Cook County Auditor-Treasurer Braidy Powers has written a memo to Cook County department heads with guidelines for preparing their 2013 budgets prior to annual budget hearings that will be held later this summer.
While Powers states in the memo that the county is not under levy limits for next year’s budget, he also wrote, “Department heads are directed to budget conservatively based on the best information available to them.”
Commissioner Bruce Martinson wondered if telling the department heads about the lack of a levy limit would give them carte blanche to spend excessively. Powers didn’t think so. Raising their budgets too much might influence the state to impose levy limits next year, he said. Commissioner Martinson thought that might tempt department heads to really pad their budgets this year in case they had to rein in their spending next year.
Commissioner Johnson suggested that funding programs adequately could reduce unnecessary spending in other areas. If you cut down funding for things like chemical dependency treatment, he said, you might pay more in the long run because of the consequences of people not undergoing treatment. He said this is the same with something like a new community center: if you cut costs by using cheap materials such as windows, you will pay more in the long run because of higher heating costs.
Commissioner Sue Hakes said Public Health & Human Services Director Sue Futterer is trying to figure out if increasing services in some areas could decrease the significant cost of out-of-home placements.
They need to look at efficiency, Commissioner Fritz Sobanja said. Labor is their highest cost, he said, and building efficiency into infrastructure can save on labor costs. Maintenance Department employees now have to drive from the courthouse to other places to retrieve some of their maintenance equipment. If they had enough storage at the courthouse, he said, they could save money on time, gas, and vehicle depreciation.
In his memo, Auditor-Treasurer Powers instructed department heads to budget health insurance increases of 12 percent.
Hiring locally
Commissioner Jan Hall brought up an issue she said she was “very concerned about”: using local contractors on projects funded with county money. She expressed concern over the number of out-of-county contractors hired for the Lutsen fire hall/town hall expansion.
Lutsen borrowed $350,000 from the county at 1 percent interest, and “nobody gets that,” Hall said. She said she assumed loans given to local fire departments would be used to hire local contractors but indicated a minority of local contractors were hired on the Lutsen project.
According to a list of sub-contractors compiled by Max Wahlers, who is the general contractor on the project, five out of 11 bids went to local contractors.
Commissioner Bruce Martinson took issue with Hall’s criticism, however. He pointed out that of the seven contractors hired, four were local and three came from out of the county. He told the News- Herald that local workers would be doing “well over 75 percent” of the actual labor. At the board meeting, he commended the Lutsen Fire Department for hiring “almost all” the work locally. “I’m sure the county courthouse was not up to that level,” he said.
Martinson asked Auditor-Treasurer Braidy Powers how much work on courthouse and Law Enforcement Center building projects had been done by local contractors, and Power said all the work was done by out-of-towners.
“We need to consider the local contractors,” Hall said.
Commissioner Fritz Sobanja brought up the projects that would be completed with 1 percent recreation and infrastructure sales tax revenue, saying he thought local contractors should be notified by “snail mail” whenever projects are being let out for bid.
On the Lutsen project, local contractors are Max Construction (general contractor and carpentry), Edwin E. Thoreson Inc. (excavating, septic, and paving), Peak Electric (electrical) and County Plumbing (plumbing). Out-ofcounty contractors are Elias Masonry of Cloquet (concrete and masonry), Sutherland Drywall of Duluth (drywall, painting, exterior staining and finishing), and Highland Beauty Floors of Duluth (tile and base). In other news: . The board discussed when and where striping is done on county roads. County Engineer David Betts said narrow roads do not get striped, and the work is done when striping crews are in the area. Snowplows are really hard on stripes, he said.
Commissioner Jan Hall said the homeowners along Chicago Bay Road do not want their road striped. Engineer Betts said writing a policy on striping is on his list of things to do when he gets the time. . The board authorized the Highway Department to accept a bid from Edwin E. Thoreson for salt/sand and delivery at a cost of $54,980. It was lower than Isak Hansen True Value Hardware’s bid of $55,400. If the county needs extra sand, which Engineer Betts did not think it would, the bid gives the county a price for picking it up themselves. While the Thoreson bid was lower for delivered sand, it was higher for the extra sand at $20/cubic yard. Isak Hansen’s bid for extra sand was $15.35/cubic yard.
The board discussed the possibility that while the extra sand was higher from Thoreson’s, the county might not spend as much money retrieving it because Thoreson’s pile was closer to Grand Marais where most of the county’s salt/ sand is used. . The board authorized purchase of a new chair for 911 dispatchers in the Law Enforcement Center at a cost of $626.05. The purchase is in this year’s budget.
Sheriff Mark Falk wrote in his purchase request, “Dispatch chairs are utilized 24/7/365.” Personnel Director Janet Simonen called it “the most used chair in the county.”
Leave a Reply