Reaching middle ground
Budget compromise restores funding for forestry, housing
A budget compromise helped avert a showdown at Wednesday’s county board session.
The compromise, brokered by Supervisor Mike Bub, restored a position to the forestry department, funding to the Taylor County Housing Authority and reversed dramatic changes proposed to the county employee’s health insurance while still keeping the overall tax levy increase below the rate of inflation.
As approved, the county budget for 2023 will be $13,378,540. Overall spending is up 8.1%. However, the county’s overall property value jumped by more than 11% last year. The impact of this is that the $7.89 per $1,000 of equalized value tax rate approved by the county See COUNTY on page 10 board is down about $0.22 per $1,000 — or about $22 on a home valued at $100,000.
The county’s finance and personnel committee had previously recommended a budget with the funding cuts in housing and forestry as a way to reduce expenses. Committee members had also approved switching from the WCA Trust health insurance to a narrow Security Health Plan insurance which would limit county employees to going to only Marshfield Clinic providers but which would see an overall reduction in county insurance expenses. The proposed insurance change was wildly unpopular with county employees who said it would result in having to take additional time off to go to appointments to an out-of-county provider while the option to buy-up was cost prohibitive for many county employees with others noting they would be going backward with pay increases not keeping up with the additional cost.
As part of the compromise measure approved by the county board, the county will stay with their current health insurance provider WCA Trust with a 10% rate increase over 2022 with a plan change of not covering out of network providers. Bub noted that the WCA Trust is a very broad plan with approved providers throughout Wisconsin and much of the country. “You can use any of their providers anywhere in the nation,” Bub said of the plan, noting there was a very small risk of dropping out of network. Another major plus with WCA Trust is the continuation of county employees being covered for using Taylored Made Healthcare.
In exchange, the proposal called for county employees to increase from paying 15% of their health insurance premiums to paying 17% of their premiums.
“I think this is a win-win,” Bub said, noting that he did not think it was unreasonable to have employees pay slightly more.
Supervisor Rod Adams asked if the employees would be happy with the change. Bub noted that this will allow them to keep their current providers and go where they are currently going. “I don’t know that they will throw us a party for having to pay 2% more,” he said, but that it allowed them to be able to keep the status quo.
As part of the deal, Bub called for the county assigning a committee that would look through every department for cost savings options and staffing reductions either through attrition, consolidation or other ways in an effort to prevent the county from having to use short-term borrowing to exceed the revenue cap in the 2024 budget.
The 2023 budget includes $500,000 in short-term borrowing which goes toward capital improvement projects such as roads. This is a work-around in dealing with the state-imposed revenue limits on counties. While it is a tool commonly used by other counties, including Clark County to the south, this is the first use of it in Taylor County.
Under the short term borrowing, which was approved on a separate vote with supervisor Lester Lewis the sole no vote, the county will borrow the $500,000 from Nicolet National Bank and repay it in about 90 days.
Bub cautioned that there would be no sacred cows as the committee looked at each department. “We have to look at every budget,” he said. He said details about how that would work would be decided at a future meeting and suggested it could be the county’s executive committee. Supervisor Chuck Zenner, who chairs the finance and personnel committee, said he supported the idea and noted he has suggested it in the past. Zenner said he felt the finance and personnel committee should be the group to examine each department.
County employees, who were among the standing-room-only crowd attending the meeting expressed concern that the employees be part of the process noting that they may have suggestions to shave expenses or the importance of keeping positions that are not as easily seen from the outside.
“That is the expectation, to speak with every department,” Bub said. “We do have a budget crunch, because of revenue limits,” he said.
Zenner agreed. “The employees are here everyday, we are not,” he said of the need for their input.
Not everyone on the board was happy with the compromise budget proposal and taking all the items as one lump. Supervisor Rollie Thums noted there were six items on the sheet passed out at the meeting and said he would like to see the board vote on them individually.
Bub said it was a compromise and that with any compromise there are parts people will like and some parts that they will not. He cautioned that if the board started to dissect it, they might get to bottom and find the compromise as a package no longer had support.
Supervisor Scott Mildbrand agreed with having an up or down vote on the entire package rather than each item. “It is a very delicate balance,” he said, noting that one minor change could make the difference between its passage or not.
On a roll call vote to approve the budget amendment compromise, it passed 13-3 with supervisors Lewis, Thums and Catherine Lemke opposed and supervisor Greg Knight absent.
The vote drew applause from those in the audience including many in the outdoors and sportsman community who came in support of the forestry department remaining at two full time employees. In the vote to approve the budget as amended, Lewis recorded the only no vote.
Supervisor Lester Lewis
