WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAU) – Marathon County will hold the line on property taxes and will not lay off any employees next year under a budget proposal the county administrator releases today.
County administrator Brad Karger will present his 2012 budget plan to the county’s finance committee at 3 p.m. The meeting is at 212 River Drive in Wausau. The committee could approve the budget. The full county board will vote on the budget next month after holding a public hearing.
The budget holds the property tax rate at $5.17 per $1,000 of assessed property value. If approved, it will be the same tax rate the county has had over the last three years. The average homeowner would see the county portion of their tax bill drop by about $9. The county board has the option of raising the tax rate as high as $5.28.
The county will save $3.2 million by making employees pay more toward their pension and health care costs and by shifting toward a high-deductible health plan – tools that were enabled under new limits on collective bargaining that lawmakers passed in March. Those savings will help the county avoid cutting programs or employees, Karger said.
“Without these changes, I don't know how we would balance this budget without a lot of program reductions or program eliminations,” Karger said.
Karger says the budget is balanced, adding that the aquatic therapy pool, the Start Right program, and the library’s budget – which all faced possible cuts this year – are fully funded for 2012.
AFSCME Council 40 staff representative John Spiegelhoff, whose union represents a majority of the county's 750 employees, says employees were willing to make the benefit concessions but could not because of the new collective bargaining limits.
“I think to some extent it is a wolf in sheep's clothing,” Spiegelhoff said. “You can't sustain this over a number of years and these services will suffer in time.”
One of the biggest new initiatives in the budget is using tax dollars instead of grant funding to pay for a social worker who works with at-risk families through a community response program.
Other new initiatives include budgeting more for legal fees for defendants who do not qualify for a public defender but do not have enough money to hire their own attorney and $125,000 for a growth investment fund that will help the county attract more jobs to the region.
But the budget picture isn't all rosy. The county will lose about $1.1 million in shared revenue from the state and will see $331,000 less in general transportation aids for road maintenance and repairs.
