Staffing, service on the table as county looks at budget cuts

County executive committee refines scope of efforts to remove $500,000 from Taylor County budget in 2024

Staffing and service cuts will be on the table as part of county board efforts to reduce the budget by $500,000.

Members of the county’s executive committee met Monday morning with committee members getting an update on a reorganization plan involving the treasurer, real property lister and surveyor’s offices and refining how they want the county to move forward in making budget cuts and what those cuts may look like.

Committee member Scott Mildbrand said he wanted to address comments made by supervisor Lester Lewis at a previous meeting that an office reorganization would not save money. He said he researched it and met with the current county surveyor Bob Meyer. Meyer has plans to retire later this year. The county is considering a plan to not rehire for his position and go to one person in the department with additional help contracted as needed for corner post setting.

Mildbrand said he felt that even with the additional costs they would have from paying other staff more to take on additional duties and to contract for services, the county could be saving about $50,000 a year in costs.

County finance director Larry Brandl agreed, however he expressed reservations about finding large savings through staff cuts, noting that the majority of county offices only have one or two staff member positions in them. He also noted that even the larger departments such as highway have only a fraction of the staff they had years ago. “Highway used to be a 60-man crew, now they are down to 20,” Brandl said. “Most of our offices are one to two people. It isn’t as easy as saying we are going to cut a person here,” he said.

“If you are going to cut services you have to be willing to cut services,” Brandl said.

“Government is a business, in business you either increase revenue or you cut costs,” said county clerk Andria Farrand. She noted that the recent action of raising marriage licenses by $30 isn’t going to make a huge difference.

County board chairman Jim Metz noted that the county is facing a revenue issue with years of levy freezes by the state government and that they have asked department heads for the past 13 years to come in with 0% budget increases.

Committee member Mike Bub disagreed saying those zero increase budgets didn’t include employee costs and that the county needed to look at those costs to save money for taxpayers.

“If we are at 0% how are we spending more money? The budget is the budget. You can’t take the biggest piece of the pie and ignore it,” Bub said.

Mildbrand opposed the idea of laying people off saying that instead they should be focusing on eliminating positions through attrition and not rehiring after people retire. He said the last thing he wants to do is to eliminate positions people have.

“It happened to my wife three times and it sucks. I don’t want to do that to anyone,” he said.

He said if the state would allow the county to raise taxes based to the consumer price index (CPI) of the previous year, that would make the headaches go away because they could keep up with inflation. Instead increases are based solely on growth in the county, which Brandl noted has never been higher than 1.4% in the past 10 years.

The budget cutting committee will be meeting on February 14.

In other action, committee members:

  Reviewed a sample job description for a network coordinator to oversee the county’s fiber optic network and serve as liaison in working with Wanrack and other providers to ensure their obligations under the county contracts are being met. Currently Bub, as the broadband committee chairman, has been doing a lot of this work, relying on the skills he used prior to retirement. However, he said that with the county committed to having the network for the next 20 years, they will need to have someone in place to go forward. He said he expected it would be a part-time position. “It is a 20-year investment. Odds are that none of us sitting at this table will be here in 15 to 20 years,” Bub said. The county human resources director will look internally to see if there are workers within the county government already who have the skills needed to do part or all of the job.

  Approved supporting a resolution calling for state funding to keep up with county costs to run child support collection programs. Wisconsin had been second in the nation in recovering child support cost and has slipped to sixth, in large part due to the loss of funding at the county level. Bub questioned a section of the resolution template that referred to federal matching funds regarding the amount and wanted it clarified when brought to the county board that it is the correct amount. “I just want it to be accurate,” Bub said.

  Approved on a 2-1 vote seeking additional opioid settlement funding from pharmacies including chains such as Walgreens and CVS which reached settlement agreements with state lawsuits. Bub opposed the action, noting that the pharmacies simply filled the prescriptions. “Didn’t the doctors have to write the prescriptions to get them filled? What did CVS and Walgreens do wrong?” he asked, noting that the ones who are writing the prescriptions are not being sued and that the businesses will just end up raising their prices to cover the settlements.