Marathon County to receive $1.4M more from state
Marathon County will receive an additional $1.4 million in state aid next year after Gov. Tony Evers signed a bipartisan bill in Wausau last week that will deliver a long-awaited boost in funding for local governments across the state.
Cities, towns and villages throughout the county and Wisconsin will also see an increase in shared revenue from the state, which had stagnated for years under the old funding formula. With the new law in place, 20 percent of the state’s five-cent sales tax will go into financial assistance for local units of government, resulting in a roughly $275 million hike in aid statewide over the next two years.
The county’s Human Resources, Finance and Personnel (HRFP) committee happened to meet last week on the same day, June 20, that Gov. Evers was in the county to sign Assembly Bill 245, which ties the annual growth in sales tax revenue to state aid distributions.
Committee chairman John Robinson said the county’s additional shared revenue will amount to a nearly 35 percent increase over this year’s total. Percentagewise, this is on the lower end of increases for counties, but that’s due to the fact that many counties were getting such a low amount under the old funding formula, he noted.
Oneida County, for example, was getting just $1.90 per resident before the change, while Marathon County’s shared revenue equaled $28 per capita, Robinson said. In terms of total dollar amount, the county’s aid will increase from $3.9 million to $5.2 million, which he called “significant.”
Included in the committee’s agenda packet was a June 15 letter from state Sen. Jesse James (R-23rd), who said lawmakers came together to provide “critical funding” for Wisconsin’s counties and municipalities.
“This historic shared revenue funding will enable local governments to not only continue their current services, but help the community in a variety of other ways,” James said. “Some of these include support for law enforcement entities, removal of the obsolete personal property tax, increased funding for public schools and school choice programs, as well as more funding for EMS.”
Board chairman Kurt Gibbs echoed the senator’s comments, noting that the new law will replace an old system that produced “winners and losers” among different counties and municipalities. Going forward, local governments will be able to equally share in the revenue generated by the state sales tax.
“Economic success is now at the heart of the state aid formula,” he said. “I applaud the legislature for all of the work that they’ve done.”
Prior to this, Marathon County has not had an increase in shared revenue in 20 years, Gibbs noted.
Robinson said a number of issues still need to be resolved, such as when the new aid payments will arrive. He said the additional funding will not be available until July of 2024 at the earliest.
“It will make the budget a little bit easier this year or next year depending on how that rolls out in the payment schedule,” he said.
Other business
n The committee went into closed session to discuss the “potential purchase of private property adjacent to countyowned properties,” but no action was announced in open session.
n Committee members continued an ongoing discussion about recruiting and retaining employees, with a focus on potentially changing the work week hours in some departments. This could include employees working four, 10 hour shifts instead of a traditional five-day week. County administrator Lance Leonhard said he would work with department heads to develop a “high-level plan” for adjusting hours, and bring a proposal back to the committee in July.
n Leonhard told the committee that the state has officially allocated $7.4 million toward the construction of a regional morgue in Marathon County, and county officials are now working to put together the required $7.4 million local match. He said a proposed land purchase from Northcentral Technical College could be considered part of that match, along with $2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and $2 million requested from the federal government.
In the meantime, Leonhard said the county has engaged with an architect to start designing the facility and zero in on the actual cost of construction. The county is working to develop a fundraising campaign but is also considering a scaled-back facility that would not initially include space for serving as a regional teaching center, he said.
“If we were to just build the core government functions, this facility would look a lot different and it would be much more inexpensive,” he said. “It would still be expensive, just much less expensive.”
