Supervisors adopt county budget, tax levy

JEFFERSON — The Jefferson County Board of Supervisors approved a $29.6 million budget for 2019 on Tuesday.

The budget was first presented to the board by County Administrator Ben Wehmeier on Oct. 9 after being drafted by the county Finance Committee. The board held a public hearing on Oct. 23.

On Tuesday, there were three supervisor-proposed amendments to the budget, of which two passed unanimously and one that failed on a 3-26 vote.

The first amendment, proposed by Supervisors Donald Reese and Lloyd Zastrow, called for creating a full-time deputy clerk position for a total increase of $7,338. The position itself would cost $16,175, and the difference would be covered by increasing county marriage licenses by $20 (going from $90 to $110), along with savings totaling $9,175 in new software and by billing half the cost of new modems to municipalities.

The amendment passed on a 29-0 vote; Supervisor Mary Roberts was unable to attend Tuesday’s meeting.

The second amendment, proposed by Supervisor John Kannard, called for postponing the County Highway CI reconstruction to 2020 and applying those project funds instead to repair County Highway E in 2019. Kannard argued that Highway E is in worse condition, and that its planned repairs have been delayed for multiple years.

The Finance Committee voted against the amendment due to neither the Highway Department nor the Highway Committee having any input on the amendment. Highway Department director Bill Kern said Tuesday that, according to the pavement-rating process the county uses, there are 95 miles in the county that need to be repaired, but the county only has a budget for working on about 10 miles. Location, planning work, state and federal funding also are considerations, he said, and therefore, a balance of projects and budget throughout the county is needed.

The amendment failed on a 3-26 no vote. Supervisors Kannard, Greg David, and Lloyd Zastrow voted in favor of the amendment.

The third amendment, proposed by Supervisor Dwayne Morris, called for continuing a part-time county jail cook position.

A full-time position has not been filled since 2009 due to budget shortfalls since then. There was an emergency hire in 2018 for the part-time position.

According to Morris, a recent inspection called for the need of the continuance. The position will be financed through the Jail Assessment fund for $10,015, which is roughly 10 hours a week or 520 hours in a year, which will not affect the tax levy.

The amendment passed on a 29-0 vote.

Following that amendment vote, the full, revised and amended 2019 budget was approved on a similar 29-0 vote.

Aside from Tuesday’s amendment debates, not much else changed in the budget since its initial presentation.

As previously reported, the budget calls for a tax levy of $28,499,733. The 2019 tax rate is about 16 cents less per $1,000 equalized valuation than the 2018 rate, for approximately a 4.07-percent decrease.

The levy figure includes both the countywide general operations tax, or mill, rate of $3.828 per $1,000 equalized valuation and the debt service mill rate of $0.1637 per $1,000, which totals a mill rate of $3.991 per $100,000 of equalized property value.

Without the debt service, the general operations levy is $27,636,332.

For the 2018 budget, the general operations tax rate was $3.9882, meaning that there will be a decrease of $0.1604 per $1,000 equalized property value in 2019. In other words, roughly speaking, the general operations tax rate will be about 16 cents lower in 2019, which translates approximately to a $160 decrease per $100,000 of equalized property value.

Additionally, for the 2019 budget, the non-countywide levies — which are “apportioned to the municipalities benefiting from the service being furnished” by the county, as stated in the recommendation — will be $863,411 (a tax rate of $0.1442) for the Health Department and $1,151,101 (a tax rate of $0.3346) for library services.

When those two figures are added to both general operations and debt service, the total levy becomes $29,650,000.

County Chairperson Jim Schroeder commented on this year’s budget process.

“It went very well, as it has for the last several years,” he said. “We are very happy with the result. We did have some supervisor amendments, and the way I would characterize those is that it is the right of every supervisor to propose an amendment, and in my judgement, every amendment proposed tonight was proposed in the spirit of making things better.”

In other matters, the board:

• Approved, on a one-year trial basis, sharing a University of Wisconsin-Extension community educator on a 0.3 fulltime-equivalency basis with Waukesha County starting next year.

 
 

Jefferson County has been without a full-time educator since 2016, and Waukesha offered to share its educator with Jefferson. It will cost Jefferson County about $25,000 for 2019.

The position will be funded by the county’s UW Extension budget from 2018.

• Approved an agreement with the state Department of Transportation (DOT). The DOT had offered to purchase salt brine blending and storage equipment for use at the Jefferson County Highway Department’s Jefferson garage and satellite shops in Lake Mills and Concord.

The county will buy the equipment, but the DOT will reimburse the county and take ownership of the brine equipment for 10 years. After that period is over, the DOT will transfer ownership to Jefferson County.

The initial cost is $138,400 to the county, which the DOT will pay back.

• Approved an $89,977 contract with SRF Consulting Group to update and revise the county’s Comprehensive Plan and its Agricultural Preservation and Land Use Plan. The firm was the lowest of two bidders for the contract.

• Approved applying for Department of Natural Resources grant to assist with improving paddling and watercraft access to the upper Bark River from county owned land. The total project cost is estimated at $15,000. Of that, the county would provide $3,131, with a matching grant of the same amount from the DNR; the DNR is pursuing a Pittman/Roberts grant that would cover the remaining $8,738 of the project.

• Approved various contracts between the county’s Human Services Department and the state agencies with which it conducts routine inter-agency statutory duties. The contracts are required under state law, and cover over 100 professional service providers or agencies.

• Sent back to the Executive Committee for more consideration a broadband ordinance that would allow the county to obtain Broadband Forward! Certification under the authority of the Public Service Commission (PSC). The ordinance, based on a model provided by the PSC, is designed for state-wide consistency for the Broadband Forward! Certification applications by local governments.

A community that adopts the ordinance will be considered “broadband ready” by the PSC, meaning that the community has “taken steps to reduce obstacles to broadband infrastructure investment” for telecommunication firms in terms of applications, fees, permits and review processes. The ordinance, as proposed, did not allow a community to discriminate between service providers.

• Appointed Barbara Schmitt and Nancy Boos to the Nutrition Project Council.

• Approved routine amendments to the county zoning ordinance.