Cook County Commissioner candidates answer questions

The Cook County News- Herald sent off a series of county related questions to the District 2 and District 4 candidates running for office. Below are responses from District 2 candidates Myron Bursheim and Stacey Hawkin.

Q- Do you think the 2019 short-term vacation rental ordinance passed by the county board that was put on hold should go into effect? Or should the county wait until the state makes a unified law for all counties and follows those guidelines regarding the taxes paid for these rental properties?

Myron- The ordinance we passed on short-term rentals sets requirements for licensing. The land services department was not requiring (hold) licensing at the beginning of 2020 but is now doing so. The resolution we passed for tax purposes was to classify rentals as seasonal versus the Department of Revenues directive of commercial for this year. Unless the legislature takes action to pass a law specific to vacation rentals, we will be getting directives from the DOR as to tax classification for 2021. This is a complex problem and has significant implications for our tax capacity going forward.

Stacey- Cook County Vacation Rental Ordinance #62 was adopted by the commissioners on May 28, 2019. The county is currently receiving funds from licenses issued and is paying an outside agency to collect the license applications, oversee compliance and collect data regarding neighbor complaints.

The ordinance is not on hold although the reclassification of these properties has not been addressed at the state level yet.

I am curious to see the initial statistics from the outside agency that the county contracted with to oversee these rentals. We deserve to see if the cost of implementing the ordinance justifies the results.

Vacation rental properties used by families to help alleviate the costs of owning a cabin, should not be in the same tax class as properties purchased and owned by Limited Liability Companies or other owners whose primary use is short term rental. There currently are properties that previously were used solely as seasonal cabins but are now full-time commercial enterprises owned by LLC’s. And if you own one of these properties along the Cascade Beach Road, you are not required to remit the same percentage of Lodging Tax as properties in other Cook County lodging tax districts which raises a fairness issue. Vacation Rental Properties are an important part of our tourism economy but it is unfair for them to pay the same or lower tax rates as homesteaded or other rental properties.

I support the assessor’s recommendation to reclassify these properties to more accurately reflect their true usage. The county needs to continue to work with our state representatives and ensure that this issue is addressed at the state level.

Unregulated or ignored, these types of properties can have detrimental effects on the lives of those who are struggling to live here year-round.

Q- If there were a shortfall in the general budget, what steps would you take to balance the budget?

Myron – If the shortfall is not significant, the best practice would be to take the discrepancy from the budget reserve and correct the shortfall if needed the next year. This only works if you have a healthy budget reserve, preferably above 75 percent of one year’s budget expenses. We currently have a budget reserve of over 90 percent; this is, therefore, the immediate step I would recommend. I would not recommend shifting payments into the next fiscal year, for example, which can instantly take the problem off the current books, but it serves only to make the following year’s budgeting that much more difficult. Borrowing money for operating costs, another common tactic, may be even more dangerous. It adds to the public’s long-term debt without creating any related future public benefit.

Stacey – It depends on the reason for the shortfall. Is it because an expected grant was not received? Was it because of an unexpected maintenance issue? Is the shortfall in one fund/ department or an across the board shortage due to some unexpected event? Or is the shortfall the result of faulty budgeting and forecasting?

Some of those circumstances are the reason the county needs a healthy unrestricted reserve. Cook County’s fund balance is at 90 percent of expenses according to recent statements made at board meetings. The fiscal policy the board just approved suggests a fund balance of 75 percent.

Government’s role is to see where people are struggling in their lives and make incremental steps to address those issues. It is important to understand the reasoning for providing the services funded by taxpayers before making additions or cuts to a department.

In any budget discussion, I will ask departments for detailed information regarding income received for services provided by source, a list of mandated services and the costs and number of people using those services, and overall data regarding the department’s costs. As a citizen, I have asked for some of this information numerous times across various departments and was told this was not tracked or known by the department, but that I could make and pay for a public data search to perhaps get that information if it was collected. It is impossible to determine the value and/ or cost of a service provided if you are not tracking how many people are using that service. Part of why I decided to run for office is because I want to ask the needed questions as a commissioner without having to pay for the answers as a private taxpayer!

Q- Cook County Public Health and Human Services needs more space for its workers. Would you vote to build a new building, add to the current courthouse, or seek to have some employees work from home as they have done during the COVID-19 pandemic? There are a myriad of ways to approach this; what solutions would you seek to solve this dilemma?

Myron – I have served on the County Building Committee that was formed this past year. We have started to study some of the alternatives suggested in this question. As commissioner, I have visited facilities in the county that we could rent for moving some staff out of the courthouse to accommodate the additional space needed for our Public Health and Human Services staff. It was obvious to me that available rental properties are inadequate to meet our needs at this time. There has been some discussion of building more space adjacent to the courthouse and use bonding for funding. However, considering the Covid-19 pandemic implications for our financial future, it is best to proceed with exploring “work at home” for the immediate future if suitable for the delivery of services to our public and for our service providers. I would not recommend any plan of a more permanent nature until we can better predict our financial future after the pandemic.

Stacey– I am not in favor of building a new building or adding on to the courthouse at this time. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that we can change the way we work in a building.

The county paid $45,000 for a facility study that suggested we build a new Public Health facility, a new Law Enforcement Center, a New Hovland garage, and remodel the Courthouse.

The data and premise used for that facility study was faulty and the current board did not do their due diligence in evaluating that information. It was only because of private citizens getting involved and doing the necessary research that put a halt to a new jail at this time.

After our previous county administrator left, it was determined that the old Hovland garage was NOT unsafe and uninsurable as we were told when the project was first proposed. Perhaps if our county commissioners had done their own homework and research, or asked for more data, we would not have had to spend over a million dollars on a new garage?

As Commissioner, I will not be afraid to ask for the needed information and facts before agreeing to spend taxpayer’s money on more consultants whose primary goal is to sell the county their next product.

Q- Commissioners make policy and plan for long-range situations. Is there any policy (pick one) that you disagree with and if so, how would you like it changed so it affected a better long-term outcome?

Myron- I will use a current situation where we are revising our Cook County Fiscal Policy. I serve on the Budget Advisory Committee and we have drafted a fiscal policy which was presented to the Board of Commissioners at our July 21, 2020 Committee of the Whole Work Session. The recommendation reads:

“Whenever possible, the Cook County Board will ensure in its budget preparations that anticipated expenses are paid with anticipated revenues raised during the same fiscal year. The board will eschew deficit budgeting that relies on use of fund balances. Only in an emergency, or when fund balances exceed previously set levels, should fund balances be used to fund current expenses during budget preparation, and then only for one-time expenses and with explicit public acknowledgment.”

After discussion on this further with the Budget Advisory Committee and the Board of Commissioners, I am recommending the elimination of the last sentence. The reason I have is that the next statement in the fiscal policy sets the goal for the General Fund to have an unassigned fund balance of 75 percent of current expenses. Therefore, when our fund balance is above the 75 percent level, which is our current situation, this last sentence is not necessary and can tend to increase the fund balance over time if above 75 percent.

Stacey- I disagreed with the board and the former administrator that our county needed a full-time Land Commissioner in the Land Services Department. That position was used to help develop and promote the Sawtooth Bluffs Master Plan, a $5.1+ million-dollar city/county park. This plan is still being worked on and discussed by the Parks & Trails Commission.

The board needs to focus on the most critical issue facing our county residents, which is housing.

Making it easier to develop year-round housing for our workforce should be a priority goal of the board. The board should follow the advice of another taxpayer-funded study, the Go Team Study, and adjust our zoning code. The board should task the Land Services department to establish a community task force to reevaluate zoning codes with the intention of making it easier for developers to provide year-round workforce housing and/or multi-family dwellings. We have county and city-owned properties that have been identified for suitable housing projects. The county needs to prioritize work and seek proposals to put these properties on our tax base to help working families find housing in Cook County. That should be a higher priority than a new park facility for recreational purposes.

Q- There has been a discussion about making the Cook County Law Enforcement Center into a holding center that would allow inmates to be housed here in confinement for longer than three days. Are you in favor of adding onto the current facility and moving to making the law enforcement center larger?

Myron – Core Planning Document regarding building needs for the county was developed in June, 2018. It was recommended that we consider expanding our Law Enforcement Center which would house inmates for a longer period than three days. During our deliberations and current trends regarding incarceration in Cook County, it became apparent that we cannot justify the financial investment in a larger Law Enforcement Center at that time. I advocated not to expand based upon the latest projections but do recognize that we need to consider expanding space to better meet the needs of the staff to do their work. This will require further study after we get through the pandemic. We have replaced the windows to improve the insulation as well as improved other insulation issues in the walls through our building maintenance process.

Stacey- The data collected to date does not support the county establishing a holding center. The permanent costs associated with implementing this type of facility are far more than what we are currently paying to transport inmates.

The Sheriff and Attorney’s Office need to collect and make public more information about the types of crimes and sentences along with the demographics of inmates we are holding. When I asked at a public meeting what percentage of inmates were residents of the county and how many were non-residents, and what the length of stays were for each type of crime that required incarceration, I was told that information was not available. That is a rather basic question that should have been asked long before the county paid an architectural firm to draw up new jail plans based on a faulty study suggesting we needed a bigger jail.

Q – The county Highway department road/bridge fund tends to be an issue when the budget is getting ready to be set. In the past commissioners sometimes made cuts to the highway department’s budget to lower the levy. Still, residents often complain that not enough money is spent on the upkeep of county roads. Would you seek to maintain a balance that allows the roads/bridges to be repaired/ replaced without cutting the highway budget?

Myron- At our last Committee of the Whole Meeting, we were presented the 2020-2029 Cook County Transportation Plan. I support the findings and recommendations of this plan which was based upon Steering Committee work for two years and a Transportation Plan Public Input Survey conducted in the summer of 2019 which was summarized as: “A strong majority of respondents indicated that preserving, maintaining, fixing, and improving existing roads is a higher priority than replacing bridges, adding system mileage, or investing in sidewalks and trails.”

I believe that we should learn from reliable and professional surveys so I do not support increasing the budget outside this fiscally responsible plan which limits funding available so projects are prioritized based on public preferences. This transportation plan has a bridge replacement schedule planned out for the next ten years, which should serve as a guide for replacing bridges and culverts in non-emergency conditions. I believe it is reasonable to state that this plan will not increase our budgeting over the span of ten years, unless unforeseen circumstances develop.

Stacey- The County paid $30,000 for a long-range transportation study through ARDC. This plan included input from the community and was made public early in 2020.

The top three things the report prioritized were Pavement Preservation, Bridges, and Gravel Roads. System changes, which included widening or realigning existing roads was listed at #9 in priority value.

The current board ignored the study’s findings and voted unanimously to spend $72,000 to research what it would take to straighten the road over the Cascade River on County Road 45.

If you are old enough to remember 30 years ago, the old bridge was replaced with a curve in the bridge. There was a lot of controversy at the time about how wide the bridge was and how much it cost. We were told by our engineer at the time that this improvement was necessary to replace the deficient bridge and it was cheaper than trying to cut a road through the rocky hill in order to straighten the road.

There were public meetings and comments submitted (you can read these on the county website). The overall responses indicated a desire to keep the road rural in nature and not pave the road so that the road’s speed will not increase.

So our commissioners paid for a study that asked the residents what they wanted, and then they decided to ignore that study and all the comments from the taxpayers that when into that report. You can watch the meeting online. They even said that’s not too much money to study this problem!

That bridge is rated in good condition and we have eight other bridges the county board, at a previous meeting, voted to rate as high priority because they are deficient and may need to be closed.

The $72,000 is NOT to fix the road. It is only what is necessary to pay an engineer to tell us what it WILL cost to straighten that curve. We do not have the money to fix the road in the first place and now the board is asking to increase its cost!

This is just one example of wasteful spending with no regard to priorities. Add to this the amount taxpayers spent to have consultants tell us we needed a new Hovland garage, and add in the unreasonable equipment replacement plan that was being followed by an earlier highway engineer.

If the county developed fiscally responsible long-range maintenance plans instead of paying outside “experts” to suggest new ways to spend limited taxpayer dollars, we might not have a backlog of maintenance projects and be able to fund the highway department in a fiscally responsible way.

Q- Over the past several years Cook County has had the highest –or one of the highest—levies in the state. Some counties keep their levy at 3 percent or lower unless they run into an emergency. Short of an emergency situation, do you favor capping the levy at 3 percent?

Myron – Yes, Cook County had a very high levy increase of over 17 percent when we set the levy in 2017. I did oppose the 19.9 percent that was recommend but supported funding to balance the budget and address a dire need for more Public Health and Human Services staff. In the last two years, we have also needed to have a higher levy than normal because of the uncertainty of federal PLIT payments for the BWCWA in the next ten years. At our last Board Meeting, I voted against the 4.16 preliminary levy passed by the other commissioners because I think we should be giving more relief for our property taxpayers during these uncertain times.

Stacey- No, I do not support setting a cap to the levy. I do support fiscally responsible budgeting and the collection of necessary data to make informed decisions regarding spending. The data that was presented as the justification for the large increases in levies the last few years was not presented responsibly. The fact that our fund reserves are at some of the highest levels they have been in years shows that those large levy increases could have been reduced to a more reasonable level.

Board members need to do their own homework before voting on an issue. The board approved the last union contracts based on the recommendation of the administrator. There were board members who voted for approval of those contracts without even reading them or asking how they would affect the already adopted budget. Those contracts were a part of the reason the budget needed to be adjusted later in the year and also part of the reason why the levy needed to be increased by such a large amount the following year.

Q- Pick any county-related topic you would like to see addressed and explain why it needs to be addressed and what you would propose to fix it.

Myron – My topic is AFFORDABLE HOUSING.

I am committed to expanding affordable housing efforts by working with the City of Grand Marais through a Joint Powers Agreement, establishing a Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA).

The HRA will serve our community by: • Creating jobs • Expanding the tax base • Eliminating blight • Facilitating public improvements.

Stacey – Financial responsibility and accountability are important issues. The public needs to trust that elected officials are doing their due diligence when deciding how to spend taxpayer’s money.

We are a small county with relatively few residents. We must learn to work across departments and with the school, hospital, cities and townships and the Tribal Council to ensure that we are providing the services that are most needed by the residents of Cook County.

The board used to meet quarterly with some of these other groups and I think it helped to broaden the knowledge of those board members and made it easier to address issues of mutual concern.

It would be beneficial for those meetings to resume with the intention of not just promoting our own varying agendas, but finding ways to promote collaboration and the sharing of resources.