EAU CLAIRE — “It’s kind of a two-edged sword,” said Eau Claire County Administrator Kathryn Schauf when commenting on the population growth in the county. “Last year, we had the highest net new construction in the state.”
This, she said, is a good thing for county revenue because the amount of property tax that can be levied by the county is determined by this value.
“We can only increase our revenue by the percent of net new construction or zero, whichever is greater,” she said. “It used to be that board members had the taxing authority (to) identify what taxes were going to be”, but this is no longer the case.
“We’re fortunate in this area, (because) our number is higher,” she said. “But that is still only about $600,000 in extra revenue (while) our basic costs to continue are usually significantly more than that.”
As the county enters into their budget planning season, Schauf says that many decisions need to be made about where and how to allocate funds.
“The areas where we’re going to be challenged are areas where we’ve been challenged all along,” she said. “We have these big buckets of service like Health and Human Services, Public Health, the Aging and Disability Resource Center, Veteran Services, and then we have public safety like the sheriff, 911, and then the judicial.”
In regard to human services, she said that “as we see the number and complexity of those cases grow, we are having to use more and more property tax levy to provide those services, (and) then we have less property tax levy for other services.”
She also talked about the county’s involvement in roadways.
“For the interstate and some state highways, we do the maintenance and plowing,” she said. “It’s actually a good deal to do it that way because it saves the state money.”
County Finance Director Jason Szymanski said that “one of the biggest drivers of inflation has been rising wages. One of our largest expenses are the wages, benefits, and investments that we make in our employees. We’ve, as others in the market, have raised their wages to get employees here.”
“We have 663 employees,” said Schauf, mentioning the Treasurer, the Register of Deeds, and the County Clerk as just a few.
Szymanski also mentioned the cost of service and maintenance contracts, and both talked about the rising costs in materials for maintaining roads.
“(The) levy laws apply to all local governments,” said Szymanski. “They apply to the city (and) they apply to the school districts. So, we’re all kind of in the same predicament together. Our costs keep rising, but we can’t raise the levy to match the increase in costs.”
Meanwhile, he added, “The more people that we have in the county, the more demand there is for the services that we provide.”
Schauf said that the finance budget committee will have two listening sessions coming up where citizens can offer their input on the budget.
“(The listening sessions) haven’t been scheduled yet, (but) they’ll probably be in August,” she said.
She added that the public hearings on the budget will not start until October.
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