 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And probably one of the best decisions or at least one of the better decisions that Bill and I were a part of the last seven, eight years ago was hiring a new finance director, a finance director named Tim Finch. Tim, it's good to have you with us today. Thanks, I'm always glad to be here, thank you. Tim's been the finance director I think now for, has it been almost eight years? Yeah, close to it, yep. And has done a fantastic job for Sheboygan County. We've faced some tremendous challenges over the years and Tim and his team have just been wonderful to work with. And today we're gonna talk a little bit about the 2008 budget process as well as our overall fiscal outlook. And Tim, as some of our viewers may be aware, if they've been following it a little bit, the county's been working on the 2008 budget for the last four or five months and we're getting close to bringing it to the full county board for their action. Thus far, how's it gone and what's the 2008 preliminary budget look like? Well, actually it looks very good for this year. Next Tuesday, as you know, the county board will get the first peek at the preliminary budget and they'll take that back and then review it, look at it and then come back and really study it in detail on that 30th at the county board on October 30th. But it's gone very well. It's been very successful this year and probably, well, more successful than it's been for many, many years, at least as far as the tax levy goes. So it's gone real well. Please give our viewers a feel for, well, how does the process work? You know, I think we're all feeling pretty good about the budget this year. That may not be the case next year or thereafter, but this year in particular, it's gone very well and what is it about the process that's helped us be successful? Well, it's a pretty structured process where the first thing that's really set is an overall goal for the county as far as what the tax levy is to be. That's really the focus and by starting with that, then you can get down to what individual departments need to do to fulfill that overall county goal. And then it's the responsibility of each department head to make sure their department hits their individual target. If everybody hits their individual target, then the overall county goal is gonna be met. So I think it's really a good process because it focuses on what's our goal for the county as a whole. One of the things I really like about it is it's a complete team effort. The county board, as you know, Tim, we present the fiscal outlook to them during their annual leadership forum and Chairman Gehring and others present part of the budget and discuss that. And they ultimately, as you said, establish a collective goal and then you and I establish targets for all the departments with the input of the finance committee, of course. And as you said, the department has to do a real good job positioning their department to hit that target and ultimately achieve the goal. When you think about the last four or five months and as the process has unfolded, what have been some of the key challenges that have come our way? Well, there have been a couple. The first one was when you and I sat down with the sheriff's department and looked over their preliminary budget and pretty much knocked our socks off because they were way, way over the target. So that was an initial challenge to work with them and try to figure out what can they do to bring their budget back in line with what the target was for the department. So they did an amazing job in going back and found some additional revenue and trim some other expenses. But initially, that was a tough one to deal with right out of the gate. Also, the initial budget for health and human services had some cuts to some fairly important programs, some of the meal site programs. And that was not well received by some of the county board supervisors and folks from the public who were made aware of that. So some adjustment had to be done there as well. And the clerk of court's office had real challenges over the probably past three or four years with their costs going up and not being reimbursed more by the state or having very little increase in reimbursement from the state. And everything they do is mandated as a state mandated program. So it's been pretty tough for them to balance their budget. So they needed to get pretty creative to do that for 2008 as well. 22 departments that you and I have the pleasure of working with and they're all expected to meet the target yet can come in with a variance if they have a particular program or initiative they're interested in. And as you said, the sheriff's department, I think originally they were almost a million over target and to the credit of Sheriff Helmke and his staff, they did get creative, as you said. And now we're in good shape. Some of those are some of the early challenges in the process. What about some of the areas where we're gonna be beefing up or improving as a result of the 08 budget? Sure, in spite of the fact that the sheriff's department had some real issues with their initial budget, they were able to get in their new squad cars to get back on a two year rotation. They had tried for a few years, they tried refurbishing of vehicles and just didn't feel that that ended up being cost effective. So they're gonna get away from that now and go back to rotating and having new vehicles every two years. So they'll have, I believe, seven new patrol vehicles for 2008. And then the following year, I think they'll do seven more and they'll be back on track with that two year rotation. So that was positive. They're improving their technology in the area of internet crimes and computer crimes. So that's an improvement for their program. Implementation of the family care program at Health and Human Services, a huge initiative that's being cooperative initiative between the state and the local governments in the counties. That's gonna change the face of how Human Services does business quite a bit. So, and the outcome, the potential outcome of that is that hopefully some of the waiting lists for the services that are provided will be eliminated or now they do have waiting lists for some of the things they provide. So that'll be a big improvement. Marketing for Rocking Knoll, now we have just one healthcare facility left and it's critical that we compete with not only Sunny Ridge that we used to own but no longer, but the other nursing homes. So a marketing campaign will be underway there to do that. Major improvements at the airport continue. Most of those have at least 80% funding from either the state or federal government. So those improvements continue out there. Expansion of the Interurban Trail for anyone who's a hiker or a biker, that's a good thing. And then some reconstruction work on County Highways O and V. So those are some of the major things, good things that we're still gonna be able to do within this budget. Very good, thank you, Tim. The 2008 budget is really a banner year for county budgets. I've been on the county board for 19 plus years and looking back it's really been 21 years since we were able to reduce the levy. Tim, how can it be that Sheboygan County for the year 2008 can reduce the levy when many other governmental units are claiming those are going up? It's magic. County board magic. No, actually, Chairman Gearing, it goes back to, partly back to what we talked about before having a really well-defined budget process. The very first step in the budget process is to decide what's our goal. What's our goal for the county? Is it a levy target reduction or a specific increase amount? So starting with an overall goal I think is critical and that's the first step in the process. And I think credit goes to you a number of years ago for kind of focusing that direction, if I remember correctly. And then second, individual departments, they know what their targets are to meet that overall goal. So they know upfront, there's no question in their mind what they have to do to meet that overall goal. And then they're held responsible. Department heads are responsible for hitting their targets. As Adam mentioned, there is an exception process. If for some reason it's just totally beyond their control to meet the target, there is a way for them to seek other funding. It's not guaranteed, but there is another mechanism. But the process works really very well. Number of years ago, to the county board's credit, they instituted a restricted borrowing policy, no more than $4 million in one year, borrowing for our larger capital projects. That is bearing fruit now for the first time in 2008, our debt service is going down. And it's directly due to that policy. Cale of Sunny Ridge saved us about $1 million in the 2008 budget, so we were able to reduce, we would have had a million more of levying our budget for 08, so that was very positive. And actually, the way that ended up, that was quite amazing. When you figure no residents had to move from Sunny Ridge, any employee that was at Sunny Ridge that wanted to stay there was offered a job with a new owner. And the taxpayers have gained $1 million in 2008. So it's pretty amazing. All three of those things came together with that Cale of Sunny Ridge. And then changes to our health insurance plan, we've constantly been tweaking that health, the HR committee and the department have been looking at different options for health insurance. Made a number of good strides in that area, so our costs are going down in that area too. So all those things have contributed to a banner year for the budget, incredible year really. Would it be correct to say that while initially the Cale of Sunny Ridge was looked upon as a very negative thing, it really has turned very positive in that the patients are getting good care, the employees are still working one place or the other, plus we're actually saving money. Yeah, exactly. All three of those things. Shboyton County could have just closed the facility and closed the doors, residents would have had to move to other counties, there was not capacity here in Shboyton County to absorb all the residents. So, but really what happened to me was the best possible situation for everybody concerned, employees, residents and for the taxpayers as well. But how about getting down to the numbers, we're going to actually reduce the levy, is that by $1 or is it maybe something more than $1? Yeah, actually what we're gonna do is we're gonna reduce the levy by about $550,000. So we're gonna go down to the levy for 2008, preliminary levy that the county board will take up when they look at the budget is $44.9 million and $550,000 less than last year. So that's a 1.2% reduction in the actual levy. It's pretty common to have a rate reduction, this is an actual levy reduction, so the taxes are going down. So taxpayers should be very pleased with that. The tax rate will decrease from, if this levy amount is adopted, the tax rate will go from $564,000 last year to $525,000 per thousand in 2008. Great. What do you think about the overall financial condition of the county down the road, is it doom and gloom or how does it look? Gosh, you know, finance directors and attorneys, usually are all doom and gloom, but it's very hard for me to be all doom and gloom. There are always challenges on the horizon and you know that, I don't know that, we've talked about that a number of times, but Sheboyin County is really an excellent financial condition. We have sufficient reserves to see us through, in my opinion, anything the state could throw at us. Not that it wouldn't be a challenge, but we're really in good condition. Our bonds are rated AA2, which is excellent. That's considered an investment grade. So that's outstanding. We received an unqualified clean opinion on our financial statements, as we have for the last number of years from our auditor. So we're really in good financial condition looking forward. Also the sales Sunday, which of course, as we mentioned, that's gonna help prevent higher levies in the future. So future taxpayers are gonna benefit from that. And we're looking at some more options with regard to health insurance that will probably save us money down the road. Some of them might be a little controversial, but in the end, I think we'll be able to save some more money and take care of our employees at the same time. Many of our viewers know that we still continue to operate one nursing home, Rocky Noel. How will that affect the bottom line down the road? Well, that's a really good question. That's still one of our challenges. Rocky Noel is a challenge because healthcare is expensive to provide and the levy is gonna probably continue to go up. However, we've got a new administrator at Rocky Noel who's an aggressive individual. He's gonna look at a number of ways to increase our revenue. And I think he's got some excellent ideas. There's gonna be a new marketing campaign there to help us compete in the private sector. And bring in revenue, hopefully we'll be able to get a few more Medicare patients, maybe a few more private pay patients. That's Mr. Michael Taubenheim. He's the new administrator at Rocky Noel. So I think he's got what it takes to do some good things. There's a lot of energy, a lot of experience. So I know he has some things in the drawing board. Quite exciting. But the challenge does remain. Wages increase at three to 4% per year. So those are gonna continue to go up. Medicaid reimbursement has not kept up with cost increases. That's the biggest problem we've had. So we have to find a way to answer that. But I think we will. Okay, finally, I think as all of our viewers know, we don't have a state budget yet. We may never have a state budget at the rate that they're going. Can you tell our viewers how the state budget does affect the county's operations, especially Rocky Noel? Yeah, you know, one of the things that has been, has hurt us, it hurt us with Sunday resident continues, hurt us with Rocky Noel is the fact that that one time there was intergovernmental transfer funding to cover the gap between the state Medicaid reimbursement rate and what it costs us to provide care. And it's a pretty big gap. IUT has been phased out. So that stop gap measure is no longer there. So the Medicaid reimbursement rate from the state needs to be higher than it is, but I don't think there's a lot of hope that it will be. So we're gonna have to find other revenue sources to fill that in. So that directly impacts Rocky Noel and financially how they can do there. Okay, thank you, Tim. Sure. It would be difficult for the three of us certainly to imagine this, but if you would for a moment, imagine if every unit of government you rely on, whether it's the town, the city, the village, the school district, if all of them were three, four months overdue on developing a budget, imagine if all of us could just take all the time we wanted and we'll get around to passing a budget eventually. Things would crash and burn, crash and burn. And certainly the county doesn't have that latitude or ability. The city doesn't, the school districts don't. We have certain statutory requirements that we need to meet. And if we don't, we're gonna be in a world of hurt and the people that are relying on us to provide good, effective government are not gonna be happy. At the state level, apparently that doesn't apply, at least not today. It's been 110 days or better that they've yet to pass a budget. And as Chairman Gehring mentioned earlier, it has implications for units of government, including Sheboygan County. And as Tim and I have been discussing of late and Tim, I know you were good to put some graphs together for our viewers, but there's no question that when the state establishes a cap and says, well, we don't wanna see property taxes go up, we're gonna freeze that. Or we're only gonna allow a 2% increase. When you see those type of mandates coming down from the state level, they're clearly saying, okay, local units of government, apparently you aren't able or responsible enough on your own to make those decisions. We're gonna put caps on you. But what's maddening about that? What is absolutely hypocritical about that is county is the right arm of state government. Counties are the right arm of state government. We implement state programs and services. It's largely our job. And the state provides funding for some of those mandates or programs and services we provide. On the one hand, we hear, keep a cap. We're gonna put a cap on you. Don't raise property taxes too high. Then we see the action or leading by example and a budget doesn't even get passed. And then if and when that budget is passed and eventually it will be, what we're searing year after year is less financial support for the programs and services that we're required to provide. So what does that do? It puts more pressure on the local property tax payer. It's a vicious cycle. And it's one that I think Chairman Gehring and I and many, many other local officials across the state are getting a little tired of. So here we sit, what, a couple of weeks away from the county board having to act on their budget. And we don't know what we can expect and rely on from the state of Wisconsin. When we talk about unfunded or often underfunded state mandates, Tim, please share with our viewers, well, what are we talking about there? What do we mean by that? Programs that the state requires us to provide. And we have a number of them in the county. Health and Human Services has a lot of programs that are mandated by the state. We have to provide them. Some of them or most of them we get reimbursement for it from the state, but that's kind of what you're talking about is a reimbursement has not kept up with the cost to provide that service. So we're required to provide service but the reimbursement from the state has not kept up with our cost to provide that service. Number of examples in that area. One of them, Court's is another example, but in Health and Human Services, there's the, and I think we have a graph here. I don't know if they can show this, but I know we've got one that demonstrates that juvenile correctional costs. And each year there's, we get reimbursed for those costs, but our cost, percentage increase in our costs has shot up a lot more than the reimbursement we're receiving. And on the graph, I don't know. Yeah, they're on the graph here. The blue area or the blue bars in the graph indicate percentage increase in the daily rate that we're charged by the state to put in juveniles that have to be placed at the state level. And again, this is something we're required by the state to do. And then the red bars indicate increases in reimbursement. You can see that the blue area, which is their rate they charge us, has increased immensely more than the revenue they provide back to us. So there's been an increasing disparity between those two, especially if you look at 2007, their charge to us increased 28.7%, while there was almost no increase in revenue back to us to pay for that service. So we're getting squeezed. So let me stop you there for a moment. You mean to tell me that we're responsible for implementing state mandated programs, including working with juvenile delinquents and juvenile delinquents have to go to state correctional facilities run by the state. And so at the same time that the state is telling local units of government, specifically counties, that while you're gonna have to work within specific levy caps or we're gonna put a freeze on you, at the same time they're saying that, they're increasing the rate associated with sending someone to one of their state correctional facilities by, according to your chart in 2007, 28%. Correct, absolutely right. And we have no option if we're court ordered to send an individual to a state institution, we have no choice, we have to do it. And we have to pay the rate established by the state. What about state shared revenue? My understanding of state shared revenue is many, many years ago, the state legislature and the governor, the wisdom at that time was, well, they recognize that county government is responsible for implementing programs and services, state required programs and services. And so they provided state shared revenue to help pay for that. What's happening with state shared revenues, say over the last 10 years? Yeah, good question. And I've got another graph that kind of shows that too. And as you mentioned, state shared revenues to help us pay for those programs and services that are mandated, that were mandated by the state to provide. And you can see the decrease that's happened. This starts at $19.99 and it's pretty much a steady decline from $99 down to $2004 and from that point it's remained flat. So in 1999 we were receiving about $3.6 million and now we're down at about, we're under $3 million at this point. So there's been a steady decline. Steady reduction. What's the percentage reduction been? Let's see, I'm glad you asked that question. To 27%. 27%. 27%. So in the last 10 years, I just find this remarkable. In the last 10 years, the state hasn't even maintained the cost to provide certain programs and services, but it's actually reduced their financial support in the area of state shared revenue by 27%. Correct. Does the milk or eggs you purchase or the gasoline that you purchase, has that gone down 27%? No. Has it stayed the same the last 10 years? No. I think our viewers, I'm certain, are getting the point here that it's frustrating because there's such a disconnect between the state and county or state and local governments and it's getting to the point where we wanna make sure more people recognize that it doesn't do any of us any good to point fingers. I know folks want this, want the programs and services delivered and they want good quality services but folks need to take responsibility and if you're gonna require a program or service to be delivered and then not provide the funds to do so, in fact, they've gone down in this area 27% in the last 10 years and then turn around to that same unit of government and say, oh, by the way, we're gonna freeze you on how much property taxes you can raise because while you're the bad guy, you're raising those local property taxes, I hope people can begin to appreciate if you haven't been following this before what incredible buying that puts the full county board in when it comes to providing programs and services, they have to prioritize, they have to make reductions and though there's always room for improvement and always areas we can reduce, at some point, something's gotta give and this is clearly an area where we need to improve upon in relations and taking responsibility between the state and local government. And initially there was a small increase for state-shared revenue to counties in the initial budget proposal, but that's apparently been scrapped so it'll stay flat again for 2008. What about the area of courts? The law enforcement is one of the most important areas that county government provides. I mean, law enforcement, health and human services, there's a number of areas, but law enforcement is a key fundamental service that every county needs to provide and does so as the state is, you know, you're required to provide that service. What's happening financially there? Yeah, kind of the same situation. Clerk of courts is a mandated service. We have to provide that. As you said, we're the arm of state government so we have to provide court services. The graph here has a red and a blue component to each of the bars for each year. The red component is the county tax survey that county taxpayers provide. The blue component is what the state provides to fund the court system. And as you can see in the graph, the blue, which is across the bottom here, has increased very, very little, 13% over 10 years, so it's a very small amount. However, the red portion, which is the county portion, you can see it's increased a lot and I can't read that percentage from here, 65%. So the county taxpayers have had to pick up a much greater burden of court costs because the state basically has not funded it adequately. For a state-required program. Correct. Very good. Well, we only have a couple of minutes left and I know we spent some time talking about that a little. But clearly that plays a huge role in the development of the county budget and as Chairman Gehring mentioned early on, that the state budget process certainly is implications for us. We're looking forward to, well, I don't know if we're looking forward to it or not Chairman Gehring, but we certainly want to see a budget so we can finalize the county budget. Back to the county process, if people want to get involved, they want their voices heard, they want to have some input on programs and services, what level may be provided, what level may be reduced because of other fiscal pressures, how do they make their voices heard? Well, at this point, the time to do it would be the county board on October 30th, they'll review every budget that every individual department proposes the entire county budget will be reviewed by the county board. So there's a public hearing that same night. Anyone who wants to speak on the budget or ask questions can do that. They don't have to register, they can just come and they'll have a chance to ask questions or have their voice heard. So October 30th, I believe this is October 30th, 6 p.m. fifth floor of the county courthouse. And that's the best thing to do. That's when the board will be going through the line by line with the budget and then we'll take input. If you're interested, certainly join us on October 30th in the Sheboygan County Courthouse. However, every year we go through this process as a very, very important one. It's probably the most important policy decision the county board has, and that's ultimately adopting that full budget. There's what, 120 programs and services and we have real fiscal constraints. So though 2008's been a banner year because of some good decisions by the full county board, it won't get any easier in the future. So please feel free to weigh in with your county board supervisor directly or you can always tend one of the county board's standing committee meetings. They're all open to the public and that's a good opportunity to be heard as well throughout the year. So with that said, I hope you learned a little bit more about our Sheboygan County budget process. If you want more information or have questions, don't ever hesitate to contact myself or Chairman Gearing, your county board supervisor or our great finance director Tim Finch on behalf of Chairman Gearing and the full county board, thank you for joining us next month and wonder Jim, our health and human services director will be our guest.