Oneida County will stay with regional planning commission, for now

After some deliberation, Oneida County will stick with its membership in the North Central Regional Planning Commission for another year.

At a recent meeting, supervisors on the county’s executive committee decided informally not to send a withdrawal resolution to the full county board, but, at the urging particularly of county board chairman Scott Holewinski, the county will fully analyze the pros and cons of membership in preparation for next year’s budget process.

That analysis would include all the services the county gets for its membership, what services come with extra charges, and how the payments and the services compare to other counties in the region.

“I would like to see it in writing what we’re going to get every year and how much the additional charges are, including what they’re going to charge the city of Rhinelander to do these things and see if it is a real benefit,” Holewinski told committee members at a June 4 executive committee meeting. “I will work with Tracy [county clerk and county administrator Hartman] and send a list of things that I would like to see included so that it’s all detailed out and we all know what we’re going to get in the next 10 years. …. So my recommendation is, we do this for one more year and we study this a little bit more and work with North Central Regional to see how the payments would be fair between the counties and what we’re actually going to get from them.”

At the beginning of the meeting, supervisor and committee chairman Billy Fried explained that there have been some concerns and questions about the North Central Regional Planning Commission’s (NCRPC) value to the county and that the committee was trying to ascertain where the county’s tax levy was best used. 

Fried also said there was a six-month required notice to withdraw and, with the budget year looming, the county had to act if indeed it was going to act at all.

Fried said the county had also been researching the legal logistics of withdrawal, and Hartman said county corporation counsel Mike Fugle was still digging into that aspect.

“We are legally allowed to withdraw,” Hartman said. “He [Fugle] is trying to make sure that there isn’t a law that he hasn’t spotted yet that would require us to either have a position on staff or contract with somebody else [to provide certain services now provided by the commission, such as comprehensive planning]. As of right now, he has not been able to find anything that would prohibit us from withdrawing and require us to do anything other than follow the actual comprehensive plan rules and how often we have to redo them.”

Making the case

NCRPC executive director Dennis Lawrence appeared at the meeting to make his case that the county should retain its membership.

“Our job is to make sure that Oneida County complies with a variety of state and federal requirements,” Lawrence said. “That is kind of the role that we do.”

Lawrence said there were a lot of things the commission did behind the scenes that many people were probably not aware of. 

“You see the things that we do, from a five-year cycle for all-hazard mitigation plans, five-year cycle for recreation plans,” he said. “We do transportation plans every five years, it’s required by DOT.”

Lawrence said the agency also performs a variety of regional things that are important to maintain eligibility for certain programs.

“Grant work is pretty substantial in the last four years,” he said. “We were able to secure $800,000 for the county for projects and for folks through the Main Street Bounce Back grant program, for the economic recovery program.”

Because the county is a member, Lawrence said, the agency can provide services to local units of government, including towns in the county.

That prompted a question from Fried, who wanted to know how the towns specifically benefitted, especially because Fried said he had been told the town themselves were paying for services.

Lawrence explained that Oneida County itself was what the agency calls a direct member.

“You guys pay the levy,” he said. “So the services we provide to the county are generally free, but for the local units, because they don’t pay kind of that direct fee, we do a cost share with them. So they probably pay about 50 percent of what any one project could be.”

For example, Lawrence said, a comprehensive plan likely costs around $15,000 to develop for a town. 

“They give about $7,500 depending on the complexity of the plan that they want to develop,” he said. “There are some things that we do for free at the town level. We do a lot of road rating. We do that because we run an annual grant to DOT or various work programs for our 10-county region, and those towns that sign on to do that, then we are grant funded through DOT to do that.”

However, Lawrence said, if the county isn’t a member, then no local unit of government is a member within a county, meaning, as Fried summed it up: “So if the county would pull out, then the towns, if they reach out to you for these services, some of these things will double in price,” he said.

What’s more, Lawrence continued, NCRPC would not provide the service to the towns, even if the towns were paying the full price.

“So if they want to do a comprehensive plan, they have to go to the private sector, with RFP [Request For Proposals] processes, secure consultants, or try to do it on their own, which certainly some communities have done,” he said.

Paying more than fair share?

Another issue of concern has been the fee the county pays. Lawrence said the NCRPC sets a levy rate per state statute.

“We have a standard levy rate that we have for all 10 of our counties,” he said. “And then for our highest value counties, which is Marathon, Oneida and Vilas counties, we instituted a cap at $41,000, which we have decreased since I’ve been director. This went from a little under $70,000 down to $41,000. Our executive committee is saying, ‘Hey, let’s try to make the burden less and less every year to our counties.’ We will see a reduction in 2026. I think probably it will be another couple thousand dollars less than that.”

Fried wanted to know what qualified Oneida County as a high-value county.

Lawrence explained that the region’s property valuation ranges from a low of about $2 billion in Forest County to a high of about $15 billion in Marathon.

“You guys are over $10 billion, so that’s a high value,” he said. “The cap for our top three is all the same.”

Because Marathon has more valuation, Lawrence said, there is a bit more cost share on some of their projects, unlike in Oneida County.

“So when we did the comprehensive plan for you guys, there was no fee,” he said. “For Marathon County, we did add a bit of a fee for some of the work for them on that project.”

But only three counties — Marathon, Oneida, and Vilas — pay the cap rate of $41,000, Lawrence acknowledged.

“The others, because they’re under that $10 billion valuation, the rate applies,” he said. “So it probably ranges anywhere from about $20,000 to $30,000 or so per year for some of those. And then those counties, because they’re not at the cap, then there’s some slight cost share for some of those projects as well. So that’s kind of the process.”

Supervisor Steven Schreier said he had questions about fairness.

“My concern is less with the valuation of a county that’s worth more than us, it’s more about the counties that pay less in dues and get the same benefits that we get, meaning they’re statutorily required to have all the same plans in place that we have,” Schreier said. “I assume their towns, their county have to have the same comprehensive plans, hazard mitigation plans. Those are all statutorily required plans, but they’re getting it for less than what we are and we’re paying more because of this valuation of the property.”

So, Schreier asked, how do they justify that to the taxpayer when the taxpayer in the county next door is getting the same plan for less.

“And I don’t have an answer for that because I don’t know how to tell them why the value of something we’re paying for here is more than what it would be next door,” he said. “…We also know that there are some towns that aren’t particularly happy about the fact that they’re locked into having to pay thousands of dollars in their budget for that because at the town level that’s significant for them to have to budget for those types of things.”

Schreier said it felt close to being a con game. 

“And it almost feels a little bit like a Ponzi scheme or something where we’ve created statutory language to force us into having all these different plans and then we pay dues to someone to provide plans, but we get a discount on some of the plans and not always,” he said. “And there seems to be sort of an arbitrariness to who does or doesn’t pay full price.”

Also, Schreier added, if NCRPC is performing work tied to grants, then they really aren’t doing the work for “free.”

“I mean you’re paying yourselves through the grant,” he said. “So there’s a lot there that is sort of numbers-wise maybe not obvious to the average person who would be looking at, ‘What am I getting for their money that they’re spending.’”

Lawrence said he had a simple answer, which is that every year varies a bit based on the work program being developed.

“I would say if you look at sort of a five-year cycle, that’s the way we look at things internally, is that between an all-hazard plan, five-year transportation plan, aerial photo imagery, a variety of other kinds of plans that are required, if you looked at the market value of those planning efforts versus what you pay, that the county has a benefit,” he said. “Right now a comprehensive plan, if you look, I just looked at some of the more rural county plans that are going for about $75,000 to $80,000 per plan. Oneida County paid nothing in addition to the annual membership and that was just one project and over a two-year period.”

During discussions, committee members clarified that the $800,000 that Lawrence said the NCRPC had secured for the county was not in one calendar year, but over a period of time, and others focused on the percentage of the agency’s budget that goes to salaries and other overhead.

“We’re a small organization,” Lawrence said. “Our overall budget is probably just under a million dollars and I would say salaries and benefits probably are about 75 percent of our overall budget.”

Just like counties and other units of government, Lawrence said, there have been substantial increases in those costs. 

“So we try to use other sources of funding,” he said. “That’s how we’ve been able to maintain that levy rate at a pretty low rate since I’ve been here. It’s never been increased. We normally decrease that rate.”

Government liking government

Several county department heads spoke in enthusiastic favor of the county’s membership in the NCRPC. Sarah Chiamulera, the county’s land information director, said her agency had benefited greatly from the aerial imagery program and even scored a $20,000 refund in costs.

Oneida County zoning director Karl Jennrich said his department, too, benefited from the membership, in particular with the comprehensive plan. 

“It’s only once every 10 years, but you can recall back in 2013, that process was a two- to three-year process,” Jennrich said. “This time around, it’s the same thing. I think we’re up to about two years now.”

For sure, Jennrich said, NCRPC is not familiar with Oneida County.

“So yes, when we did get the draft comprehensive plans and various aspects, there were some things that were not correct in the plan,” he said. “They may have referred to another institution, another county, but again what I’ve always stated, it is our responsibility as staff and committee to look at that and modify line by line and make the corrections. All North Central is doing is providing us with the statistical information that’s required by statute and then from there we add as much fluff or frosting or goals, that type of stuff to those plans.”

Jennrich said he really didn’t have time to work on a comprehensive plan.

“I have a list a mile long of projects that I’m not doing right now,” he said. “And again, comprehensive planning is not something I really want to do. I am a zoner, which means I deal with the reality of zoning. I’m not a planner, I don’t have a background in planning. We don’t have staff that are planners. … I am aware of other counties that do have planning staff on their payroll and help not only the county with some of these economic development grants, with other planning stuff, but they also reach out and help the rural areas with the rural towns with that planning.”

Jennrich echoed Chiamulera in the benefits of the aerial photography program, and he said it helps in nailing people for zoning violations.

“The department uses aerial photography,” he said. “It really, really, really, really helps us. Again, not that we’re looking for so many violations, but when we talk to people and you can see something that wasn’t there in 2020 and now was there in 2024, I mean, yeah, we do go after some of those violations brought to our attention over the years.”

Oneida County forestry director Jill Nemec piled on more effusive praise.

“Forestry’s main use of the planning commission would be to prepare our outdoor recreation plan,” Nemec said. “There is some content in there that I’m like, I don’t know what purpose it serves. However, there is a lot of good stuff in there that does help us. And as I’ve told you guys before, we need that in order to prepare for most of our recreation grants that we go after with the plan.”

As with other department heads, Nemec said, her department could do it themselves if they had to.

“However, like Karl [Jennrich] said, we don’t have anybody on staff that has a recreation background,” she said. “We don’t have anybody on staff that knows how to query the public regarding uses. The survey tools alone that the planning commission uses are probably the most value for preparing this plan. We don’t have a mechanism to do that.”

And her department also relies on the aerial photography program, which aids in performing a proper forestry inventory, Nemec said, which is in turn tied the timber sale program.

“If we didn’t have updated inventory, we’d be stumbling around in the woods for days trying to figure out where our type lines are in order to be setting up the timber sales,” she said. “So every five years is super helpful for us.”

The department uses them daily, too, Nemec said.

“If they were spread out, if the county funded that all by themselves and they spread that out over a longer period, like we’re getting photos every eight years, every 10 years, it would just make our jobs harder to do,” she said.

Other issues arose later in the discussion — how much of the agency’s work is cut-and-paste, essentially using formulaic templates for multiple counties; the heavy integration of the NCRPC into the grant economy; regional projects that benefit all counties; and economic studies on issues impacting the region, such as freight rail.

Near the end of the discussion, Fried said it sounded like a good deal to him.

“I’m hearing a good value if not in a product, at least they don’t have to devote staff or time to it is what I’m hearing,” he said. “To me, it seems for what they can do for us and providing that discount for towns, that under $40,000 a year, which is less than a third of one employee, there is a strong value for the county to continue it.”

Fried said that was only his own perception.

“I’ve been through this exercise three times now and we all grumble every year for nine months and then when it comes time to making a decision, the staff says, ‘yeah, we can do the majority of that’ because they’re afraid to say — and I appreciate you guys coming up and saying, ‘Hey, I do find value in it,’” he said. “I think there is value in it. If we have concerns with inaccuracy, with what we perceive as cut-and-paste or someone not really putting time into it, it’s up to us to bring that forward.”

At that point, some possible changes, particularly with town services, were bandied about, and Holewinski made his call for further study.

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