The Hancock County Council battled over the county’s 2025 budget at it’s July meeting last Wednesday.
In the nearly-eight-hour meeting, the council had a goal of cutting $3.9 million from the originally proposed budget, bringing each county department as well as the county commissioners forward to present on why it needed the amount of money it asked for. According to council president Jeannine Gray, the rise in costs for the county is similar to that of a growing family.
“The more mouths you have to feed, the larger the house you need to put a roof over their heads and the more taxing it is on the family unit,” she said. “It’s really no different with county government.”
The earliest point of contention came from Bill Spalding, president of the county commissioners, as his request for the county’s health insurance was for $4.8 million, a significant increase over the 2024 budget. The increase is in response to a large jump in costs this year, forcing the county to dig into its insurance reserve fund, and Spalding expects healthcare costs to only continue to rise as the county plans for next year.
The council ultimately voted to cut $200,000 out of the commissioners’ proposal, despite Spalding’s warnings against doing so.
“If that’s what you want to do, then pay it out of the reserve when it comes up at 4.8 [million dollars].”
The county’s financial advisor, Greg Guerrettaz, agreed with Spalding, citing rising costs and a lack of a budget increase last year for the need for this year’s massive spike.
The public defender’s office provided the next point of contention, asking for a raise for one of its attorneys as well as an additional attorney. The raise was mandated by law to bring public defender pay in line with the prosecutor’s office, and chief public defender Jeremy Teipen argued that the additional attorney would save the county money overall, as they would be taking on cases the county currently outsources to other law firms due to lack of time as the county’s prosecutors bring more and more cases for a growing Hancock county.
After a long debate, the council ultimately decided to accept the public defender’s proposal in full.
As the meeting neared its conclusion with the sheriff’s budget, the council began to realize it still needed to cut around $1 million, according to council president Gray.
Throughout the meeting, councilman Scott Woolridge was almost giddy about cutting the budget, coming back from each break gleefully stating the amount the council still needed to cut.
Woolridge provided a refrain during the afternoon of “I voted no!” following a series of no votes despite offering little to no pushback during the council’s deliberation over several budget items, and eventually, fellow councilman Kent Fisk had finally had enough.
“You can keep voting no, Scott. We’ll run the government,” Fisk snapped.
The council remained $1 million over budget of its target at the end of the day, to Woolridge’s dismay, as the council sent several items to either their respective committees or the county auditor for review to clean up redundancies, such as equipment being listed in both the commissioners’ budget as well as the newly created maintenance department’s budget, which the council hoped would account for the rest of the money.
Should the county not get that million balanced, Guerrettaz says that it will be more reliant on one-time income sources and depleting cash reserves in order to pay the bills rather than maintaining stability.
The council will have a joint meeting with the commissioners on July 30 to iron out some of the issues in the budget before it is finalized over the next couple months.
“We were elected to provide the best service we can to Hancock County, and we have to take it very seriously,” Gray said. “We have to vote for what’s best for them.”
