County likely to come up short on goal of cutting $500K

There were no golden eggs or geese laying them to be found in the most recent session of the county’s budget review committee which met on May 4.

The committee has been charged with the task of meeting with each department to identify areas where the county could make cuts or improve efficiencies with the goal of eliminating $500,000 from the county’s overall budget to avoid having to use short term borrowing to circumvent the state-imposed levy limits.

Instead of finding any low-hanging fruit, committee members heard from departments which regularly use cast-off office equipment from other departments and frequent local thrift stores for office supplies and who delay software upgrades until absolutely necessary to keep costs under control.

Register of Deeds Jaymi Kohn reported on ways she works to keep costs down in her department. Her office has herself, a chief deputy and a half-time assistant. Kohn suggested the half-timer could be eliminated if they were able to utilize hours from a person in the zoning department. This would require that employee and the chief deputy switching from 35 to 40 hour weeks.

Kohn also suggested the possibility of moving the zoning office from their current first-floor location to the second floor to make sharing staff easier while also creating a general land information area.

County finance director Larry Brandl raised doubt if the cost of moving the departments would be worth the potential savings. “It isn’t moving just one or two people it is moving all of the infrastructure,” he said.

One of the major expenses for the register of deeds office is the electronic management of the records in the office and the lack of off-site storage of the records. She noted they have four copies of each record, but they are all kept in the same building.

Committee chairman Chuck Zenner noted the county’s goal is to not lay anyone off. Since the county does not participate in the state unemployment pool, if a county employee is laid off, the county pays the full amount of unemployment each pay period.

Committee member Greg Knight also questioned the value of moving offices and further splitting the hours of a staff member who is already shared between the zoning and forestry departments.

He said it was worthwhile for the departments to look at it as a potential, but said they also needed to looking for the long term. “You will just be revisiting it five years from now,” he said.

Kohn noted there has been a decline in real estate transactions, but that if the number rebounded to where it was two years ago, the workload would be a lot higher.

Kohn said the register of deeds office has gotten the reputation of being scavengers when other departments are looking at replacing items rather than purchasing new items of their own. She said other times she has made purchases with her own money for items in the office rather than having the county purchase them.

“I don’t think you should have to do that,” Zenner said.

“I am a taxpayer too,” Kohn replied. As far as ways to increase revenues, Kohn said they have started charging 25 cents a sheet for regular copies for people coming into the office. She also said the county could look at having her department do title or abstract work, which she noted would be competing with the private sector. She said they already do this work for the county when it takes tax delinquent property through the in rem process. “It is really, really a lot of work,” Kohn said of the need to research the ownership history of parcels.

Zenner expressed reservations with the county getting involved in the abstract and title business.

The treasurer’s office with two employees and not much in the way of equipment or contracts came next in the review. Treasurer Sarah Holtz said their biggest expense is the need to purchase new tax collection software which will require a $22,000 increase in her budget next year. Holtz explained she has been putting off the purchase for as long as possible but has been informed the software they have will no longer be supported.

She said there will be an annual fee for the software that will increase 3% each year. She said they will be getting all the municipalities switched to it next year.

One of the pluses of the switch will be making it easier to transfer funds from the county to the municipalities when people pay their taxes with credit or debit cards. She noted the county had $40,000 worth of tax bills paid by credit card this year.

In response to a question from committee member Lynn Rosemeyer, Holtz clarified that the individual paying by credit or debit card pays for the credit card fee.

Some areas the county could see savings is by requiring people to include a self addressed stamped envelope if they want a receipt when they mail in their tax payment.

Knight said he is against shuffling costs comparing it to playing musical chairs.

Holtz also spoke of changes to the in rem process. She said stating this year people who are delinquent in their taxes will have to pay all four years of taxes and not just the current year. She said over time this would bring more revenue in and reduce the number of people who are on the list year after year.

The UW-Extension office came next in the budget review with personnel costs amounting to about 90% of the office’s expenses. The office is a partnership between the UW System with the university paying about 55% of the salary and benefits for the 2.3 full time equivalent educators. For this year’s contract period, the cost to the county is $93,000.

The state average for staffing in the office is 2.77 FTEs but at 2.3 Taylor County is at the median for the northern portion of the state. One potential identified would be reducing the hours of the office support person, but it was noted that the individual in the position already has a full plate.

The Veterans Service office is another lean running office with just two staff members and no major capital equipment expenses.

Veterans Service Officer Sheila Wundrow, who has only been in the position for a few weeks, reported on some of the things the office does in assisting veterans with applying for benefits. She said they are looking into the possibility of other grant funds and working with other county departments such as Human Services to get additional assistance for veterans.

The final department reviewed was zoning. This is a three-person department without major assets. Zoning administrator Kyle Noonan said a major expense is when they have to purchase a new truck for him to use, and they go through a bidding process for that. He said the last time they purchased a vehicle his previous one went to the highway department where it is still in use.

He noted that many of their programs are state mandated. He said he was hesitant to look at large fee increases, noting they aren’t really a major revenue source for any county.

His office collected about $30,000 in fees last year. However, since many of them were part of state programs, the county had to turn over a large portion to the state government.

Brandl suggested the committee skip over the newly created land information department formed from merging the real property lister officer with the surveyor office. He noted there would be savings due to having one less person between the two offices. He also suggested skipping the tourism and historical society budgets noting these are also small budgets with the funds going largely to outside groups which depend on them to do their functions.

Having gone through the departments from Aging to Zoning and everything in between, committee members noted that while it has been valuable to do the exercise they didn’t really find major places to see cuts or increased revenues.

“You will get some efficiencies from doing this whole exercise,” Brandl said, noting departments are talking with one another more about ways to share costs and reduce expenses.

Knight noted this was an important byproduct of the entire process.

Zenner said he did not see where there would be a half million in cuts. “I don’t want to cut services,” he said. “I don’t want to start down that path because it doesn’t end.”

Brandl said most departments are one to three people with their top expenses being personnel costs. “We would have to cut personnel which cuts a service,” he said of the potential for meeting the $500,000 goal.

“We have a revenue problem, not a spending problem,” Knight said, noting that people need to contact their legislators to address the problems with stagnant shared revenue and the levy cap that makes it hard to respond when there are spikes in inflation.

Zenner noted that another option for the county is to go to referendum and seek a revenue cap increase.

The committee will meet once more on May 22 to review the potential areas of savings identified through the meetings and compile a report to send to the executive committee and the full county board.