The Oconto County Board on Oct. 31 passed a $53.789 million budget for 2025, funded in part by a $22.2 million property tax levy.
The numbers represent a 7.2% increase in expenditures over the adopted 2024 budget but only a 0.7% increase in the property tax levy for county purposes. State aid and other revenues, and a transfer from the county’s fund balance, helped make up the difference.
County Administrator Richard Heath, who was hired in April, said budgeting has become a year-round process for county officials.
“This was my first budgeting process; I’m going to probably tweak it as we go forward for my sanity purposes,” Heath said. “We kind of had a crush there for about a three-week period of time, just by the way committees were set up. I would like to have a little bit more time (in the future) to kind of digest it. I’ll play a bigger role in it next year.”
The budget includes an additional $388,964 for the aging unit that Health and Human Services is assuming from the Commission on Aging, funded by an estimated $338,969 in state aid and $50,000 from the HHS department’s fund balance. The change, approved unanimously, does not affect the tax levy or mill rate.
Also included is $2.952 million in spending for capital projects, including $728,485 for computer and related equipment — a trend that Heath said is probably not going to slow down.
“The manufacturers, the software people, those companies are pushing or pulling us at the county level to upgrade, to change, to make things more compatible,” Heath said. “They run by their own set of rules, and we just have to follow.”
Computer upgrades in the 2025 budget include emergency services communication equipment and additional cybersecurity upgrades, he said.
Supply chain issues continue to be a challenge for counties because of continued price increases and delays in heavy equipment. A new asphalt paving machine the board approved Oct. 31 may not arrive for more than a year, he said.
“The two tri-axle trucks you approved for the highway department last year aren’t even here yet,” he said. “So it’s important with these capital budgets that we don’t lose our spot in the ordering process.”
Three trucks in the 2025 budget will be ordered next week and but might not be delivered until sometime in 2026, he said.
County board members made a couple of motions to make late changes in the budget, but both failed.
Supervisor Joel Lavarda moved to add back $4,000 for the Oconto Falls Senior Center, an annual donation that the administration committee had chosen not to recommend this year. A representative from the center said the allocation amounted to about a quarter of the center’s annual budget.
The motion failed on a 13-13 tie after Supervisors Guy Gooding and Keith Schneider argued if the county does support the Oconto Falls center, the money should come from the just-approved aging unit budget.
Supervisor Tracy Ondik moved to add $30,000 for the county’s share of a school resource officer for the Gillett School District. Sheriff Todd Skarban has been working with the district, and the school board included funding in its 2024-25 budget.
But county finance director Lisa Sherman said the sheriff never formally requested the new position, so it did not go through the standard vetting process that other new positions endured.
Ondik argued that public safety officials throughout the county have identified school resource officers as a need for local districts, but Heath said there are steps in the process that need to be taken.
Ondik’s motion failed by a 17-7 margin just before the board voted 24-0 to give the 2025 county budget final approval.
The Gillett SRO is still eligible to come before the board as a budget adjustment late this year or early in 2025.
wbluhm@newmedia-wi.com
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