·         We finalized the 2006 – 2007 budgets a month ahead of time.  We have balanced with a total budget of just over $54,000,000.  There were a couple of departments that were showing significant shortages in their individual budgets.  Central Dispatch had a budget deficit of approximately $53,000 and the Building Inspector’s office had a shortage of about $63,000.  Central Dispatch is going to balance their budget by readjusting central services costs and the Building Inspector will have to lay off one of his 4 full time secretaries.  Permit requests are down about 10% this past year, while there has not been a reduction staffing levels.  The Building Inspector continues to ask the Board to raise fees for inspections 16% across the board to make up the difference, but there is not support for this.

·         At our Health Department meeting we discussed the high numbers of tics this year in Newaygo County.  None of them have been carriers of Lime disease, but that is always a concern.  If you find a tic on you, remove it without killing it and send it to the Health Department and they can test it for you.

·         We had a Michigan Association of Counties meeting towards the end of August.  Some of the areas of education centered on ending homelessness and some of the bad ballot proposals coming forward in November.  The main proposal coming forward that would be very bad for townships, cities, hospitals, police protection, fire protection and our seniors is proposal 5, otherwise known as the K-16 proposal.  I do believe that funding education is important, but this proposal goes too far.  The basic intent of this proposal is to move the pension plans of all teachers from their district and make them a liability of the state’s general fund.  The $500,000,000 cost of doing this will have to come out of revenue sharing, Medicare dollars and from other state funded budgets.  Not one word is mentioned about children, money going to the classroom, or increased standards for our schools.

·         The County has hired a new auditing firm to perform our audits.  Rehmann Robson from Saginaw has been given a 3 year contract.  It has been suggested that we change auditors every two or three years, just to get a new perspective on our accounting.

·         The County Treasurer is in the process of allowing the payment of delinquent taxes on line.  This should be available in the next couple of weeks.

·         Our Area Agency on Aging has been selected as one of four pilot programs around the state to begin a Single Point of Entry or SPE for admission to nursing homes.  The concept would require anyone seeking nursing home placement to contact one single office and work with a case worker to determine if nursing home placement is appropriate.  The intent of this program is to keep more people in their homes, instead of automatically placing the patient in nursing home care.  In other states that have adopted a SPE program, nursing home placements have dropped almost 18%, thus saving Medicare and Medicaid millions of dollars and allowing more people to stay in there homes.