Oneida County board adopts budget with 4-percent tax levy cut

With two minor adjustments, the Oneida County Board of Supervisors at its November meeting approved the county’s 2025 budget and tax levy, adopting a property tax levy of $18.3 million to be collected next year, a decrease of 4 percent from last year’s levy of $19.1 million.

The estimated tax rate will drop 20 cents, from $1.73 per $1,000 equalized value to $1.53 per $1,000 equalized value. Overall, the county’s equalized value increased 9 percent for 2025.

The only changes made by the county board to the proposed budget were to restore $25,000 in funding for the county’s snowmobile patrol and to redirect $41,000 in 2025 funding for the North Central Regional Planning Commission, the money for which had been placed into contingency for further consideration. 

The latter dollars were returned to the zoning budget for normal allocation.

Oneida County board chairman Scott Holewinski took the county board through a summary of the numbers, observing that the county began the budget process in July and held public hearings to review budget requests.

All totaled, Holewinski said, at those hearings the executive committee whacked $1.5 million from the roster of requests.

“The total budget is $81.5 million for 2025, with a general fund operating budget of $32.7 million, balanced without having to tap any fund balances or Rainy Day accounts,” Holewinski said. “The capital improvement plan for 2025 is $9 million. This includes over $6 million in highway construction projects and including projects through the Wisconsin DOT STP local bridge program.”

In addition, Holewinski said, the budget sets aside $1.5 million to replace fleet equipment and IT (Information Technology] systems, and 2025 capital improvements projects wrapped up with $1.4 million to keep public buildings in good condition.

There were areas of future concern, Holewinski said, including the state imposed tax levy cap.

“The allowable levy increase for 2023 was 1.2 percent and for 2024 was 1.3 percent,” he said. “That’s 2.5 percent and that just covers the employees’ step increases for the two years. Cost of living adjustments were 15 percent increase for the last two years.”

Inflation in the cost of goods, increases in employee benefits — all that had to come out of the operating costs, Holewinski said, which he said means that sooner or later services would have to be cut to keep up.

Holewinski said that, while the tax rate drop looked impressive, it wasn’t as good as it looked.

“It’s going down 20 cents because they raised the equalized value by 9 percent, meaning it’s about a four cents reduction,” he said.

Holewinski also said sales tax revenue and building permits continue to beat historical trends.

“How long can we depend on these growth patterns?” he asked. “I don’t know, but as an organization we need to prepare for when the economy slows.”

Personnel costs account for 46 percent of the total budget and are projected for $38 million next year. Current challenges with recruitment and retention are another problem, Holewinski said, while absorbing the Human Service Center functions increased the employee head count substantially.

“We were at about 300 employees and now we’re going to 350 employees,” he said.

Holewinski also said the budget proposal’s cost-of-living adjustment was consistent with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission guidelines to keep up with the market.

“We need to work on a long-term plan for workforce affordability,” he said. “In capital planning, the county is responsible for highways, bridges, culverts and several facilities, including a law enforcement center, equipment and IT.”

Holewinski said the county has a capital improvement plan that looks ahead three years but that large projects tend to pop up in mid-year.

“I think the county’s looking at going to, besides a three-year plan, a long-term 10-year plan,” he said.

Holewinski said he was looking for ideas from the county board on ways to improve long-term fiscal planning and for thoughts about how to balance the funding of operations such as personnel with having enough funding available for capital projects without going into debt.

Snowmobile patrol

During board discussion, there were calls to restore $25,000 in funding that the executive committee proposed cutting from the county’s snowmobile patrol, from $50,000 to $25,000.

Executive committee chairman Billy Fried gave his perspective on the proposed cut.

“During the process initially it was cut entirely,” Fried said. “Then we came back and we put $25,000 back. The reason it was cut was because it wasn’t really, in my mind, a cut of the services. It was a cut of the funding.”

Fried said it was his understanding that, if the DNR asked the county to do the patrol, they would pay for it.

“The problem is, it’s like the DOT with the highway,” he said. “They’ll tell you to go maintain the roads but they don’t pay you what it costs to do it. So as we went through the budget hearings, we came back and said, ‘let’s put $25,000 in.’”

That way, Fried said, the sheriff has his discretion to do the patrol but the county was also sending a message to the agency, saying the state needed to fund what it costs.

“It was really to kind of get their attention,” he said. “It’s my understanding that if we pass the budget, the sheriff will do at his discretion what he needs to do to provide safety out there on the trails.”

Fried also said that, at the end of the day, because he’s an elected official, the sheriff has the ability to do things outside of what maybe the board funds him to do.

Holewinski said the sheriff, whose department carries out the patrols, had attended the budget hearing with a list of potential cuts to the sheriff’s office, in no particular priority order.

“We do not control the sheriff's department and what he spends his money on,” he said. “We set his budget, give him x amount, and the sheriff determines how that is spent, so I think this is a situation where the snowmobile club has to go to the sheriff and discuss it. The sheriff decides how he wants to fund public safety.”

Holewinski said sheriff Grady Hartman does a good job enforcing the law and of making sure things are safe in the county.

“He can spend $25,000, maybe he’ll spend $100,000, but it’s not our decision to make,” he said. “The county board only tells him how many employees we’re going to give him and how much money we’re going to give him.”

Holewinski said the executive committee had cut some out of the sheriff’s department budget, but the board doesn’t tell the sheriff what he has to do.

Defund the police?

Supervisor Dan Hess, who is a retired chief deputy for the county, said he was not for defunding law enforcement in any fashion. Beyond that, Hess said he had listened to the discussion about cutting recreational enforcement and did not think it was a good idea.

“Our county is based on recreation, whether it’s boating, UTVs, or snowmobiling,” Hess said. “I understand part of the reasoning was because the DNR has not been doing their due diligence and getting out and patrolling the trails like they’re supposed to.”

Still, Hess said he didn’t believe that was a good a reason to defund a certain service for the safety and security of the county’s residents and of the people who visit for recreational purposes. Hess also said he foresees a difficult snowmobile season.

“We did not have a season last year at all, and whether the sheriff does this or not, the sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer in the county and he will be forced to go to fatality accidents when the DNR doesn’t respond,” he said. “So, based on all that, and recreation being at the level it’s going to be this year, the sheriff should be working on prevention through presence on the trails.”

As such, Hess made an amendment to the proposed budget to restore the funding. 

Supervisor Collette Sorgel said the money would make a difference.

“We’ll have a lot of people that were dying to come up last year who had to go down south and hopefully we’ll have more people on our trails, which means we’ll have more to police and more safety to talk about,” Sorgel said.

Sorgel said there was a tourism group that addresses snowmobile safety on its web page.

“We try to get people to understand the safety and how to ride safely, so that’s very important to our economy,” she said.

But Holewinski said the board was just talking about the sheriff’s department’s budget in total, and if the snowmobile patrol was a major priority, “maybe the sheriff will make sure it’s funded properly.”

“We’re just talking about his total budget for 2025, about raising his budget $25,000 at this point,” he said. “We don’t get to select which category he takes it out of.” 

Supervisor Chris Schultz said he logs between 3,000 and 4,000 miles per year on the trails and he maybe runs into a patrol every other year.

“You don’t see people out there patrolling trails,” Schultz said. “You go up by Hayward where the USDA is, the Forest Service, you see those guys all over the place, but around here you just don’t see the sheriff's department on the trails or the DNR. I’ve yet to see a DNR guy out here. In all the years I don’t think I’ve ever run into one DNR patrol.”

There’s just not a big law enforcement presence, Schultz said. 

“I think people realize that and, sad to say, if you watch the statistics, it’s always nighttime when the crashes occur and you never see the guys out there at night,” he said. “It’s usually a daytime patrol. I think there needs to be more of a presence out there.”

Fried said he supported the principle of the motion, but he wanted to know where the money was coming from.

“If someone's offering to add funds, they should be identifying where we’re getting the funds from,” he said.  

Raising the levy was out of the question because the levy limit had already been reached.

Finance director Tina Smigielski said there were some surplus revenues that could absorb the $25,000. Either that, Smigielski said, or the board could transfer the money out of the contingency budget.

Fried suggested another option — taking the money from another budget account, such as tourism, given that the patrol is related to tourism.

Holewinski again said the issue on the table was whether to increase the sheriff department’s budget by $25,000, to come from either excess revenue or the contingency fund. Supervisor Robb Jensen said he was usually reluctant to support such amendments on the county board floor but this one was different.

“We have to understand this is recreation,” Jensen said. “We’re talking about snowmobiles but it also provides for UTV-ATV trails, as well as lakes, and I can tell you from a town perspective that we are looking at having additional patrols on our lakes, so this provides a little more money.”

Jensen said he understood that the sheriff has his budget and can do what he wants, but he said the sheriff had been very cooperative in looking at ways to reduce spending, and his department was responsible for helping to reduce a significant shortfall heading into county budget hearings.

“I think having it in the account sends a message that we support having safety on our waters, our ATV, UTV, and our snowmobile trails,” he said.

The budget motion passed 17-1, with only Holewinski opposed.

The only other change was prompted by supervisor Ted Cushing, who objected to placing $41,000 earmarked for North Central Regional Planning Commission membership into a contingency to pay for projects a la carte.

That’s not how it works, Cushing said.

“Pay as you go is not allowed,” Cushing said. “You’re a member or you’re not a member.”

Cushing reminded supervisors that withdrawal from the planning commission requires a two-thirds vote and six months notice. 

“The point basically is that if we were going to withdraw we would have had to pass a resolution by June 30, 2024,” he said.

Cushing made a motion to put the money back in the zoning committee budget. Holewinski said the motion would renew membership for 2025 and then, if the county wanted to take action, they could do so by the end of June next year.

Given the legal language, Holewinski thought it was the proper action, and the board passed Cushing’s motion and approved the budget and the tax levy.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.