County Commissioner Garry Gamble thanked the large crowd gathered at the Cook County Community Center on Thursday, April 2 and began to explain the process the county board is undergoing to set up an equitable approach to distributing financial support to the various nonprofit groups that the county has funded—in many cases— for years.
There was some confusion in the audience because a rumor had spread that the county board was going to discontinue funding for non-mandated services, but Gamble and fellow commissioner Heidi Doo-Kirk assured them that wasn’t true.
Gamble said, “We need your help. This [meeting] is part of the process to help inform us and hopefully this will contribute to the trust in how we go about allocating dollars.”
Doo-Kirk, who is the commissioners’ board chair, was frustrated with the board’s approach to granting money to nonprofit organizations at the end of the budget process last year. In the final few minutes of the board’s final budget meeting before setting the 2015 levy the board granted several requests for county funding to three nonprofit groups, and at the conclusion of that meeting Doo-Kirk said this type of last-minute decision making had to end.
Doo-Kirk told the audience, “What we’re doing isn’t working. It makes us all vulnerable. We need to form a strategy that is consistently applied to every organization applying for county dollars.”
In the subsequent months, Doo-Kirk called on her colleagues to establish a fair and balanced non-mandated funding approach, and she asked for the process to be completed by July 1, 2015.
Working to accomplish that goal, Gamble reached out to Auditor Braidy Powers, GIS Analyst Kyle Oberg and Planning and Zoning Secretary Diana Lindquist, to put together a 38-page book that outlined a 10-year history of funding that included contributions to groups such as the Grand Marais Art Colony, Birch Grove Foundation, Cook County Historical Society, Grand Marais Playhouse, Violence Prevention Center, WTIP Radio, Cook County Senior Center and 14 other nonprofits. The booklet also presented a look at the county’s demographics, non-directed revenues (general revenues) for the last 10 years and an outline of county properties like the Cook County Historical Society Museum, the Horse/Dog Park and YMCA that also receive non-mandated funds.
Where does the money come from?
The county levy in 2005 was $4,44,988, said Gamble, but it grew to $6,109103 in 2014 and to $6,516,848 in 2015. While Gamble said the challenge for the county board should be to keep the levy increase to zero, realistically, he added, the board generally levies 4-6 percent yearly so the county doesn’t have to dip into its reserve funds.
While the levy has grown, the county’s population has remained almost unchanged.
The 2000 U.S. Census showed 5,168 people in Cook County—2,350 households, and 1,438 families. In 2010 the Census showed 5,176 people—2,494 households, and 1,445 families.
“While it is understood that Cook County taxpayers contribute to the county’s pool of financial resources, there remains, it is assumed, a disparity in the redistribution of these public monies in services and benefits to the various regions of our county,” said Gamble.
“It is with this perspective that the County Board of Commissioners endeavor to determine an equitable approach to redistributing tax payers’ dollars,” he said, acknowledging that the county board has “an official duty to ensure fiscal responsibility while providing services that contribute to the greatest public value.”
Gamble displayed a map showing where people lived and a breakout of the number of families in those areas and what each area paid in property taxes. Lutsen paid the most net tax with $2,114,711 while Grand Marais was close behind with $2,060,254. One unorganized territory above Schroeder paid $0. While this information was interesting some in the crowd didn’t feel it should be used to determine which groups received money.
Statewide, said Gamble, county program aid (CPA) has experienced great fluctuations in funding throughout the past decade.
“While last year saw a modest level in increased CPA payments, the funding levels have only recently gone back to their original 2005 levels and are greatly depressed in terms with inflation,” said Gamble.
More meetings to come
Many questions were asked. One person wanted to know whether or not all of the groups asking for money should have an audit in hand when they appear before the board with a grant request. Another person asked if the county board looked at volunteer hours and counted them as a form of revenue.
And Gamble was asked if the county board takes into account matching dollars from grants that an organization would receive if the county kicked in its half of the money?
These and other questions were the reason the meeting was called, said Gamble. All of the questions will be discussed at future meetings between the board and then the public, he said.
Commissioner Frank Moe said not everyone on the county board fully agreed with Gamble’s approach, but his booklet was a good starting place to begin the process and he thanked him for his work.
At the meeting’s conclusion Bev Green, director of the Cook County Senior Center, thanked Gamble and the other commissioners on hand and said she had learned a lot from the meeting.
“We are trying to build integrity into this process,” Gamble said. “We are trying to build the public’s trust. We don’t want to make decisions that don’t reflect a healthy process.”
Commissioners met in a work session on Tuesday, April 7 to review citizen input and to begin the process of creating a policy.
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