The county plans to cut 15 jobs to balance its 2026 budget

Here is how that breaks down

Marathon County Administrator Lance Leonhard told members of the Human Resources, Finance and Property Committee Tuesday, “this is a status quo budget.”

That was an interesting way to put it. Leonhard likely meant that there wouldn’t be much added in the 2026 budget.

But plenty is being subtracted - namely, 15 county positions.

To be clear, no one is losing their jobs. The cuts will come from empty positions.

And with it becoming increasingly difficult for municipalities to find workers (hence the empty positions), it makes sense.

As we learned in yesterday’s post about Wausau’s budget, they’re doing the same — though most of the cuts came from leaving positions open rather than eliminating them. Sometimes those positions would just be left open part of the year. (Wausau did this last year as part of a plan to meet spending reductions Mayor Doug Diny asked for. They planned on delaying the hiring of a second assistant city attorney - but instead the city went without both for the entire year.)

Like Wausau, nearly every department had to make cuts as the net new construction of 1.61% - the lowest of the last three years - led to only $1 million in new levy. That didn’t cover the increase of $1.2 million in the Sheriff’s Office (and that’s AFTER they eliminated six positions).

Here is where the reductions came from (directly from Leonhard’s budget message), the tax rate taxpayers can expect to pay and a historical look at rates, how much net new construction the county saw in 2025 and a potential battle over how to pay for a major county project.