Summer is a prime time for county governments across the state to deliberate and begin to finalize their budget plans for this coming year.

That was one of the key items on the agenda for the Jefferson County commissioners this week. After some discussion, the trio provisionally approved increases to county budgets and salaries for county employees starting next fiscal year.

"This is the second hardest thing that we do – the hardest thing is personnel," county commissioner Michael Dux said. "We have been creative, we’ve done a lot of cutting. If we have to cut, we’ll cut. But we have to have a guideline for that. We want to be competitive, I don’t want to lose employees."

Ultimately, the board approved a plan to increase the overall budget by 2 percent and wages by 3.5 percent, citing the importance of remaining competitive with other counties as well as jobs outside of government, in the face of consistently rising costs.

"[We want] Jefferson County to remain competitive, to recruit and to retain quality employees," board chair Mark Schoenrock said. "We don’t want to be too high, because we have a responsibility to our taxpayers, but we don’t want to be too low either because we don’t want to have a revolving door. The worst enemy of any organization is a revolving door. If you’re constantly losing people and having to go out and get new people, that has a huge effect on the operation, and we don’t have that here and don’t want to have it.” 

Danielle Schwab, who is in her first year on the board after shadowing the operation for much of last year, took a more stringent approach than her two more-tenured counterparts, saying that her research into and conversations with other counties concluded that other counties haven't increased their budgets at all, but they still find ways to make it work.

"We have to remember this is taxpayer money, it’s not loads and loads of money that we have, we’re not selling a product that we can increase the price of. Obviously they don’t like increasing taxes, that’s not going to go over very well – as a matter of fact, a lot of them would like to see it cut," Schwab said. "But I think that we probably rely a little more on that inheritance tax to make our budget work than I’d like to see. We really need to start thinking about what we need versus what we want. Now, we can’t not give cost of living wage increases, I understand that. I’m just saying, when we look at the whole budget, I think we need to start making some really hard choices about things.” 

Along the lines of the inheritance tax, in their conversation with elected officials and department heads in the county this week the commissioners acknowledged that while reaching a consensus on this year's plan was challenging enough, developing future budgets might get even tougher. Should a proposal to eliminate the inheritance tax eventually pass, Jefferson County stands to lose ten percent of its operating budget. That hit varies from county to county, but would very likely have some sort of significant impact all across the state.

Elsewhere, funding for two road projects - the existing one in Plymouth and the upcoming construction on the PWF Road - which will both be on the books over the next four years will leave less room for other future expenses, resulting in a scenario Schoenrock called a "double whammy." The county received $8.5 million in federal funds to repair the PWF Road, and the remaining total of approximately $4 million will be rolled into a county bound over the next decade-plus.

“You can’t stare $8.5 million in the face and turn it down, especially for a road that so many people depend on, and have been clamoring for – ever since I was little kid that road has been in bad shape. It’s going to be a beautiful road for the county, but it’s going to be tough for about four years while we’re paying off both of those bonds," he said.


While the plan to provide increases for this upcoming year passed unanimously, it will remain just a plan until it is formally reviewed and, potentially, implemented by the board later this summer.