St. Croix County Board approves spending $185,000 from general fund for UW-Extension in 2025 budget
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
HUDSON — UW-Extension will continue to be funded in St. Croix County in 2025 for at least one more year.
The St. Croix County Board approved spending $185,000 from the unassigned general fund for UW-Extension at the November 6 budget meeting on a vote of 17 “yes” to one “no.”
County board supervisor Bob Swanepoel was absent from the meeting.
The revenue and expense budget for 2025 is $125,365,036.
The county board approved a property tax levy of $46,330,418 which includes $34,105,509 for general county obligations; $10,286,772 for debt service; $53,792 for bridge aid and $1,869,030 for library aid.
The mil rate on the 2025 budget is $2.69 per $1,000 of property value, said Ken Witt, county administrator.
This is the 12th year that the mil rate has declined, he said, noting that the property tax levy amounts to $391.38 per person in St. Croix County.
Budget hearing
During the public hearing for the 2025 budget, about 20 county residents spoke.
Many of the residents spoke in favor of supporting UW-Extension, and many of the residents spoke in favor of supporting St. Croix County’s 4-H program, while some of the residents spoke in favor of supporting both UW-Extension and 4-H.
St. Croix County’s 4-H program has about 600 members and 200 volunteers.
Linda Garrity, who said she had worked as an employee of St. Croix County for 23 years, pointed out that the county would be “throwing away” the 50 percent of the county’s budget for UW-Extension that is provided by the state of Wisconsin.
Jeff Lueck, who farms and is self-employed as a crop advisor (Kinni Ag Service, LLC), said that Ryan Sterry, a UW-Extension agent, had been invaluable after a hail storm had affected 100 percent of the corn fields in a certain area.
Sterry had helped farmers decide whether to use the hail-damaged corn for silage, whether to disk it down, or whether to let it keep growing to produce whatever crop it might be capable of producing.
UW-Extension agents provide workshops for farmers on subjects such as disease and pest control, and they provide local, unbiased science-based research and do not base their advice on products they are trying to sell, Lueck said.
Families
Mary Lestrude, who worked in St. Croix County for 41 years, much of that as a UW-Extension family living educator, noted that UW-Extension brought research into the county that benefitted the citizens.
In the late 1990s, young families were looking for help with parenting, and so the Family Resource Center of St. Croix County was started, she said.
The Family Resource Center has helped hundreds of family and has prevented child abuse, Lestrude said.
“It does something good for people,” she said.
Dave Kruschke, a fourth generation farmer in the Town of Stanton with a fifth generation beginning to work on the farm and who served as the president of the Farm Bureau in St. Croix County for 30 years, said UW-Extension knows how to get help for farmers and how to set up seminars to benefit farmers.
Farmers must have pesticide certification to buy farm chemicals, for example, and UW-Extension helps farmers to obtain that certification, he said.
Crocheting
Tara Brown, a 4-H leader in the Town of Troy, said she started working with 4-H about 10 years ago.
Brown said her daughter had wanted to crochet and had wanted to learn how to decorate cakes.
4-H provides a safe environment for youngsters where they can find their strengths, Brown said, noting that she has three children who also have benefitted from the 4-H junior leadership program.
During COVID, Brown’s daughter crocheted masks, and she started a crochet club on the UW-Madison campus that has crocheted hats for members of a fire department, Brown said.
4-H teaches youth lifelong skills and how to be leaders, she said.
Tara Thommes, a 4-H foods leader in Star Prairie, said that 4-H is more than a club — it is a family — and that 4-H programs help kids to learn leadership, responsibility, time management and community service.
“It’s vast the things they learn in 4-H,” Thommes said.
1 cent
Cheryl Slind, who said she had served as St. Croix County treasurer in the past, supported funding for 4-H and for UW-Extension.
St. Croix County has an equalized value of $17 billion, and if the amount of $255,000 for UW-Extension and 4-H is divided by $15 billion of assessed property value, that works out to be one cent per $1,000 of property value, Slind said.
There will be more juvenile issues without UW-Extension and without 4-H, and St. Croix County residents will end up spending far more than one cent per $1,000 of property value to deal with the juvenile issues, she said.
Mental health
Chris Libby of New Richmond noted that half of youth report anxiety and say they do not get the help they need.
4-H programs support youth positivity, which is a key component of mental health, Libby said.
In addition, agriculture is big business in St. Croix County, Libby said, with 1,992 farms covering 255,000 acres and bringing in $256 milion in income.
Amendments
The St. Croix County considered two different amendments to the budget concerning funding for UW-Extension.
After about an hour of comments during the public hearing, county board supervisors spent another hour talking about whether they wanted to fund UW-Extension for $185,000.
A certain number of the county board supervisors spoke multiple times to make the same points and opinions they had expressed previously.
Dan Hansen, county board supervisor, offered an amendment to the 2025 budget to allocate $185,000 for UW-Extension and to reduce the fund balance applied to the debt service fund by $185,000.
The St. Croix County Health Care Campus will be contributing $500,000 to the debt service fund in 2025, and the amendment would have moved $185,000 to the general fund to cover the expenses for UW-Extension.
The reduction in the money applied to the debt service fund would have increased the tax levy for debt service, with the property taxes increasing on the average home in St. Croix County by $3.48.
The amendment failed on a vote of nine “yes” to nine “no.”
Next amendment
Another amendment to the 2025 budget to use $185,000 from the general fund for UW-Extension was approved by the St. Croix County Board on a vote of 17 “yes” to one “no.”
Some of the county board supervisors who were not in favor of funding UW-Extension for the previously-proposed budget amendment said they had asked UW-Extension for reports several times over many months concerning UW-Extension’s impacts on the county but had not received the information they wanted.
Kerry Reis, county board supervisor, said that while she is new to the St. Croix County Board, it was not clear to her what the other supervisors have been asking for regarding information about UW-Extension.
The county board should fund UW-Extension for another year and then be “more clear” on what the county board is looking for, she said.
The St. Croix County Board should fund UW-Extension for another year and then communicate goals and measurable expectations for UW-Extension, said Hansen, who had introduced the first proposed amendment to the 2025 budget.
“It is a long history to flush away,” he said.
