For more than two years, Leelanau County has kept its finance department afloat by paying weekly stipends to County Clerk Michelle Crocker and Chief Deputy Clerk Jennifer Zywicki to provide ongoing support for the fledgling office. Now those stipends are sunsetting, with a February 21 kill date and no support from the county’s Board of Commissioners to extend them. At least one county board member worries that eliminating the stipends will destabilize a department that has only recently found its footing after years of strife.

All the way back in October 2022, Crocker made a proposal to the Board of Commissioners that the county finance director should temporarily report to and be under the direct supervision of her office, and that she and her chief deputy clerk be paid weekly stipends of $250 for their services. The idea was for the clerk’s office to provide training and support to the struggling finance department, which had recently lost its third finance director in 10 months. Financial oversight, along with human resources responsibilities, had been separated from the clerk’s office a year previous, after District 1 commissioner Rick Robbins proposed the creation of new county departments to house those functions.

Since then, the finance department and the county clerk’s office have remained closely linked, with former Deputy Clerk Cathy Hartesvelt serving as finance director and Crocker and Zywicki continuing to receive stipends for support. The $250-per-week stipends – $25 an hour for 10 hours of work – were renewed in June 2023, and then again as part of the 2024 budget, though the plan was always to discontinue them when a more “permanent structure” was in place.

County commissioners discussed ending the stipends in November, with Interim County Administrator Richard Lewis advising the board that the mission of establishing a stable and functional finance department had been accomplished. At that meeting, though, the board decided instead to implement a sunset process for the stipends, extending them through February 21 but at rates that would gradually scale down to nothing. The stipends first reduced to $187.50 per week, then to their current point of $125 per week, and soon (on January 24) to just $62.50. Those scaled-down extensions came in part because of a recommendation from Lewis that commissioners at least keep the stipends in place through the end of the year, so that Crocker and Zywicki could assist Hartesvelt and her team with things like end-of-the-year accounting and union negotiations.

“We cannot continue to say we have unlimited stipends to pay,” said then board chair Ty Wessel at the November meeting. “I respect the administrator for saying we have to do something, but here’s what we can do to illustrate a little bit of compromise.”

The stipends have amounted to more than $50,000 over the past two years, and some commissioners have argued that continuing to pay them was setting a damaging precedent at the county government center.

“The idea that some receive a stipend for helping out someone in another department, that has really lowered morale in this county,” argued Kama Ross, then the county’s District 5 representative. “We need to say to the county employees that this is ending, and I’m very firm on that.”

Last year’s board ultimately approved the sunsetting of the stipends 4-2.

The topic was back on the agenda at an executive board session Tuesday, where the new Board of Commissioners opted against considering further stipend extensions, despite pleas from District 6 representative Gwenne Allgaier to tread carefully.

“I would hope that we would have the wisdom, as we discuss any changes or any actions, that we ensure that our finance department is solid,” Allgaier said at Tuesday’s meeting. “They feel comfortable, they have people who they have trained and feel are experienced enough, so that the transition can be looked at as complete.”

“This has been a long process; it’s been a miserable process,” Allgaier added, referring to the entire three-year saga of the finance department. “I want to see that they are solid, and I don’t want to do anything without their recommendation and assurance that they’re ready.”

Allgaier ultimately moved that the stipends continue at their current level of $125 per week for both Crocker and Zywicki, “until the finance department states that they are ready for them to be removed.” That motion received no support and died without a vote.

Without another motion to extend or reconsider the stipends, Lewis said the payments would continue on their previously established scale-down schedule and be halted for good on February 21. That led to a disagreement between Lewis and Allgaier, who argued that the motion approved by the prior board had included a stipulation that the payments wouldn’t be stopped without sign-off from the finance department. Lewis, meanwhile, held that the previous board’s motion called for the stipends to scale down to nothing, barring a change of course by the new board.

Wessell, the only remaining member of last year’s board other than Allgaier, sided with Lewis.

“As one member of last year’s board, it’s my understanding that this was approved and passed, and this is the plan, and come February 21, we’re done [with stipends].”

The meeting moved on after that, but not without a final warning from Allgaier.

“I am deeply concerned that we are making high-handed judgments up here, and repeating what we did [three years ago],” she said, a reference to how the finance and HR departments were split off from the county clerk’s office with virtually no board discussion. 

Robbins, who is back in the District 1 commissioner seat this year after being voted out in 2022, told The Ticker he understands Allgaier’s reservations and will be paying close attention to the finance department.

“Since I’m the person who started this whole thing, I told Cathy that if the finance department needs any support, she can come to me and I’ll back them,” Robbins said.