May 10, Meeting Wrap-up

The May 10th meeting had some interesting information.  A few quick highlights:

The Workforce Development Board presented on its work.  The board itself is a regional board, overseeing 3 counties (Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee).  As well, they partner a lot with Milwaukee County to petition for Federal funding grants and workforce training, in a great example of what positive regional cooperation can look like.

The more important presentation was on Priority-Based Budgeting. 

Interestingly, we are one of the first public entities in Wisconsin to go through this process.  The presentation was given by 2 county supervisors from another state, on their experiences with this type of budgeting.  During the presentation, I became very comfortable with the direction the Board is heading.  This budgeting mechanism looks to provide a system that will allow us to:

• Establish a sustainable budget system.
• Establish and maintain adequate reserves.
• Prepare for and prevent a budget deficit that we will face in 3-5 years if we don't begin making adjustments now.
• Evaluate one-time and long-term expenses and revenue sources.
• Identify programs that are not vital to the core public services so that adjustments can be made including shifting those services to private entities and reducing the scope of those programs.
• Identifying areas where fees increases are appropriate.
• Identifying programs that are self-funded, and as such don't need attention.

In looking at the numbers, Human Services (the committee I am on) accounts for 26% of the county budget.  51% of the funding for the overall budget, if I am understanding it correctly as it was presented, comes from Federal and State funding sources.

One positive sign is that of the 1,166 programs offered by the county, only 11% are programs that get categorized as "governance."  Governance programs are those that support government infrastructure and employees.  The averages given by the presenters were 16%-17%, and the range was between 8% and 23%.  Being so far below average in this category is a testament to the past and continuing board members and their efforts towards good stewardship.

One interesting thing that was noted was that 65% of the programs we provide are limited in the scope of county residents they benefit.  Each of these programs benefit less than 10% of the county population, although it is not necessarily the same 10% for each program.  I know that is confusing, so the quick explanation I would give is that Foodshare might reach 9% of county's population, while 4H might reach 4% of the County's population, and only 1% of the county's population benefit from both Foodshare and 4H (the numbers given here are purely for example purposes, and NOT actual usage statistics).  With 945 community programs, this would mean that roughly 600 of the county's programs are geared towards a specific population that is less than 10% of the total population, with varying degrees of overlap in the population served between those programs.

I am probably going to watch the presentation again once the video is posted to the county website, because I know I missed some things as my mind was processing other things.