Here & Now

Wisconsin Cities Weather 2020

Frederica Freyberg:

How to keep the potholes filled, the parks clean and the streets safe under tough budget conditions has cities across Wisconsin cutting spending and dipping into savings to keep the lights on. Such is the case in the city of Bayfield, along the shores of Lake Superior, where the worst case under discussion has been dissolving the city. But it’s not just the pandemic that added to costs and took away from revenue. Mayor Gordon Ringberg joins us from Bayfield to tell us what’s happening there and, mayor, thanks a lot for being here.

Gordon Ringberg:

Thank you, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what does your 2021 budget look like and where are those pain points in terms of spending cuts and depletion of your savings?

Gordon Ringberg:

We did get a 2021 budget balanced this year although it’s about 10% less than last year and we’re dipping into savings. We’re dipping — about $200,000 of our budget is coming out of savings which we would have preferred to use for new infrastructure and projects like that. Our biggest concern is employees. That’s probably our largest expense in any part of our budget, is employee salaries, employee benefits. We don’t have that many employees. We’ve got about 14 employees in the city and they all work very hard and we want to keep them around. So that was our biggest concern when we put this budget together, how do we keep them on, our staff.

Frederica Freyberg:

Of course. As we just mentioned, too, the pandemic didn’t help. How has it affected your city?

Gordon Ringberg:

It was very interesting. We weren’t sure what to expect like everyone in the beginning. We weren’t sure if we were going to have tourists coming in all summer long or not. Matter of fact, we were very busy. There were tourists in town every day all summer long. It surprised me. Some of our businesses were very busy. The boat charters, the boat tour operators, those guys were every day all summer long and they maybe had their best summer yet. But our bars, and our restaurants and our lodging, they’re down. Some of our bars didn’t open at all because they were afraid they were going to pass the pandemic along. It varies who you talk to. We’re still waiting on the final numbers as far as room tax and some of the other taxes that we get. But I think we’re down from last year, but not as much as we were expecting.

Frederica Freyberg:

So a mixed bag. Now, the governor just spoke to the need on the part of not just the state, but for local governments to see direct federal aid in any stimulus package out of Washington. Is that something that you’d like to be able to count on?

Gordon Ringberg:

It would be. You know, again, our COVID-19 direct costs were very small. We got about $7,000 from the CARES Act, through the governor, that we used for our EMTs and our police officers and our fire department and general cleaning supplies. Really, though, I need more help from the governor on long-term financing for the city. You know, we’ve had a reduction in shared revenue over the years, reduction in — actually limitations on how we can increase our levies to pay for the things that we need. And our levy has not kept up with inflation.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so the revenue that you have coming in, either from property taxes or shared revenue, is not keeping pace with your costs. And this is not unique to your city. This is across the state, I trust.

Gordon Ringberg:

Just about every mayor that I talk to is going through the same problems, from us being the smallest city in the state to Milwaukee being the largest city in the state. We’re all trying to figure out how we’re going to get into the future and make it work.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet these have been longstanding kind of issues, this imbalance as described between incoming revenue and rising costs. What makes you believe that the state will come forward at this point and fix this?

Gordon Ringberg:

I’m not really sure. This is something that we and other cities have been asking the people in Madison to help us with for a long time. There seems to be a — you know, just a really hard point on raising taxes, which I understand we don’t want to put any burden on our taxpayers that we don’t need to. But we have to be realistic. Like any family, we have expenses that go up and we have to find ways to increase revenue. The state has relied on property tax to fund cities and villages for a long time and that just doesn’t seem to be realistic anymore. We have to look for more creative ways to bring money into the cities and our municipalities.

Frederica Freyberg:

We just have about 30 seconds left, but I just want to allow you to be able respond to the worst case scenario that had been kind of floating out there as discussion of dissolving the city. That’s not particularly realistic. Am I right?

Gordon Ringberg:

No. That’s something that popped up in a brainstorming session. If it’s on the table, it’s bottom of the list. I would hate for that to happen. But if we can’t figure something out in the next few years, it might be our last resort.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wow. We don’t want to hear about that. But good luck to you and your city. Mayor Gordon Ringberg, thank you.

Gordon Ringberg:

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on your show.