What’s in and what’s out?
Board approves 20 amendments of $1.1B budget after lengthy and heated debate
The Martha T. Berry nursing home, food pantries in the county, the Macomb County Prosecutor’s
Office and a drain-cleaning fund benefitted the most from 20 amendments to the county budget that the county Board of Commissioners amended Monday.
To accomplish the budget— neutral moves, the board sliced a capital spending budget by over $1 million and nixed employee positions in Animal Control, Macomb Community Action
University Cooperative Extension and reduced contract services in Information Technology, at a meeting of the Finance, Audit and Budget Committee of the board in the county Administration Building in Mount Clemens.
The amendments to the county’s $1.1 billion 2023 budget that was recommended by County Executive Mark Hackel came at a marathon, four-hour meeting that featured discussion ranging from a heated disagreement over partisan politics and a long, tedious legal discussion.
The amendments, which followed two months of budget hearings, are expected to receive final approval Wednesday at a full board meeting when some further minor changes could occur.
The no-change to the budget’s bottom line will allow the county to maintain its $100 million projected budget surplus for next year.
The biggest amendment was the board doubling the amount of general-fund support, from $1 million that was recommended by Hackel, to $2 million for capital improvements at the Martha T. Berry Medical Center in Mount Clemens, where nearly 200 lowincome seniors are cared for by more than 300 employees. Virtually all of the $2 million will go toward a new heating and cooling system for the facility.
MTB Executive Director Kevin Evans told county Finance Committee Chairman Joseph Sabatini after the meeting he is “grateful” for the support.
“It was a unanimous vote,” Evans told The Macomb Daily afterward. “I couldn’t be happier that they supported our most frail and vulnerable seniors.”
The new HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) system also will provide cleaner air for residents and employees and “reduce the risk of spread” of disease, Evans noted. Other capital upgrades are needed, as well, he has said.
The 72-year-old facility operates on a unique jointoperating agreement with the county and has perennially struggled with finanacial issues. This year, it is completing its final annual payments to the county that this year is $900,000. Its budget this year is $32.1 million budget.
The heightened allocation for MTB did not come as a surprise as commissioners discussed helping the facility at an October meeting.
The board, in a 13-0 unanimous vote, also agreed to a $300,000 allocation for the Macomb Food Program to purchase food to offset a $133,000 drop next year in federal funding and try to meet increasing demand.
The program, which supplies food to over 70 pantries in the county, did not purchase 1,500 turkeys for Thanksgiving as in past years so it can provide food to pantries.
“It was a hard decision to not buy 1,500 turkeys this year,” said Ernest Cawvey, director of Macomb Community Action, under which the food program and bank operate. “We knew we could put more food on the table if we did not buy the turkeys.”
Demand has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic began, with the number of individuals going to pantries increasing from 220,718 in 2020 to 255,570 this year and number of families assisted going from 87,537 to 90,647 from 2020 to 2022, according to a flier recently distributed by Macomb Food Program Robert Combs.
“(Prices on) everything has gone up, and we need to fund this,” said Commissioner Mai Xiong of Warren, who proposed amendment.
The board in an 11-2 vote also rejected Cawvey’s “urgent need” to add an administrative coordinator for $77,000 so he could have one coordinator to oversee and monitor both its weatherization and communitydevelopment programs, instead of the exiting situation of one administrator assigned to both programs. Commissioners told Cawvery they would like him to try to get a grant for the position. Voting against the denial were commissioners Harold Haugh of Roseville and Michelle Nard of Warren.
The board also voted 10-3 to add $450,000 to the “county at large drain fund” to provide a base for county Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller to raise 50% matching funds from local communities to clean drains, in proposals by Commissioner Barbara Zinner of Harrison Township.
An additional move initially sought by Zinner to move the $100,000 in the “Clinton River cleanup fund” to the same drain fund was withdrawn after several commissioners agreed the river funds should be kept to clean the river and not co-mingled with drain dollars.
To partially offset the increses, the board in a 9-4 vote decreased the “capital outlay” fund by over $1 million, from $10.7 million to about $9.6 million, in a motion by Xiong.
“If we have to take from capital outlay, this project is important,” Xiong said in reference to the Martha T. Berry HVAC project.
Voting against it were Haugh and commissioners Veronica Klinefelt of Eastpointe, Joseph Romano of Sterling Heights and Antoinette Wallace of Mount Clemens.
Klinefelt and Haugh noted that the board is not required to approve a budget that is balanced in accordance with the budget proposal submitted by Hackel. A court decision earlier this year gave the board the ability to increase the budget, Haugh noted.
The capital outlay fund provides dollars for various capital projects.
Other reductions include $100,000 in contract services in Information Technology and $84,000 position in Animal Control that Commissioner Sabatini, who proposed the cut, said could be added next year after a new Animal Control facility is built this year.
Minutes before, Chief Animal Control Officer Jeff Randazzo pleaded for the position, noting he and his staff are overwhelmed with work, and he has been performing grant-writing duties but needs someone to pursue them full time. He said the position had been in existence prior to the COVID-19 pandemic but was unfunded for two years due to the pandemic.
“I’m not asking it to be recreated; I’m asking for it to be re-funded,” he said.
IT Deputy Director Sandy Wilson was unsuccessful in lobbying to avoid a $100,000 cut in contract services proposed by Zinner but was successful in thwarting the board from approving Zinner’s proposal to reduce its repairs-and-maintenance fund by $400,000.
Convincing the board to reject $500,000 in cuts proposed by Zinner was Facilities and Operations Director Lynn Arnott-Bryks. Zinner wanted to cut $250,000 each in supplies and services and repairs and maintenance. But Arnott-Bryks noted an increase in supplies-and-services would go toward upgrades to the concrete area between the county courthouse and Old County Building “where raised planter beds have deteriorated” as well as maintenance of “precasts” at the courthouse due to a flaw in the original construction. A big chunk of repairs and maintenance will go to a new roof at the Verkuilen Building at a cost of between $740,000 and $824,000, Arnott-Bryks said.
“We believe it is extremely important to maintain the assets of the county,” she said.
Multiple commissioners said they put a great deal of trust in Arnott-Byrks, who has been with the county for 50 years.
The motion for the cut in supplies and services in “F&O” did not draw a support from any of the other 12 commissioners and the proposed cut in repairs and maintenance failed 10-3.
Heated discussion arose early in the meeting prior the votes on the amendments when Klinefelt accused Republican commissioners of secretly gathering in a conference room prior to the meeting after she arrived early. Republicans hold an 8-5 majority on the board.
“We (Democrats) all were not invited to that meeting,” said Klinefelt, who will leave the board Jan. 1 after being elected earlier this month to the state Senate. “We started with his group of commissioners and this chair (board chairman Don Brown), (as) one team, one mission. One team, one mission. It’s been said to me 100 times, but we’re not all invited to the team meetings.
“This is not how we used to do things. … I don’t think this is the way we should do business. … I don’t think our role is to decide which department head knows what they need and don’t need. It certainly isn’t heading into the new year with a great relationship not only between the county exec but the departments that we’re gutting.”
She accused GOP members of trying to “gut” certain departments that are under the authority of Democrat Hackel in favor of budget increases to some departments under Republican control, such as county Prosecutor Peter Lucido and Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller, who oversees drains.
But Republican commissioners Jeff Farrington of Utica, Romano and Brown vehemently denied Klinefelt’s accusation.
Farrington called Klinefelt’s “inflammatory,” taking exception to her insinuation the board violated the state Open Meetings Act.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Farrington said.
He said several commissioners arrived one hour early.
“There were a couple of commissioners meeting,” he said. “Anyone could’ve walked into the room. It was a small room. Because we ran out of space, we moved to the conference room. Again, the door was open. People just walked in. No one was invited. There was no invitation. Anyone on either side of the aisle could’ve came into that meeting. We reached the number of six. At that point, so we didn’t effect the Open Meetings Act, we closed the door to make sure no one else joined us. So we did do everything properly.”
Brown called Klinefelt’s remarks “unfair” and noted after the meeting that 18 of the 23 proposed amendments received votes from both Democrats and Republicans.
“It was a bipartisan mix all the way through,” he said.
Klinefelt did not publicly respond to their comments.
The most partisan vote was the denial of an additional $65,500 position in the MSU Cooperative Extension. Proposed by Republican Commissioner Phil Kraft of Chesterfield Township, the cut passed 7-6 vote, with all seven votes from Republicans. Brown was the only GOP member to vote against it.
Kraft, a veteran commissioner, said a few years ago he wanted to eliminate the department but said he “has seen value of the program over the years.” Still, he said he could not support increasing its budget as recommended by Hackel.
In the prosecutor’s budget, Lucido on Monday was granted an additional $119,000 for part-time positions of one grant writer, and three posts to increase efforts to collect overdue child support — an investigator and two support staffers.
In Hackel’s recommended budget to the board, Lucido was awarded one additional position. After that was proposed, Lucido sought another 7-½ positions: two full-time assistant prosecutors, three part-time assistant prosecutors and three full-time “administrative coordinators” to handle the increasing amount of digital evidence, seek more payments from child-support delinquents and provide a backup prosecutors in more circuit courtrooms. The staff would increase from 96.5 to 104 positions.
While the board rejected most of that request, it agreed to approve a resolution and appropriations-ordinance amendment to allow Lucido to use roughly $500,000 that was unspent in this year’s budget to hire staff next year. The money is available due to delays in hiring other staff that were approved last year. The agreement came after nearly an hour of discussion with the board’s attorney, Peter Webster, centered around an obscure 1925 state law that applies only to prosecutor budgets.
Staffing in Lucido’s department has been the source of controversy since he took office in 2021.
Lucido last year around this time gained two fulltime and two-part time positions from the board on top of 10 other full-time positions granted by Hackel. But Hackel at the start of 2022 refused to fill the two full-time and two part-time posts. However, Lucido earlier this year gained the right to the hirings in a lawsuit ruling.
Another benefactor of the amendments was Turning Point, the nonprofit organization that provides a shelter and other services for domestic abuse survivors. Turning Point’s receipt of $30,000 for services it provides to the county was increased to $50,000 for next year.