Supervisor Robin Schmidt Report to the Monona Council

As just posted, our Dane County Supervisor Robin Schmidt provided a very informative report on a number of items at the beginning of the Monona city council meeting on January 3, 2011. You can watch the meeting here or in the program archive.

Here is a summary from my notes.

The county property tax levy rose 2.9% for 2011. The county maintained funding levels for various human services budgets, including for adults with disabilities, for which a reduction had been proposed. Through use of electronic monitoring and diversion programs the county is holding fewer prisoners in its jail and is able to make money by renting the space to the state or other counties (this is a 180 degree reversal from just a few years ago). The county adopted an $18 milion radio interoperability plan in lieu of the $30 million plan that had found little favor among most municipalities.

The county opened a new Badger Prairie Health Care Center (BPHCC), which is "a licensed skilled care Nursing Home operated by the Dane County Department of Human Services." Their "mission is to provide skilled nursing care and person-directed treatment to Dane County residents with behavioral, emotional, or psychiatric disorders that keep them from living with their own families, in community settings, or in other traditional nursing homes." As I understand it, their patients are folks with nowhere else to go.

Lakes. Robin has sponsored an ordinancee to provide a consistent framework for implementing "Slow, No wake" rules on Lake Monona. She and several other supervisors established a Lake Levels blog to "better communicate with our constituents the strategies in place by the County on a bi-weekly basis." She expressed some frustration over the management of the lakes and voiced the need to focus on preventing property damage (especially on Belle Isle). She also acknowledged that increased precipitation is not something that can be legislated. 

http://lake-levels.blogspot.com/

More info at: http://countyofdane.com/lwrd/landconservation/lakelevelpg.aspx

The county has also developed two documents: Dane County Lake Level Management Guide for the Yahara Chain of Lakes (1.86 MB PDF)


Lake Level Management on the Yahara Chain of Lakes (7.3 MB PDF)