For more than a decade, Wright County has earmarked money that has been turned back in its county department budgets into its Capital Improvement Projects, or CIP fund, which was created to pay for projects that arise or have been put off as part of the annual budgeting process.
At its Tuesday, Aug. 23, meeting, the Wright County Board of Commissioners was presented with the 2016 listing of department requests for funding of projects from the CIP as part of the 2017 budget kickoff meeting.
Commissioner Mark Daleiden said the projects that are seeking funding are ranked in order or priority.
"There are different factors that go into it," Daleiden said. "The primary objective is to find those projects that need to get done immediately because of needs that weren’t part of the budget process. We’ve asked department heads to determine their needs and we prioritize them from there – which ones can wait a year or two before they need to get done and which ones need immediate attention."
Several departments and administration are seeking CIP funds for projects. Among the proposed projects is a new property tax system which will likely be pushed out to 2018, the purchase of the OpenGOV data and statistics software program, replacing the county’s Wellness On Wheels van, potential improvements to county campgrounds and the purchase of body cameras for sheriff’s deputies in the field.
Daleiden said that there are no guarantees on how much money will get turned back in a given year because, when the commissioners establish budgets, they do so with the intention of having a budget that covers their costs. Other factors do come into play, however, that create turn-back dollars.
"We don’t come into a year figuring that we’re going to have X-amount of dollars turned back," Daleiden said. "But during the course of the year we will have people who leave their job and aren’t replaced immediately, which creates money that wasn’t spent. We also will have revenues that come in above projections that bring in more money that can be used for different projects.
"The intention of the CIP fund is to pay for projects without having to use levy dollars to get them done. We may come to the point where that isn’t always possible, but we’re looking to minimize that chance by using the turn-back funds when they are available to us."
Other items
In other business, the board:
■ Referred to the Wednesday, Aug. 24, personnel committee a request to reclassify the position of senior engineer technician-traffic to that of traffic engineer.
The current senior engineering technician is retiring in September after 40 years on the job. The job description and duties will be reviewed before a replacement is sought.
■ Authorized signatures on an agreement with wRight Choice for the 2016-17 school year with District 877 in Buffalo. The wRight Choice program is an alternative to out-of-school suspension that keeps students that have been suspended current with their school work. The Buffalo school district will pay half of the lease costs.
■ Tabled discussion of an easement on a tax forfeit property. The property is a small strip of land less than three quarters of an acre that the county is trying to get off the books and is looking to transfer to either Xcel Energy, which owns the surrounding property, or the city of Rockford.
Two years ago Rockford declined having the land taken over by the city. The tax forfeit committee was scheduled to meet at 8:30 a.m. prior to the Tuesday, Aug. 30, county board meeting.
■ Received an update on the recount of votes from the primary election in Commissioner District 2. The top two vote-getters move on the November general election, but there was only a five-vote difference between the second and third place candidates. The recount found one additional vote, which was done in blue ink and was determined to have not been read by the ballot reader. That didn’t impact the result of the election, which was certified by the auditor-treasurer’s office as being accurate and complete.
Tom Perrault with 327 votes and Darek Vetsch with 252 votes will be on the November ballot. Bradley Fyle, with 247 votes, was eliminated from contention.
■ Awarded a pair of bids for ditch repair projects. The bid for repair on County Ditch 10 was awarded to Consolidated Landcare, Inc. in the amount of $15,400. The bid for repairs on Joint Ditch 4 was for $13,750.
■ Approved the minutes of the Wednesday, Aug. 10, committee of the whole meeting, which discussed the transfer of the emergency preparedness department into the emergency manager-sheriff’s department. The only action taken by the board was to authorize a review and prepare job descriptions related to transfer of nuclear preparedness duties.