 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you my name is Adam Payne co-host of this program with county board chairman Bill Gehring and today we're very pleased to have a department head with us that has involvement with all 22 departments county wide Mr. Tim Finch our finance director Tim welcome. Thanks Adam glad to be here. Well good to have you here and as many of you I'm certain are aware if you've been following this program Tim generally joins us this time of year because we're in the midst of working on our 2008 budget process and so far so good in great part because of Tim Finch and his staff and the work that they do in the finance department. Tim please start by sharing a little bit about yourself and when you started as the Sheboygan County finance director. Sure glad to I've been in Sheboygan since the year 1999 and started in the finance department May 1st of 2000 and it's been a fun ride ever since never boring I can say every every day is a little bit different so very enjoyable. We do a lot of things in that department as you well know get into a lot of a lot of areas so it's it's always a challenge. So finance department as I mentioned you know a little bit about a lot you deal with every single department county wide and have the key role of making sure that the budget is prepared and that departments are working within budget parameters that Bill Gehring and the county board establishes who are very closely with the finance committee but for our viewers sake what are the what are the key roles and responsibilities of the finance department. Sure and then I'll tell you too what the most challenging department is to manage. Budgeting is a big thing for governments all government city county low more local level that's huge so that's probably the number one thing that we do we do external and internal financial reporting we're responsible for that counts payable counts receivable internal auditing debt management is a very interesting area internal controls financial forecasting financial policies procedures and something I do a lot is financial analysis giving you or Bill or county board or finance committee information on different things we might be considering and what's going to be the financial impact of doing those things. And with all that going on annually as I said the most important policy document that you help prepare is the annual county budget it's that time where we're right in the midst of developing the 2008 budget though it's 2007 we're preparing for 2008 and we really started that process back in February as you know we start rolling then but our our kickoff was just in June and and we're now meeting with departments what's the what's a general timetable what is the process for preparing the county budget. Sure it's it's always interesting because we really have three years going at one time we're looking at actual results for the prior year we're dealing with the current year and then we're looking ahead to the budget for the following year so it's quite a transition but as you said usually in February March you and Bill would get together start talking about what are some of the things we're looking at for the coming year usually I'll get involved somewhere in April or or thereabouts and talk about what are the challenges going to be in the past it's been health insurance has been one of our big challenges losses at the health care centers has been another one so those are things we'll kind of start to kick around you know you'll provide direction what we need to look at then we have our budget kickoff which is usually mid-June of every year at the kickoff County Board Chairman and yourself will give targets out to each department let them know this is what we're targeting as our goal for the upcoming budget year it's a very important part of the process gets all departments kind of on board and everyone's thinking the same thing we're shooting toward a target in a goal during July usually by July 6th usually we asked departments to kind of put their budget information together and then by July 13th they have to submit their information to the finance department we help them compile that July 2nd through August 10th they meet with yourself and myself we're kind of the first line of defense in the budgets to make sure that they meet that established target in goal and give them some advice maybe if there are things in their budget mechanically or wrong what they can do to correct that and then July 16th to the 24th would be when they go to their liaison committee get the approval of their committee that's the second line of defense to make sure that budget parameters have been followed and that goal is still out in front the liaison committee is really it's their it's their budget department heads prepare it's really their budget and they have to take ownership for it so this would be the time when they would do that August 13th at September 21st will be when the finance committee will meet with those committee members department heads go over each and every budget more questions will be asked at that point of course and then on October 30th the county board public hearing in line by line review the county board will go through every single budget and they'll go through by line item and they can ask any question they want they can make a recommendation to change a budget add something to a budget so that's the chance for the county board to have their say as a whole as one body and what they want to do with the budget also that's the point when the public could be involved and asking questions I think they can ask questions that I believe they have time to speak at the public hearing so if they have some comments on their budget process county government that's their opportunity to do that November 6th that would be the final adoption date of the budget for spoiling County so we get a little breather in the months of December in January and it really starts gearing up for the next year it's almost a year-on process you were kind in emphasizing the chairman Gearing and I have a role in establishing the goal and targets but certainly as you know and I want our viewers to appreciate that really it's a consensus building process because though Bill as chairman or the county board chair whoever he or she is in the future have a important leadership role there we work with the executive committee we work the finance committee and ultimately we have a county board leadership forum where we really try to get the full board behind establishing a goal Tim mentioned a goal a number of times and that's where the board establishes ultimately a goal that we're going to have a levy decrease or we're going to hold the line or a modest increase and I think that's helped position us for success the last few years you you did a nice summary going through the roles and responsibilities departments liaison committee as you know Tim right now we're meeting with those individual departments give me a sense or please give our viewers a sense of you know the role right now of the department the department head what is it that they're really doing to develop their budgets sure after the budget kickoff department heads have a responsibility to go back to their departments and start crafting that budget and they'll use usually the bigger departments will have a number of staff involved they have to look at their last year's budget what they see coming up in the future and start putting their their numbers together for presentation to their their committee so the department had really kicks it or they start the the initial work of actually putting that that budget together involved in that process you know as we mentioned before then as they come back and they review it with you and with myself to make sure it's going to meet that goal and target and if it doesn't talk about ways that we can tune it or make some adjustments so that will that will meet the established target now for 2008 the goal that the executive committee the finance committee and ultimately the county board established was to have a tax levy reduction first reduction in 21 years though all the targets were a modest increase so most departments most I must emphasize are going to receive a little over 3% so both a levy reduction but an increase for most departments which is a pretty nice situation to be in let's give our viewers a flavor for our total expenditures I know you brought some charts with you today just to first focus on the big picture what are the total expenditures for Sheboygan County sure glad to Adam I'm gonna hold the chart up here and hope that it stays fairly steady for 2008 this is our preliminary budget this is developed at the time that we set the targets for the departments these are the numbers that we began with to develop those targets so of course they'll change over time as we go along but you can see for total expenditures the the large departments in the county health and human services which is the kind of I'm not sure what color that is blue I must be colorblind sure what that is but $49 million in total expenditures that's that's our largest department by far and then just general governmental operations also very large at 29 million that would include register of deeds county clerk clerk of courts this attorney just a myriad of departments that do general government operations there's some of the beginners one I want to point out actually didn't come out too well in the graph we tried to blow it up we lost a number here but this is for the remaining facility at the health care center is rocking all that's 5.2 million and as I know you know Adam last year that was 6.1 million dollars for the health care center so there's been a reduction there as a result of the sales center and so expenses in total have come down as a result of that I think for 07 we're closer to 150 155 million correct and we're looking at 144 million so big picture total expenditures for 08 are anticipated to be about 144 145 million then what if you just turn to the property tax levy which is on the minds of a lot of citizens in Sheboygan County if we just focus on the tax levy the property tax levy how does that picture change who are big hitters now sure it's interesting because it is different the top department top tax levy department in the county right now is a sheriff's department which is the yellow one at the bottom about 13.3 million which actually surpassed human service department I think about two years ago it surpassed the human service department which is number two at about 12.7 million so the yellow and purple the two biggest tax levy departments in the county and also you know the other large hitters we have here we still have the health care centers at about five million dollars in tax levy there highway department 4.5 million debt service continues to be a large number however it is going down and that such situation is improving quite a bit and it is actually part of the reason for the being able to reduce the levy in 2008 as you know is because our debt services dropping so a total levy our total expenditure of about 145 million total property taxes out of that 145 million closer to 45 this is again anticipated for 08 and the big hitters if folks are wondering well who predominantly is drawing from that tax levy as you said the sheriff's department the health and human services department the health care centers even though we have now gone from two to one facility it's still about a five million dollar draw on the tax levy highway is in the big four then followed by debt service very good thank you Tim sure Tim as you know in 1999 the then county coordinator and county board changed the way we came about the budget a little bit differently they began to give targets and specific goals to committees how has that worked over the last five years how did that affect the levy sure glad to go actually I've got another chart here that I'll show which graphically show we'll show the viewers what's happened you can see it starts back in 1991 comes all the way out to 2008 and in 1991 we were about seven dollars per thousand for a rate and then it kind of started to slide and drop down in 1995 1996 then came back up strongly in 1999 2000 and 2000 was I believe was a time when the new budget process was established and one of the the goals of that I believe was to kind of stabilize the tax rate and if anything maybe have a slight downtrend but you know to eliminate those those swings as very successful as you can see from 2000 to 2004 we stabilized it began to drop a little bit but not in a kind of a wild pattern now from 04 on it's dropping fairly significantly due to a couple of things one would be the state mandated tax levy limits went into effect so that pretty much put us on a downward track plus some other good things have happened in shawing County to bring that rate down selling of Sunny Ridge has saved us a considerable amount of money we'll save more in the future debt services going down that's a very positive thing health insurance plan changes some of those have been seen dramatic effect on our budget so number of good things real very good policy things have happened to bring that down so the effect is in 2008 we're expecting right now a preliminary basis for the tax rate to be 525 okay that's really fantastic are there any external limits on what we can tax if we decided we needed to repave all the county roads in one year could we do that or does somebody tell us no we couldn't change the levy that yeah the short answer is no no we wouldn't want to do that and there there are still two limits in effect there's one limit that's been out there since 1993 which is a rate limit it's not really a factor for us right now because we're well above that rate limit but that is still an effect so if we would increase our level significantly enough we could bump into the rate limit but right now what's hitting what's limiting us right now is the levy limit and last for for this year it was 2.36 percent for 2008 it's 4 percent as state mandated or proposed state mandated limit we're of course gonna be below that's not a factor because we're actually gonna drop the levy or that's the plan to drop the levees so we're really not affected by those limits but we could be other counties will be okay we really have been doing well with the rate going down and next year perhaps the levy actually going down but what challenges do we face in the future what might have major effects down the road on but we need it to tax yeah we still in my opinion the long-term biggest challenge that we have and it's shared by many other governments is just the compounding of wage and benefit increases each year we're looking at between two and a half and three percent across the board increase plus we have normally we'll have step increases for for employees on top of the cross the board that's the biggest long-term challenge we have because that continues to compound every year the only way to address status to try to be is lean with your staff as you possibly can be and we've made some strides in that area rocking all will continue to be a challenge just as Sunny Ridge was a was a challenge for health care is very expensive to provide so that'll be an issue which we have to we have to address that unfunded mandates and reductions in federal programs such as the you know governmental transfer program which lost us a huge amount of money for support of our health care centers that's been a problem and just general unfunded mandates from the state level are more and more difficult to deal with so we have those challenges positive note health insurance is not as big an issue as it was a number of years ago so that's although it's still a long-term issue not nearly as much as it has one okay thank you Jim sir good news good news on the budget front good news with the trends we've seen the last five six years there's some real positives that certainly Chairman Gehring in the full County Board I think feel pretty good about but during this process of addressing this Sunny Ridge and that very emotional trying period and gut wrenching decision by the County Board some of the other reductions in programs and services that had to be made to either stay within the state levy cap requirements or just simply not have significant increases in the tax levy so but during that process of holding the line on the taxes we've also made some decisions to invest in this community some major capital projects have the County Board has invested in the benefit of the local economy and the quality of life in this community please share with our viewers what some of those capital improvements have been up late sure quite true number of good things continue to happen at the airport which we're able to develop considerable amount of federal and state funding so those projects have been very beneficial to the county and they've been pretty cost effective to do to runway and hangar expansion continues at the airport primarily right now the runway 321 extension is going to create the situation where they can do bring in larger aircraft plus they can fuel for longer flights so it's gonna give them capability a very nice enhancement to their capability out at the airport right here at UW Shabuigan the new information technology center is I believe complete or very close to being complete beautiful it's incredible I know you've been through it I haven't been through it yet but I hear it's amazing Shabuigan County funded funded that development and recently the science edition out here so UW Shabuigan has seen some of those good projects that have been funded by the by the county working on a phone system upgrade to get better technology in our phone system new software at Health and Human Services which is going to replace some aging software that really doesn't give them the capability that they need there it's been a big big project expansion of the Interurban Trail if you're a hiker bicycler you'd be real interested that they're trying to hook up with Ozark County and have the trail continue from there all the way up into Shabuigan so they're working on expanding that to be able to link up there ongoing roof replacement not real exciting but things that we we have to do in a number of county buildings the highway department they're not noticed unless there's a problem out on the road or folks aren't plowed out in time but they do some very important work and and they're investing in our infrastructure as well the tragic tragedy that happened in Minnesota with the bridge and recently there was some attention on our infrastructure here in Shabuigan County and it sounds like overall our bridges are in pretty good shape but the highway department and the county board also play an important role in the maintenance and upkeep of our infrastructure do they not? Oh absolutely yeah the highway department one big project they're going to be working on in the next year or two is Superior Avenue upgrading that road so yeah they do an amazing job five-year plan is a whole another budget process onto its own it's really a separate budgeting route than the normal budget so it's really kind of a another budget that we work on throughout the year and a number of folks have a hand in that and the executive committee kind of has the final say in what's going to happen and then the county board the ultimate say in what's going to be funded in those projects. The five-year plan that Tim just alluded to that's a capital improvement plan that the county board establishes Tim as a leadership role with pulling that together the finance committee executive committee pull that together and it's it's not just looking out six months or a year it's it's literally looking out five years and planning for those capital improvements and probably the most significant one you mentioned in addition to the airport the highway and some of those ongoing improvements is right here in the very facility we're in UW-Shabuigan has seen just tremendous attention the last three four years by the county board whether it's the new acuity technology center or the the science building and just beautiful facility and if you get a chance if you haven't been out here to UW recently we had the new dean Al Harderson just with us what last month bill come on out and take a look at this facility because this is the community's facility a lot of people don't recognize that it's a county building county building and grounds run and operated by the state but just a fantastic facility and would encourage you to take a look at it if you haven't with all this going on with 22 departments and and departments trying to work with budget constraints and specific targets and the infrastructure improvements that go on whether it's new phone system or putting a new roof on a building some of the things you just have to do how does the county board go about establishing priorities if they only have so much money to work with how did they decide where to spend it well the budget process is really where where it all begins and kind of supplementing that is the one thing that we had in the last few years is the Pepsi program which is where a program prioritization process that was hosted or implemented by the executive committee each chair of each standing committee was involved in took every program in the county threw it on the table and evaluated every single one and came out with a ranking system and departments have used that determining if they have to make cuts to the apartment they've used that process that ranking system to look at what are the top priorities and I think it's going to continue to be very effective so they use that five-year plan as we mentioned is another budget kind of within the overall county budget so within the normal budget the five-year plan and then the Pepsi process there's the prioritizing really goes on with the within those those documents you mentioned earlier the importance of the the public getting involved they can attend the hearings at the county board to have input on the budget process but you and I both know that because of the timetable and time and effort involved developing that process that budget the earlier you get involved the better and you mentioned that the budget you know it's developed predominantly by the department head and their staff presented to the liaison committee if you were what would be your advice to the citizenry of Sheboygan County if they wanted to get involved with the budget process what's probably the best vehicle for them to do so well the public hearing is where they could speak if they wanted to speak to the budget or county government that would that's going to be on October 31st 6 p.m. and the 5th floor of the courthouse they would come they could speak in the budget ask questions or they can hear they'll hear every single department will be reviewed as far as the budget process so that's probably the best place for them to have input and ask questions on the Sheboygan County budget but earlier in the process at the liaison committee level yes are those all open to the public and people attended individual committee meetings and discuss the budget or provide input at that time yeah absolutely any any of those meetings is open to the public and finance committee meetings as well those are open so if a citizen wanted to come and hear the department pitch their budget to the finance committee and see how that process works they could come to those are held in the administration building 508 New York Avenue usually in room 119 sometimes they'll go up to the third floor but yeah those are that's where the rubber really meets the road and you know a lot of the work and discussion about what's going to be in budget takes place so excellent thank you Tim we only have a couple of minutes remaining and I hope you got a nice snapshot or flavor for the overall budget process very nice overview Tim any last areas that you wanted to say a few words about or your finance department in particular the finance department the people are great my department I couldn't do what I do with without them so big big pat on the back to each and every one of them they're incredible just in general county budget process here this year has been very very positive I mean first have it tax-level reduction in 21 years quite amazing really when you think about it so it's this has been a little bit more fun to work on this budget I would agree now we just have to deliver that's right now we have to deliver then next year hope that we can meet the higher expectations the community yep deliver again right well Tim thank you for taking the time to join us today and putting together the charts and all the work you do we sure appreciate your leadership as finance director my pleasure thanks Adam and thank you for joining us on behalf of chairman Bill Gehring and the Sheboygan County Board we're pleased that you could join us today learn a little bit more about Sheboygan County government now it works if you have any questions or you want to get involved with the budget process don't hesitate to give us a call the county clerk's office Julie Glancy she's outstanding and she can tell you about the respective liaison committee meetings where they are when they meet you can go online we have Sheboygan County website to get additional information or don't hesitate to contact the county board chair of my office 459-3103 459-3103 if you'd like to get more information so again on behalf of Bill Gehring and myself thank you for joining us