Marathon County presents tentative 2026 budget with $3.50 mill rate; public hearing draws no speakers

Marathon County officials on Nov. 3 presented a tentative 2026 budget that county administrators say preserves services while responding to inflation and labor-market pressures.

“Marathon County continues to be a very well managed fiscal organization,” County Administrator Leonard told the Board of Supervisors as he summarized revenue and cost pressures behind the draft budget. Leonard highlighted a net new construction rate of 1.61% and equalized value growth of about 9% as positive revenue indicators, and said the county’s 2024 unemployment rate (about 2.7%) supports efforts to retain and recruit staff.

The tentative budget document read at the hearing sets a proposed mill rate of $3.50 and lists a proposed tax levy of $61,425,481; the clerk also quoted an equalized value of $17,547,049,400. Leonard said the proposed package results in a 17¢ nominal reduction in the county portion of the tax rate and estimated that for an average Marathon County home valued at about $253,000 the county share of that tax bill would change modestly (Leonard gave an illustrative county share of roughly $74 per month for the average home).

Officials described several balancing measures in the draft: department-led cost reductions, defunding the equivalent of about 15 full-time positions, tighter casual-staff budgets and a reclassification-driven wage implementation that the administration calculated as an average 5.55% increase in county wage costs from 2025 to 2026. Leonard said health-insurance inflation was estimated at about 6.5% and that no new general-fund reserve spending or new debt issuance was proposed in the draft.

The HR/Finance committee made a small number of early amendments before forwarding the budget to the full board. Committee members increased the capital expenditure program by $525,000 to include a jail chiller project and adjusted the sales-tax revenue estimate upward (Leonard described the amendment as narrowing the shortfall versus Ford Analytics projections from roughly 11.27% below to about 8.5% below). HR/Finance also advanced several budget-related items for the full board to consider next week.

Chair Robinson framed the budget process as prioritizing employee compensation, protecting capital reserves and maintaining service levels. “These are tough times when we've got a levy limit tied in the net new construction at 1.61% and a lot of inflationary pressures,” Robinson said, noting committee-level reviews focused on mandatory versus discretionary programming and fee levels.

The clerk read the summary of the tentative 2026 budget during the public hearing; no members of the public testified. The board scheduled final consideration and a vote on Nov. 11, 2025.

Numbers and clarifications: the transcript includes multiple numeric references to total-budget figures that were inconsistent in the readout; specific line items to note from the presentation include the proposed levy ($61,425,481), the mill rate ($3.50), equalized value ($17,547,049,400), an average estimated county wage-budget increase calculation of about 5.55%, and an HR/Finance capital amendment of $525,000 to fund the jail chiller project. Where the transcript presented inconsistent totals for the overall budget, the article notes that exact total-dollar figures were not consistent in the record and are listed above as reported at the hearing.

What’s next: the board will reconvene Nov. 11 to consider amendments and vote on final adoption. Staff told supervisors they are available to answer questions and provide follow-up detail before the vote.