County board re-elects Holewinski board chairman

The Oneida County Board of Supervisors has re-elected supervisor Scott Holewinski as chairman of the board, with a unanimous vote by acclamation this week after no one ran against him.

The election for first vice chairperson was a different scenario, with supervisor Russ Fisher defeating supervisor Diana Harris by just one vote, 11-10. However, the board followed that by electing Harris as second vice-chairwoman, also by acclamation.

In other words, there was no real dissonance, and that carried through on most of the day’s votes, including a resolution to create a part-time administrative coordinator position, which is designed to help the county’s sprawling committee system of government work as a more cohesive unit and to relieve the administrative burden on elected officials, who had assumed some of the coordinator’s job responsibilities.

That vote was also unanimous.

In accepting another term as board chairman without opposition, Holewinski thanked supervisors for the strong vote of confidence as he started his 23rd year on the board.

Holewinski then addressed what he saw as some of the likely challenges the board will face over the next two years, foremost among them the restructuring of the tri-county Human Service Center. 

“Services will not end, just the way they are administered,” Holewinski assured the board and the public. “The three counties [Oneida, Forest, and Vilas] have passed resolutions to discontinue the existing contract by the end of 2024, as it is today.”

Holewinski said the transition is fully underway, with a team of employees from the three counties working on the restructuring, along with a transition oversight committee.

Another challenge would be the yearly budget, Holewinski said.

“It’s been the will of the county board over the years to increase services with a healthy cash balance, along with using the cash balance for offsetting operating expense,” he said. “This has to change. Our cash balance has decreased substantially. The 2024 budget wages and benefits went up $3.3 million while the allowable tax increase went up only $213,000. There will be drastic cuts in the future by future county boards if we don’t start now to make changes.”

After the county board meeting, Holewinski made committee appointments for the new term. Of particular importance is the newly formed executive committee, a super-committee that is replacing the powerful administration committee but with more members —now a third of the board.

That committee is populated by the county board chairman and the two vice chairpersons — Holewinski, Fisher, and Harris, respectively — and by four appointments made by Holewinski: supervisors Billy Fried, who will serve as committee chairman; Steven Schreier; Connor Showalter; and Robb Jensen.

Another critical committee is planning and development, where there will be three returning members —Holewinski as chairman and supervisors Mike Timmons and Bob Almekinder — along with two newcomers, newly elected Dan Hess and returning supervisor Mitch Ives.

The county board also elected the public works committee, once known as the highway committee: Ted Cushing, Billy Fried, Bob Almekinder, Mike Timmons, and Dan Hess.

The public safety committee, which oversees law enforcement, will be helmed by Steven Schreier, with Fisher, Debbie Condado, Harris and Fried rounding out the panel.

Supervisor Robb Jensen will lead the social services committee, with Cushing, Hess, Condado, and Schreier also aboard. 

Debbie Condado will serve as chairwoman of the county Board of Health, with Hess, newly elected supervisor Lenore Lopez, and Fried serving as the other county board representatives. The board of health has three non-elected members.

County coordinator position approved

In a day of relative unanimity, the board approved the creation of a part-time administrative coordinator position, at a cost not to exceed $22,960 for the rest of the year, to be paid as a monthly stipend.

The approval comes at the end of a long process that began last June, when the county hired Allyson Brunette Consulting to explore a new management model and to engage in what the county terms “an inclusive process” involving elected supervisors and department heads.

In November, the board moved to have the administration committee review the resulting analysis, known as S.W.O.T. (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) and to bring back implementation options for consideration to the county board.

The final recommendation, passed unanimously Tuesday, calls for hiring a part-time administrative coordinator for up to  20 hours per week.

As it turned out, bringing the coordinator resolution back to the county board was the administration committee’s last hurrah, as it is now defunct, and committee chairman Billy Fried said the committee had gone round and round in considering multiple options. Those options were to create a full-time county administrator, a full- or part-time administrative coordinator, or to strengthen the current model and create a county liaison position. 

“For a while I thought I was on a merry-go-round and I think it ended up, in my opinion, to be a really good thing,” Fried told supervisors Tuesday. “I believe we started in one direction of enhancing the current model, something that was talked about in the public comments.”

Indeed, at the outset, while Holewinski was pushing for a full-time administrative coordinator to oversee the county’s day-day operations, Fried saw things differently, not wanting to invest a large sum of money in an initiative that might not succeed and that had, in fact, failed in the past.

Fried’s idea was to keep the existing model, which assigned many of a coordinator’s duties to Lisa Charbarneau, the human resources director, but to strengthen it.

That model had hardly been a success, either, with Charbarneau essentially becoming an administrative coordinator in name only. But during discussions Fried said that was not Charbarneau’s fault, and that his idea was to actually empower her with the authority to carry out the duties that had been assigned to her.

That was the starting point when the administration committee took up the task earlier this year, Fried said. However, he continued, along the way, the committee lost the late supervisor Tom Kelly, who passed away earlier this year. Holewinski replaced him on the committee.

“Replacing Mr. Kelly was our chairman and that ended up being a good thing because the chairman of the county board is exposed to things that we don’t realize and one of the underlying tones of our whole discussion was that there’s a lot of good things going on here in our county and we don’t want to disrupt it by taking too big a step in looking for efficiencies,” Fried said.

That thinking changed somewhat when Holewinski joined the committee, Fried said, precisely because of his unique exposure as county board chairman.

“So, as I said, we kind of started out looking at enhancing the current model, but getting Scott on the committee was huge in my opinion because he was able to identify things that needed to be strengthened as far as communicating, accountability, and efficiencies,” Fried said. “So we come forward with the resolution today to create a part-time administrative coordinator.”

Supervisor Steven Schreier, who also served on the administration committee, said he would echo much of what Fried said.

“I think we did our due diligence in that we really looked at pretty much any and all of the options,” Schreier said. “Even when we had sort of thought that we had put one option behind us, I don’t think we ever really said to take it off the table. We just said that right now it appears that’s not the direction we’re headed in.”

Schreier agreed that, when Holewinski joined the committee, the dynamic shifted.

“We were able to get more feedback from our Chair on what he felt that we really needed, as well as himself, and to being more efficient in how we coordinate,” he said. “And I think the key of what we’re looking at here is how we coordinate what the activities are in the county.”

In that regard, Schreier said, he did not view the new position as another level of bureaucracy or as a position that has ultimate authority over things. 

“This really, truly is a coordinator, and I think the way we’ve set it up now, it is really for us the ideal situation in that we all seem to recognize from the SWOT that we wanted more direct coordination, not only for ourselves as board members but for our department heads and the employees that work under them as well, and frankly for the public,” he said. “I think that this really should help streamline a lot of the issues that we have. Not that we’re inundated with a lot of issues, but we have them, as do all levels of government, whether they’re towns or municipalities.”

Schreier said he also thought the new position should potentially be looked at as a starting point.

“We can evaluate it over time,” he said. “Six months I believe we said we were going to really get a good hard look. How is it performing? Did we provide enough hours? Is it meeting its intended purpose basically is what it comes down to, and we all will be the judge of that because this individual works for us and helps us be better county board members.”

Schreier urged a “yes” vote and said it could “just be the thing that we need in place right now to see that we’re headed in the right direction with this administrative position.”

Holewinski said he brought the idea for the position to the county board but now thinks it was a good idea for the administration committee to have hashed it out.

“I don’t know how 21 of us would make the decision that five did in the very end,” he said. “I wanted a full-time position, but I think this is the best thing financially and getting what I think needs to be done by a part-time position coming in. The county board will actually hire that person, which basically answers to the full county board, but it will closely [work with] the executive committee.”

New county board supervisor Dan Hess said he assumed that the administration committee had done its due diligence in thinking the position through, but he reminded everyone that the last time the county went the route of an administrative coordinator, it didn’t work, and he too raised the question about more bureaucracy.

“I was with the county when they had the last county coordinator position, which was an absolute failure and a waste of taxpayer dollars,” Hess said. “I would hope this isn’t another layer of government and bureaucracy that we have to deal with. Usually when you’re creating positions, you’re creating them because services have changed and increased based on population and different types of population in our communities.”

Hess questioned whether a service would have to be cut to fund the new position, and he questioned, too, the broader issue of creating a new position “when we don’t have an increase in services and population.”

Holewinski pointed out that the county had already budgeted $200,000 for the position and he also said he believed it would not turn out to be another layer of bureaucracy, in fact just the opposite. 

“I think it would be helping us and the executive committee and all board members to better understand what’s really going on between each department within the county,” he said.

Supervisor Ted Cushing, who has also served as county board chairman, said he thought the administration committee made the right call with the part-time position, adding that there’s a lot more to being county board chairman that there used to be.

“It’s a hell of a lot more difficult today running the county board than it was 23 years ago just because of all the mandates,” he said.