Rick Gundrum is the Best of the Best for Assembly

We have some good local candidates running in the upcoming Assembly election, but Rick Gundrum is the best of the best.  Rick is the only candidate that has served for 12 years in a legislative role, and in that role he has taken the tough votes and negotiated the tough compromises that comes with being a legislator.

In my time on the County Board, Rick Gundrum has been an outstanding Chairman.  The County has continued to reduce our debt to extremely low levels, reduce our tax rate to the lowest in 100 years, maintain a balanced budget, and maintain strong financial reserves.  Levy limits force us to make budget reductions each year, but with Rick as our leader we make them while maintaining a fiscally strong government.

Like Scott Walker, Rick Gundrum substantially reduced his own pay as County Board Chairman.  Rick was a leader in making our County Board smaller and more efficient, by reducing the number of County Board Supervisors.  Rick has worked to eliminate gratuitous per diem payments to County Board Supervisors.  Rick has eliminated unnecessary meetings, making our County Government more efficient.  Rick also continues to seek out opportunities to eliminate redundant services by combining services with surrounding communities and counties.  

Rick Gundrum has worked to prevent major retailers from shirking their property tax responsibilities to the City and County, by pushing their tax burdens on homeowners. Rick will take that fight to Madison, where he will join forces with Duey Stroebel in eliminating the dark-store loophole.

It has been a privilege to serve with him as the Chairman of our County Board, and to work with him on these efforts.  Rick will be an even greater benefit to our community in the Assembly, so I encourage everyone to vote for Rick Gundrum on December 19.

Christopher D. Bossert

County Board Supervisor

District 3

Night Meetings for County Board Start in May

In May, we will shift County Board meetings to the evenings, with a 6:00 start time.  This is something I led the fight for.  I want to give the public easy access to meetings. 

Some of the old guard on the board don't like this, and are recruiting past board members from the old guard to run again, hoping to move meetings back to 9:00 a.m.  They want to make it more difficult for the public to attend meetings.  Despite every other legislative body in Washington County meeting in the evenings (every city council, every town board, every school board), they want daytime meetings.

Daytime meetings raise suspicion about what we are doing.  I have received a lot of feedback from people who were angry that meetings on key issues were being held in the daytime.  They thought we were trying to do something sneaky, and that's why we wanted to make it hard for the public to attend.  I even talked to someone whose employer was a County Board Supervisor, who wouldn't let her off from work so that she could attend a meeting on an issue that was important to her.

I want to keep meetings in the evenings, so that anyone from the public can attend, without having to take off from work.

Should The County Purchase Wally & Bee's?

At Tuesday's County Board meeting, our main issue will involve whether or not to purchase Wally & Bee's, so that it can be added to Glacial Hills County Park.  Last fall, our Public Works Committee authorized the County Administrator and his staff to enter into discussions about this very question, and this Tuesday they will report back to the full board on the status of negotiations (in a closed session). 

Once we hear back from them, I will be deciding how I will vote on this (and 25 other Supervisors will be making that same decision for themselves).  We might vote to buy it, or if it does not look like a fair deal we might vote to continue negotiating or break off all negotiations.

Some key factors:

• The project would add a beach to the County Park, and would also convert a privately-owned boat launch to a County Boat launch.
• For larger boats, this boat launch is the only useable boat launch in that lake system.  The local community is very invested in maintaining access to this boat launch for that reason, and converting it into a county park is the most favored option for accomplishing that.
• The original asking price from the owners was around $1 million dollars, which I know is an expensive price tag.
• The Parks Department last fall had estimated a need for spending around $1 million to improve the land, remove the par, and covert it to park use.  This brings the total project cost to around $2 million.
• The County has had an interest in purchasing this land for several decades.
• We implemented the park sticker program with the goal of improving our priority parks, like Glacier Hills.
• The owners are looking to retire, and have the property actively listed for sale.
• The appraised value (which we will find out on Tuesday).
• After a year of negotiating, many of these numbers have probably changed.  We will get the update on Tuesday.

We are not alone in this endeavor.  There is significant financial assistance coming from the DNR, the Village of Richfield, and the local homeowners association.  Many homeowners are willing to put in some of their own money towards this project.  One homeowner who contacted me this week specifically pledged $5,000 of his own money towards this project. 

Last fall, this financial assistance was at a level where is would cover almost 2/3rds of the total cost ($1.25 million in outside assistance) leaving the county to fund only $750,000.  That's still a lot of money, but it is a lot better than having the County on the hook for the full $2 million.

Information Gathering

To research this issue, I went out to Wally & Bee's and took a look at what we would be buying.  After all, sometimes seeing things first-hand is best.  I also surveyed the other boat launch, and confirmed that it really is only useable for smaller boats.  You can see the narrow channel, and with the snow-cover it is difficult to gauge just how narrow that channel might be.

I also pulled up a few sometime pictures from their website and the internet:

I also took some pictures of the other boat launch.  You can see the channel the boats have to maneuver through to reach the lake.

After reviewing all of this, if you are from my district and have thoughts on this issue, please contact me.

Update, at the County Board the decision was made to explore converting the lakeshore to an easement, which would ensure public boating access to the lake without buying the rest of the bar, or the 4 acres behind it (Wally & Bee's owns a narrow 5 acre strip of land).

Support Our County Parks---Buy a Park Sticker

Our County Administrator sent this message out today:

• Washington County Parks Sticker – Please consider purchasing a Parks Sticker for yourself, friends or family this holiday season!  It is a great gift and a great way to support our Parks and our County, ensuring that we can have nice parks while continuing to have things like the 2% COLA in 2018!  Thank you for your consideration and support! https://www.washcoparks.com/parks/passes/

When I ran, I promised that i would work to keep valuable resources that have made our community strong, like the County Parks System.  Because of levy limits, the way to preserve our Parks System and grow it is to make is self-sustaining, and that meant implementing park stickers.  Waukesha County has done this for years, and it has been very successful.  Not implementing park stickers would leave the future of our park system in an uncertain status.

I plan to but my parks sticker in the next few weeks, and encourage everyone to consider doing the same.

Understanding Washington County's Budget Situation

The County has had to make a lot of adjustments to our budget over the last few years.  I am going to attempt to explain why.

First, let's look at the County's situation from a big-picture perspective:

What we have:

• Reasonably healthy financial reserves (savings account), which are at about $12-$15 million at last check.
• A lot of land and buildings.
• Very low debt.  In fact, of the 72 counties in Wisconsin, we have one of the lowest debt rates when compared to population.
• Low employee count.  At about 850 employees, we have one of the lowest employee to population ratios of any county in Wisconsin.

Where we fall short:

• Annual budget---each year, due to levy limits, we experience about a $2 million increase in our recurring annual expenses while our revenues only increase by about $300,000.  This gives us a renewing $1.7 million dollar structural budget deficit.  Each year, we have to start our budget for the upcoming year by looking at last year's budget and removing about $1.7 million in expenses.  These numbers vary a bit, year to year, but they give us a good approximation of what we are dealing with.

I had one former County Board Supervisor tell me that we should not make any adjustments, but instead just fund those programs we'd like to adjust out of our reserves.  That's what the State of Illinois decided to do about 10 years ago, and it's why they are in fiscal peril now.  Let's look at what would happen if the County took that approach, starting with 2019 (since 2018's budget is already set):

• 2019-If we assume the best case scenario, we have $15 million in reserves.  We fund $1.7 million dollars in programs out of our reserves, reducing our reserves to $13.3 million.
• 2020-Since we did not deal with 2019's budget deficit, we start 2020's budget with a $1.7 million dollar deficit from 2019 (these are recurring annual expenses, after all) and add in the new expense increase of another $1.7 million.  we now have a total of $3.4 million that we need to fund out of our reserves.  Our $13.3 million by the end of 2020 is down to $9.9 million.
• 2021-Since we did not deal with 2019's or 2020's budget deficits, we start 2021's budget with a $3.4 million dollar deficit and add in the expense increase of another $1.7 million.  We now have a total of $5.1 million that we need to fund out of our reserves.  Our $9.9 million by the end of 2021 is down to $4.8 million.
• 2022-Since we did not deal with 2019's, 2020's, or 2021's budget deficits, we start 2020's budget with a $5.1 million dollar deficit and add in the expense increase of another $1.7 million.  We now have a total of $6.8 million that we need to fund out of our reserves.  Our $4.8 million by the end of 2022 is down to a negative $2 million, meaning we now need to borrow $2 million dollars.
• 2023-Since we did not deal with 2019's, 2020's, 2021's, or 2022's budget deficits, we start 2023's budget with a $6.8 million dollar deficit and add in the expense increase of another $1.7 million.  We now have a total of $8.5 million that we need to fund out of our reserves.  Since we have no reserves left, we need to borrow all $8.5 million, in addition to the $2 million we borrowed in 2022.  We have now increased the County debt by $10.5 million.

So in 5 years, we have burned through $15 million in reserve funds and have now borrowed $10.5 million.  If we try to go a sixth year in this approach, our new borrowing increases by $10.2 million to a total of $20.7 million borrowed over 2022-2024.  The problem just keeps getting worse until we deal with it. 

I can easily see how unsustainable this is, and I am sure you can too.  At some point we have to make budget adjustments or our situation just keeps getting worse and worse year by year.  Delaying those adjustments only makes our situation more precarious. 

I ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility, and that means balancing our budget each year.  We balanced our budget in 2017 and 2018, and need to continue making the tough choices we have been making.

During the first few years of levy limits, finding adjustments to make was very easy.  Over the years, the budget adjustments have become less easy each year.  This year, we are now looking at agencies like the Economic Development of Washington County (EDWC), a gold-star partner that has brought nearly 1,500 jobs to Washington County over the last few years.  We don't want to be making adjustments to their budget, because they are such a great partner for us and they have accomplished so much.  Unfortunately, we are at the point where we have to start looking at agencies like the EDWC.  In their case, they are showcasing their professionalism by developing a solution that will ensure that they remain sustainable and viable while completely removing themselves from the County's tax levy.

We have other programs that we need to make similar transitions with.  4-H is one of them.  4-H is an organization that is very personal to me, as my kids have both been in 4H for quite a few years.  As important as 4-H is to me, I understand the need to make adjustments.  I was at our County Administrator's presentation to 4-H, and I know they saw the need to make adjustments.  Like EDWC, 4-H appears to be interested in developing a plan over the next few year to make themselves much more self-sustainable and to present that plan to the County Board in 2 or 3 years.

I know that many of the other programs we are looking at are just as important to others in the community as 4-H is to me.  You may have a particular program that is important to you, and wish that the county would continue to fund it at the current level.  I  don't want to cut any of these programs off cold-turkey, or set any of them up to fail.  I also believe that many, if not most, of the other County Board Supervisors feel the same way.  Hopefully each program will work to find ways in which they can become much more self-sustainable.

Renewing My United Way Committment

Last year (2017) I made a commitment to give 1 month of my County Board Supervisor salary to the United Way. Yesterday, I renewed that commitment for 2018. I stopped in at the County's Human Resources office and completed my pledge card, to have monthly deductions equal to 1 month of my salary, with donations to be split between the Heroine Task Force, Elevate, Family Promise, and NAMI-Washington County. I didn't get elected to hoard money for myself, but to serve the community, and returning a portion of my salary to the community furthers that service.

Important Quasi-Governmental Agency Committee Meeting (Postponed)

On Monday, we will be having an important meeting of the Quasi-Governmental Agency Committee.  This committee was formed by the Executive Committee with the goal of helping several agencies transition off of the County Tax Levy.  On Monday, the EDWC (Economic Development Corporation of Washington County) will be presenting a plan they created to remove themselves from the tax levy.

I have always had a tremendous respect for the EDWC and Christian Tscheschlok.  They have brought 2,222 and more than $146 million in wages jobs to Washington County.  They have always been a consummate partner with the County, and I look forward to seeing the solution they have come up with.  The fact that they arrived at their own solution to this issue, and are presenting it to us, is a sign of their professionalism and commitment to the best interests of our County.

The EDWC receives about $97,000 in support from the County's tax levy.


Update: This afternoon's meeting has been postponed, as a couple of Supervisors have schedule conflicts.