you
Welcome to our morning show community conversation on a Monday and we're going to put the focus on the city of Richland center right out of the gate here to kick off another busy week.
Mayor Karen Teplie is here along with Ashley Oliphant, city administrator for the city of Richland center.
So lots to talk about Karen.
What a weekend in Richland center.
Yes, it was beautiful, beautiful weather, some great activities.
I just want to take a moment and say congratulations on 40 years.
That is awesome.
Um, I know.
I listen in quite often and I think it was when you were in the hospital and I remember thinking, you know, it's one of the symptoms of, you know, the issues that you had was, you know, could have some memory loss or something like that.
And I thought, well, that's going to be a tough one for Phil.
And you did not miss a beat.
I mean, you just came back, you have all of the, I'm just always impressed with the
the quizzes that Hank gives you and how much information you have about the music and of all genres.
You're just amazing.
So congratulations on 40 years.
Well, thank you.
And I had the opportunity to have my first ski.
So that was awesome.
I was going to have my can autographed by you.
Your first ski.
Wow.
Well, that's something, you know, now you're you've completed all of your goals in
life, I
guess,
right?
That was fun, but I understand it was a nice parade and of course wheels of time had good attendance.
Yes.
Yes.
And once again, wonderful weather.
I mean, this time of year can be, you know, kind of iffy, but it was, um, yeah, great crowd.
Um, talk to Marty a little bit after your, your, um, show there that you had at the auditorium and he said it was great crowds, a lot of people.
And so yeah, it was great.
That's all you can ask for.
You have more events at the end of the month with the big
pumpkin celebration and everything
that's going on.
Yes, pumpkin fest will be going on.
And yeah, so that's always a fun event for from, from the little kids to the adults, you know, they can view all the creative people here in our community.
Cause I'm always amazed at how they can make those pumpkins be just about anything.
So yeah, me too.
There's a real talent there.
Some things you want to talk about this month, Karen, that's on your list.
Sure.
Um, so I just wanted to kind of go over a few things that I'll be on the agenda.
So once again, I've always stressed that, you know, if you want to be involved in the community and have a say of what is going on, you really need to show up at the committee level.
So from our budget committee, we're going to authorize about 192,000 from the general fund to finance that Valley View Drive project.
I just drove by there this morning and they were working on it.
So we're going to
I haven't come out of the general fund instead of having it out of the what was going to be the water utility loan.
So this way we won't have interest to pay.
So the council will have a decision on that.
We will also go over cost containment opportunities for the 2027 budget.
And then from plan commission, we'll do several, not seven, but several land divisions.
One comes from the Richmond County that transfers about 20 acres of property on Highway 14 to the Richmond School District.
So that is the gymnasium, Melville Hall, some of the soccer fields and that type of thing.
Another CSM was submitted by Shriver Foods and they just want to join a little bit.
They purchased the lot that everybody might know as the pharmacy sits on and cornerstone.
So they purchased that and they just want to combine their lot with just a small piece from that property because they want to have one of their intake bays made a little bit larger.
So once again, those are CSM, so those are certified survey maps, and that's where the city has a say, you know, as far as the county, the county one.
So it's just approval of those.
From general government committee, we will do a legal services agreement with Murphy Desmond.
So you probably remember Mike
Michael Wendell is our attorney and when he decided to leave absuane.
So as a city, we employ the firm and absuane did not have the ability to provide another attorney.
So we went out for an RFP.
So attorney Wendell's new firm, Murphy Desmond, applied along with another firm.
So council will have the decision to approve that.
And then economic development, actually later today about 5 p.m.
Jason Glasbrenner will present information from Veerbecker engineering to a joint committee of both the executive finance and the campus reconfiguration committee for a possible
memorandum of understanding about the possible sale of a section of the campus property.
So that'll be happening at 5 p.m.
They're going to have a closed session after that.
So that's kind of a few things that are going on.
Yeah, just a few.
Yeah.
Yeah, some improvements, you know, and construction season eventually is going to come to a close, but you've had this and some road work, some street work being done as well.
Correct.
Yeah.
And I just took a ride by, like I say, both of the story field project as well as Panorama States and, you know, everybody's working this morning and walls are up on Panorama and also
They have one, two, three, I think four duplexes in some level of being completed at Story Field.
All except for one of the concrete pads are poured.
So they're moving right along there ahead of schedule.
You mentioned the Valley View Drive area as well and Scott Gould was on with us last week kind of talking about the project there but it's been a long time since things have been done in that area so I guess it was due.
Right and the city got involved there I believe as I recall they could have just after the utilities did their work and then just patched everything after their work was done but I believe we decided to you know just redo the street so it's a nice
Smooth smooth smooth road.
You've been bringing friends with you here during the last few months and you have another friend today
Yes, Ashley Oliphant our city administrators going to join us today I think it's once again really important for the public to hear from other members of our our staff Because once again, they know this way way more than I do as they should
Good morning Ashley.
Good to have you in here with us
here.
Thank you for having me
Give us like an overview.
Is there a typical day for you and what you do in the office?
No, it changes every day and that's what makes it really enjoyable Because you don't quite know what you're going to get into every day you come in with a plan, but things happen things change We provide many services and you know when you provide a service You have to be pretty flexible and adaptable to what's going on.
So there is no typical day But we have a lot of great people trying to make things
better each and every day and so we just strive to do that.
I have enough trouble trying to balance my old checkbook the old-fashioned way.
I couldn't imagine balancing a city budget.
That's not easy.
No, it's not easy and it does take a team.
So there's many people involved.
You know, our department heads have to manage their budget from a day to day basis.
We have great people in the clerk treasurer's office that are part of that me as well.
And of course, our committees provide oversight and the ultimately the council provides oversight, but
You know, I think that's what's confusing is we're used to our own personal finances and how that works.
And governmental accounting, governmental finance, it's nothing like what we have in our personal life.
Oftentimes it feels a little backwards.
So it takes a little bit to get accustomed to, especially when you're a newly elected person.
If it's your first experience, it's overwhelming.
I bet.
take us through the budget process and kind of what you're looking at right now in October.
Yeah so we start in about August we start rolling out the budget worksheets as we call them to department heads they fill those out they look at history so what have we spent in the past what do we
forecast into the future, what do we think that will need?
So they work on filling out those worksheets with their requests, what they're requesting for their department.
And unfortunately, with levy limits the way that they are, it really means that department budgets are flat.
They're generally, at least for the last several years, they're coming in
about what they were the year before, even though our costs continued to rise.
So it's quite a challenge for a department head to make sure that they're advocating for and getting the resources that they need, just to keep up with status quo, let alone make improvements or changes.
the department heads, they go through that process, then they meet with both myself and our treasurer, and we go through each line of their budgets, refining those figures, making sure that we're doing a good job forecasting and really anticipating as best as we can what's to come.
And then after that, the budget committee reviews those requests, and they meet two, three times, at least,
go over the budgets with a fine tooth comb and really in recent years having to make really difficult recommendations to the council because we can't keep doing everything that we've always done when we're fighting inflation and our levy is limited, it is restricted.
So we've seen some hard decisions just made recently, shared ride taxi was an example of that.
because our budget just cannot afford to keep going the way that it has been.
And so extremely volatile or variable expenses make that really challenging to keep doing.
And so we're looking at things like what is mandated versus non-mandated.
And that's a really tricky thing because there's a lot of services or functions that the city provides that aren't necessarily mandated, but
You and I would agree that we should we should probably do that for example EMS That's something that the city does not have to provide but It's something the city should provide and it's something that the city has been committed to providing for many many years, but it's not something that
has been easy to do with the increased costs that EMS across the state, across the nation has been facing.
And so that's been a really difficult challenge that we've had to overcome in being able to continue to afford that while also providing many other services.
Yeah, that, that was news to me when, you know, a couple of years ago when that conversation came up, I always just thought it was something that we had to, you had to have, you had to provide, but it's not true, is it?
No, and I think there's a lot of examples like that where it's, we would all just assume, of course it's obvious you have to have EMS, but that's not the case.
I think another one would be garbage.
I think we all expect that there's a garbage service in the city, but.
There's no legal mandate that a city provides for garbage.
Recycling, on the other hand, we do have to provide.
And so even that difference just between garbage and recycling, it makes the landscape complicated.
Because a lot of times it's the things that we really think are no-brainers we have to provide.
They're not required.
And you work with companies to provide the garbage service or whatever.
So you, you, you take those bids and sign those contracts.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And that's, that's interesting.
Uh, and then what about, uh, are the grants or anything like that that are available that you work on?
Yeah.
We're always looking for grant opportunities, um, and, and trying to obtain grants whenever we can.
And grants are, can be challenging too.
Not only are they competitive, but they often require a match or therefore one time things or a short
and so unfortunately you know sometimes you'll get a grant but it'll only last for so long so how do you continue to to provide whatever it was that the grant was funding once that grant goes away also a lot of times grants come with a lot of regulations a lot of rules and administrative hurdles that you have to accommodate you have to
find ways to manage those grants and oftentimes that's you know a full-time job just in and of itself is grant management and so you'll even see grants out there for communities to be able to hire grant managers.
So grants are amazing and they've they've been a tremendous resource but it's they're not always stable consistent or they don't necessarily allow you to do
what you're trying to do, you might have to change it to meet the grant requirements and it's not necessarily exactly what the community would like, but hey, it's a grant and we can't let that opportunity slip by.
No one wants their taxes to go up, right?
For sure.
It's probably the number one thing.
So misconceptions that maybe a property owner in the city of Richland Center has.
Could you talk about those?
Yeah, I think it's just like the budget is complicated.
I think looking at your tax bill can feel complicated too.
For one, when you get your tax bill, there's multiple taxing jurisdictions on your tax bill.
So your taxes might go up and you might think, well, I'm going to pay my taxes in December or January to the city.
And so the city raised my taxes.
Well, not necessarily because they're the counties on the tax bill, the school districts on the tax bill, the cities on the tax bill.
So it is important when you get your tax bill to look at the lines of it and see the taxing jurisdictions.
So for the city, our tax levy has been for the last several years flat.
You've been assessed about the same taxes for the city for the last several years.
It hasn't really increased.
And that's because of levy limits.
But I think another thing that's important to note is that we do often feel like our property taxes are paying for all city services.
And that just actually isn't the case.
About a third of the cost of the city's operations is from property taxes.
Another third is from state aid.
So we receive a large portion about an equal portion to property taxes from the state to fund our services like road improvements and things like that.
like that.
So the bulk of the city's budget is made up of property taxes and then equally state aid.
Services such as garbage and things like that are additions then.
as well on the tax bill or how does that work
so that would so when you get your utility bill you'll have a fee for garbage and so that the garbage the cost for garbage is paid for by you as a fee that you see on your utility bill and so that's that's one way that I think probably most municipalities handle garbage is rather than taxing for garbage collection you pay a monthly cost for that service
Is original center unique from other cities?
In what ways would it be unique?
Would you be aware of that, Ashley?
Well, I think it is.
I think one of the best things about Wisconsin is that we have so much local control.
And so that home rule or local control really allows communities, whether you're a town, a village, a city, to be unique and be responsive to your residents.
So whether it's from a zoning code to other regulations, no community, no two communities have the same rules because they're made by the local people for that community, that culture, that environment.
And so that's, I think it's really unique about Wisconsin and is really special about what
we're doing, but unfortunately...
As it relates to the budget, what we're seeing is with levy limits, so we are limited to what we can tax through property taxes.
What happens is the cost of providing services, and we talked about how not everything is mandated and some things that we think should be aren't, what happens when you cannot raise your levy and you cannot receive additional funding from other sources or increases that are
needed an appropriate level from state aid, you have to make really difficult choices.
And some of those choices are.
consolidation.
So how do we how do we keep providing what we need to provide for our community?
Well, we can't keep doing everything and every community is struggling with this.
And that's why you've probably heard of innovation grants.
So the state has made innovation grants available.
And what those do is give an opportunity to consolidate services or transfer services.
And so
While that's great, and there's opportunities, maybe really beneficial opportunities, the consequence of that is a loss of local control.
When you're consolidating, whether it be a police service or maybe it's even elections, it could be any number of things that you consolidate.
You take away local control.
You take away that
ability to be unique and to be responsive to your constituents.
So while there's benefit to it, there are consequences as well.
And that's really the direction that we're heading in is more consolidations and not just services.
Unless there's a significant change at the state level with how municipalities can fund themselves, we will see more and more consolidations.
And I don't think that's necessarily what the people want.
Yeah, I'm guessing that's the case.
Potential cuts, I mean, those are, that's kind of a scary couple of words, right?
Very much so.
And you know, you can only cut so much, right?
You can't cut your way out of this because it's a structural issue.
The budget, the way the municipal finance goes,
it's a structural issue and we're playing, we're really playing a game we can't win.
With the way inflation has been since, you know, 2020, our budget has not risen by that amount at all.
So we're, each year we have less and less buying power.
So we've already, at the city, we've already trimmed as much as we can trim.
We've tried to be as efficient as we possibly can be and we just can't cut our way out of it because it's a structural issue.
And so that makes it really hard because there's a changes that the community has felt, the landfill, the transfer station, that's a great example.
We were really blessed to have a transfer station in this community for a very long time, but again, not something that's typical.
That was a unique thing about Richland Center.
It's not usually a city function to have a transfer station.
You might see that with a county or in a very large city, but not here, but those are the kinds of difficult things that
decisions had to be made around because we can't keep going under the rules and the regulations that we're subject to.
And I'm not suggesting at all that I think that property taxes should just no limit on them and let's use property tax to fund everything.
I don't think that's a solution for anyone.
I think the state needs to be more creative and allow things maybe like sales tax at a local level or other avenues where we can properly fund our government.
What can local people do, people that are hearing this, what are some steps they can take to possibly, you know, be more optimistic about the future?
Well, I think the biggest thing is to contact our state elected officials.
Let them hear from the, from especially, you know, small rural communities.
It's often a one size fits all approach.
And we know in Western Wisconsin,
One size does not fit all.
We have a very unique topography and landscape compared to a lot of other parts of Wisconsin.
So a one size fits all doesn't fit from that perspective, nor from a financial perspective.
You know, we have a lot of floodplain here.
We can't develop on floodplain the same way you can outside of the floodplain.
So that limits our net new construction, which is where we can raise new tax revenues.
So contacting our elected officials at the state level, expressing concern about levy limits.
and the consequences that are associated with them, but also as Mayor Tepli mentioned before, being involved.
coming to those committee meetings, coming to council meetings.
Every year we have a budget hearing and adoption.
It's November or late November, early December.
And we don't really have an audience there.
And that's really unfortunate.
I say every year at that meeting, this is the most important policy you'll adopt all year because it is.
It sets the stage for next year.
It determines what we can and can't do.
It's a huge thing that we want
folks to be informed and involved in and express what they wanna see because as we talked about earlier, not everything is mandated.
So understanding what the community wants will really guide and direct where things are cut or reduced or shifted.
Having that input is invaluable.
Your police, city police, certainly that's another thing that we call, we expect we're going to get an answer or talk to somebody and that is mandatory, but it's hard to keep them staffed as well,
isn't it?
Yeah, and it's a little nuanced even with that.
So we are required to provide for public safety police, but how will we do it?
that's a local decision.
And so it doesn't have to necessarily look like it does today, but I think we have an excellent police department, great leadership there, great officers there, they're a great team.
But it is challenging because the police, right there, they are providing that service and that's labor intensive and so wages, benefits, those rise every year.
Uh, so that makes it difficult to maintain staffing levels the way that we, that we have.
And I don't think it's anybody's desire to see a change to that, but, um, it's the reality that we're in that we have to look at everything.
There is net new construction though, as you talked about, uh, we've seen that this year.
Yeah.
So, um, hopefully, you know, we will have a positive impact from that, uh, and we won't feel it right away.
because of the way that assessments work.
So what is new as of January 1st every year, that's what will be counted for the following tax season.
So if a project is halfway finished, it's only half.
that's accounted for on January 1st.
So sometimes there's a one to two year lag between when we see new construction actually hit the tax roll.
So it's very positive.
We want to see more of that.
I think though, for perspective, it might be helpful to continue status quo as we are.
We would need roughly, roughly $40 million of new construction every year in order just to stick with status quo.
And that's a really large number that I don't think that it's realistic to envision us achieving every year.
But that's, again, that's part of the structural issue with how the budget process and tax levying works.
Wow.
I had no idea.
That is an astronomical amount, actually.
It is.
And we just, as I mentioned before, floodplain.
We don't have flat land everywhere that's out of the floodplain.
So it's not like we have endless land resources where we could do that.
So we have, like I said, with Western Wisconsin, with the topography the way it is, it's a challenge that all of us along the border here we feel.
Well, we're all on it together.
We love where we live, you know, and we're hoping that things, uh, maybe can get better with some legislation and things like that down the road, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Good to have you in here today.
Thanks
for your expertise.
Ashley Oliphant, original center city administrator, Karen, uh, some other things, some other topics, including, uh, an update.
Scott Galt in fact talked about, uh, there's a open house coming up on Wednesday night.
Wednesday night, um, October 7th.
Um, it would be, um,
the utilities
what they call a customer appreciation day.
So it's an opportunity to learn and to see, learn from utilities, see demonstrations.
They will also have booths set up for, you know, from like the library and Park and Rec and the city is also going to have a booth there.
So I will be there.
And I think a few of our city staff will also join me.
I haven't asked yet, so we'll have to make sure.
You are now on the radio.
There you go.
So yes, you're looking forward to that.
There's also your opportunity to have a free meal.
So come out and like say, ask questions, get, you know, once again, opportunity to be involved for the, for the public.
What about any news on the 765 kilovolt lines?
765 line.
Yes, I was invited along with members of the county and the no 65 line group.
Derek Van Orden came to town and so we had a small meeting.
He is pretty fired up about this.
He certainly does not want to see this part of the state of Wisconsin, you know, have the infrastructure that they're talking about, you know, with 200, 250 foot.
you know, width of lanes that they will need for 200 foot towers and that type of thing.
So he is going to see what he can do on the federal level.
Once again, this is a state issue, but every now and then some, you know, federal law can help.
So he made a lot of notes and contacted quite a few people while we were there.
So we'll see what happens there.
You know, once again, this is kind of a hurry up and wait type thing.
kind of felt that people were not notified, and there was kind of like a catch-up period, right, to try and figure out what is going on and when.
So, you know, the timeframe that we're hearing is that the company will make their application sometime February of 2027.
And then after that, the PSC, Public Service Commission, will have that from
anywhere from 12 to 18 months.
So while it is going to be very important to stay plugged in and all of that, it's also very important to make sure the facts get out.
So it's a long time for stories to be told and that type of thing and that's not going to help anyone.
So if I can just say that before you post things online and that type of thing, make sure that it's a fact and stay engaged.
Yeah, good point.
That's for sure.
But I think some of it was with, you know, the vagueness of the whole thing.
I think that's where a lot of the story started.
Correct.
Correct.
I mean, I even remember one where somebody said that there was a data center, I believe that the PSC declined or maybe it was lines.
I don't recall at the moment.
And people are saying because of the public input that the PSE stopped that.
And so I went and Googled a few more depth of that and really found out it was because the company had made some 480 changes to their application.
That's why it was denied.
So we have to make sure that we're stating.
seeing facts
Ashley touched on a little bit any update on EMS or anything else you want to say
sure I serve as the city representative to a group that is meeting there's 12 municipalities and we last met on September 28th and so the conversation Daniel Tim he's from the Henrietta Township he provided a really
eye-opening presentation on what this would take for either a district or the city or that would comprise these 12 municipalities that would be served by the EMS, really what that would take, the skills that you would need, everything from finance to servicing the vehicles.
You know, does anyone in this group have these skills?
And it was no, no, no, no, no, I'll cross the board.
Then he provided the figures and that was really eye-opening.
So he took the last three years of the EMS numbers from the county and projected those forward on what it would take financially to operate this.
unanimously, it was said, you know, we don't have the skills and we do not have the finances to to make this happen.
So the decision then was to go out for an RFP.
So that's where it stands right now.
So this this committee is is going to go out for an RFP to see what what other third party folks could provide that service.
And, you know, talk about economy of scales, everything from, you know, farming to
Everything seemed like it's just it's just almost impossible to run a standalone service that once again requires a lot of labor.
It's 24 7365 With people that absolutely, you know
I have skills and everything that they should, of course, be paid for.
In the prior years, that was pretty much a volunteer staff.
And I was amazed when I first came to this community.
The fire department and EMS were based on volunteers that was people risk life in the middle of dinner, have to go for a call, all the things.
But it's a different.
It's a different model today.
And it's just, it can't, it's hard.
It's really hard.
It's another one of those very difficult decisions.
I'm sure everybody that serves on Richland EMS, good, well-trained people.
And like I said, we'll, we'll just have to see where this goes, but we'll, affordability is just not there.
And equipment is just, you know, that's kind of how to say to the price of stuff.
Yes.
Everything, as Ashley mentioned, you know, is, you know,
inflation has, uh, has kind of taken over, uh, unfortunately, and, you know, just made this next to impossible to do.
Indeed.
Well, thanks for coming in, Mayor Karen.
We appreciate you very much.
Yeah.
Good to see you again.
And Ashley, always good to see you.
Nice job today.
So we'll, we'll let you get back to your untypical day in the office, right?
I appreciate
that.
City Administrator Ashley Oliphant and Mayor Karen Tepley in the segment of the morning show.