departments to have to come here to spend 55 cents.” Committee member Scott Mildbrand noted the department has been able to get by on the zero increase budgets set by the board based on the ability to carryover funds from one year to the next. He cautioned that if the county board took away the carryovers he did not think they could be at 0% for their department budgets anymore.