No sale

Taylor County won’t be cashing in on a carbon credit deal anytime soon.

At Tuesday’s session of the Taylor County Board, board members rejected on a 15-2 vote a resolution to enroll the county forest in the program. Lynn Rosemeyer and Myron Brooks were the only ones voting in favor of participating in the program.

The county had been approached about enrolling 14,813 acres of productive forest land into the program. Under the program, credits would be sold on the American Carbon Registry to corporations and others looking to offset their carbon footprint. The Climate Trust, the company who had approached the county, projected the county would see a net revenue of about $6 million from the sale of the credits with about $3 million to $4 million of revenue in the first few years. However, it carries a 40-year commitment with it for monitoring and following the program guidelines.

Board member Chuck Zenner reported on talking with representatives from Dairyland Power who are involved in carbon credit programs. Zenner is a See COUNTY on page 4 board member of Dairyland Power. He expressed concern with the county needing to be careful on restrictions about how much can be cut in the forest noting that environmentalists would be looking closely at this agreement and others like it . “There could be a lawsuit if it is not cut properly,” Zenner said.

It was also noted that while the projected revenue is $6 million it works out to be only about $150,000 a year over the term of the contract and it was questioned if that was worth the potential risk down the road.

Board member Mike Bub said the cost to the county could potentially be higher if the county was prohibited from cutting 10% of the available timber. In the past 5 years the county forest has generated $2,844,786 in logging revenue. This works out to be an average of about $568,957 per year. He said a 10% reduction in revenue would be $5,896 per year which over 40 years would be about $2.28 million in lost logging revenue from the contract.

Others were opposed to the plan based on the length of the commitment. “40 years is way too long,” said board member Jim Gebauer.

Board member Rollie Thums agreed and said he received a number of calls on the proposal with all of them opposing it. “It seems to me that the majority of opinions from the public is no,” he said.

Bub also questioned why the county would go with a contract for that one company rather than getting competitive bids for it from multiple companies. He also said he did not believe the program does anything to curb pollution, describing it as being for rich people flying private jets to say they aren’t polluting.

“There are just too many ifs,” said board member Bud Sukow. He said he would like to wait to see what other counties who are taking part in the program experience.

Ambulance contract

County board members approved increasing the full time staffing for the ambulance service by 3 full-time equivalents to address coverage concerns. This will bring the cost of the ambulance contract to more than $1.9 million per year.

Bub questioned why the increase was needed to a contract that had been negotiated and approved only six weeks before the change was proposed.

Rosemeyer, who chairs the law enforcement committee that negotiated the contract said concerns were brought to the committee at the February meeting about coverage. The decision was made to go from 16.8 to 19.8 FTEs for the service.

The contract had been built on the idea that there would be paid on-call community members covering shifts. Rosemeyer said those volunteers simply aren’t there and said that last fall the county board had approved going up to $1.9 million in the contract.

Bub objected to the increased cost. “Taylor County has the highest tax rate in the state of Wisconsin,” Bub said, citing the Wisconsin County’s Association. He said that to him adding $200,000 to the contract less than six weeks into the contract was too much. “I don’t think that is a very good faith attempt to see if it works,” he said.

Bub suggested that partnering with Aspirus may not be the solution and noted Floyd talked about the county running its own ambulance service. He questioned what the status of that idea was or if the county was actively looking for other services to contract with.

“I just can’t support this,” he said of the increase in staffing and cost.

Zenner said the county is doing its best to cover all the residents of Taylor County. “I don’t see why western Taylor County should be cheated out of service,” he said.

Bub said nobody is being cheated, he called for the county to play out for more than 6 weeks to see if it can work out with the lower staffing.

Ambulance director Bob Kirkley said the same problems are being seen elsewhere and in many ways Taylor County is in a better position than other rural areas. He gave the example of where he is originally from in Upper Michigan where there is a 40 minute wait for an ambulance to arrive on a scene.

By comparison, Taylor County has averaged a three minute response time to have an EMT on the scene. The county’s increase is in the time on scene as they await a transport vehicle to bring the patient to the hospital. He said the additional staffing would help reduce this.

“I feel Aspirus is holding the citizens of Taylor County hostage,” Thums said. “I think there is a better service out there somewhere and we can get it.”

Floyd clarified that the county was looking at taking over the ambulance service and that the committee was actively looking at options other than Aspirus.

‘How can you compare if you only have one,” Thums said, noting that he would be “reluctantly” voting yes on the contract change.

In the end, the contract change passed on a 14-3 vote with Tim Hansen, Bub and Mildbrand opposed.