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County executive budget proposal calls for tax cuts

By Heather Graves
Correspondent

BROWN COUNTY – For the second year in a row, Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach has announced the lowest tax rate in more than a decade.

“(My 2020 budget proposal) reduces our tax rate to levels not seen since the 1980s,” Streckenbach said. “My 2020 budget proposal is filled with historic achievements.”

He introduced his 2020 budget proposal Monday, Sept. 30, at the Neville Public Museum.

The projected total budget revenue is $176.36 million.

The proposal calls for a 27 cent mill rate reduction, from $4.45 to $4.18, resulting in a roughly $55 property tax decrease on a $200,000 home.

Troy Streckenbach

It also sees a further decrease of the county’s debt by an unprecedented $11.9 million, bringing the county’s total outstanding debt to $81.1 million.

Streckenbach credits the continued debt decrease over the last few years to the property tax relief plan, a half-percent county sales tax over six years passed by the county board in 2017.

The projected sales tax revenue for 2020 is $27.75 million.

In addition, the 2020 levy is proposed to fall from $92 million to $91 million, despite Brown County seeing its net new construction grow by 1.7 percent and total equalized value increase to more than $23 billion.

Streckenbach said the budget stays true to the desires of taxpayers who want to see a decrease in their taxes, but not in their services.

As in previous years, Streckenbach proposes to improve county roads, bridges and facilities – with $11 million slated in the 2020 budget proposal.

The proposal also includes funds to address the space concerns at the jail with a 28,000-square-foot supplementary space expansion with an additional 128 beds, reducing the need to ship inmates to other counties.

The budget also includes the addition of a sheriff’s investigator and a new video visitation system.

Streckenbach said the new system will allow anyone with a computer to have an inmate visit without having to be at the jail.

“The system will increase visitations by removing barriers,” he said.

Streckenbach said the budget also reflects the county’s continued support to the shorthanded Child Protective Services department.

The budget proposal includes the addition of 13 newly state-funded positions to help address challenges the county is seeing regarding child neglect and abuse.

It also includes the addition of an adult protective services and adult behavioral health employee to better address neglect cases while helping adults struggling with mental health disorders.

Streckenbach looks to continue the county’s commitment to innovation by using 2020 to identify data points and technologies that will improve the effectiveness of the services the county provides.

“To be successful as a place of choice, we have to get with the times and improve technology, and there is no better way then with infrastructure,” he said.

Part of that growth includes the creation of an economic development director.

Streckenbach said the director will focus on developing the airport, the Port of Green Bay, the Brown County Phoenix Innovation Park, private/public developments on county-owned land and managing a technical college incubator at the Brown County STEM Innovation Center.

Also, he said keep an eye out for the county’s new website being launched later this year.

“The old site served its purpose,” Streckenbach said. “But in today’s world, data is received on many different platforms. The new site is mobile-reader friendly, it will automatically adjust to your screen, depending on the device you are looking at the website on.”

Other highlights include the addition of a veterans court coordinator to help manage caseloads, a 16,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art regional facility to perform autopsies locally, digitization of county records and further branding of the Austin Straubel International Airport and the Port of Green Bay.

Streckenbach said he is hopeful the budget will be well-received by the full county board.

The Brown County Board of Supervisors will hold its annual budget hearing at 9 a.m. Nov. 6.

“We work really hard to recognize what the board wants,” Streckenbach said. “We listen very carefully in committees. We believe in running government as efficiently as possible. I’m not sure where the debates will be, nothing is perfect, but there are a lot of good things in this budget.”

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