Last updated: August 2026
Price County’s 2027 Budget Faces a $500K–$1M Gap. The Board’s Fix Comes With a Catch.
By Price County Fun Editorial Team | Last updated: August 28, 2026
TLDR: Price County faces a projected $500,000–$1 million gap in its 2027 budget. The county administrator is proposing to shift ~$400,000 of insurance costs into the debt levy and borrow up to $500,000 a year for highway equipment. But the debt-levy shift needs a three-quarters board vote every single year, and if a future board refuses, mandated services could drop from ~1-week case handling to the state’s 90-day maximum. The key decisions come up at the Executive Committee meeting Sept. 15.
Price County is staring down a projected $500,000 to $1 million gap in its 2027 budget, and the fix the county administrator is proposing would borrow for everyday expenses like insurance, a move that requires a three-quarters board vote every single year.
County Administrator Nick Drier laid out the numbers at the Aug. 18 County Board meeting. The county isn’t overspending, he stressed. It’s trapped by Wisconsin’s 0% levy cap, which has held county property tax levies flat for more than 15 years while the cost of state-mandated services keeps climbing. (For a deeper look at how the county’s budget process works, see our explainer on how the Price County budget gets made.)
“We’re about a half a million to a million dollars over budget,” Drier told the board.
The gap is structural, not a spending spree. The state allows counties to raise their levy only by “Net New Construction,” new buildings and improvements added to the tax rolls. In Price County that averages under 1% a year, which doesn’t keep pace with inflation, let alone the rising cost of mandated programs.
One detail worth understanding: even as the levy rises, the actual mill rate is falling, because equalized property values have gone up. County officials say that distinction matters when talking to constituents: they’re managing a revenue gap, not a spending problem.
The proposed fix: borrow for insurance
To protect the General Fund, Drier is proposing to shift roughly $400,000 in liability and property insurance costs into the debt levy. Borrowing sits outside the levy limit, so it frees up operational room to fund mandated services.
“We can take our insurances for liability — it’s four hundred some thousand dollars — we put it on as a debt, we can borrow for that, and then it opens up four hundred thousand dollars of operational levy,” Drier said.
The catch is the vote. The debt levy has to be approved by a three-quarters majority of the board every single year.
“The biggest problem with debt levy is you as a board have to approve it every year with a three-force vote,” Drier said. “One year your board might go, sure, this is a great idea, let’s move it. And then two years later I bring that back and they go, nope, we’re not borrowing that half a million dollars for your insurances — figure it out.”
If a future board refuses, the county would have to cut or restructure programs to absorb the cost. For mandated services, that means dropping to the state’s minimum service level. Drier used child support as the example: the county used to handle a case in less than a week; the state allows up to 90 days.
“We used to have a service level that was less than a week,” he said. “You came in, you got talked to, you were taken care of within four to eight hours, if not sooner.”
Highway equipment: a $500K-a-year borrowing plan
The other big proposal is a five year plan for “yellow equipment,” the loaders, graders, and bulldozers the highway department uses for construction.
Historically, the county bought heavy equipment when a mild winter left surplus in the maintenance budget. That’s a gamble on the weather. The highway committee is now proposing a steadier approach: borrow up to $500,000 a year on a rotating basis to keep the fleet current.
“They’re requesting half a million dollars to be rotating through yellow equipment, and they have a five-year plan for that,” Drier said. “That’s something that still needs to be vetted, needs to be determined if it’s something that we want to either increase our debt for or stop doing other projects.”
The county is also trying to hold a 10-year rotation on its large trucks. A single salt truck now runs about $380,000. The equipment fund covers one truck a year; the county has been borrowing for a second to keep the rotation on track.
“We’ve been, for the last couple years, doing two trucks — it gets us on a rotation of about 10 years for those large trucks, which get beat up,” Drier said.
Self-insured health plan is a bright spot
One area where the county is in better shape than many of its neighbors: health insurance. Price County is self insured, which Drier said shields it from the 14% to 17% premium spikes hitting other Wisconsin municipalities.
“We went self-funded three years ago, two and a half years ago, and so it’s just a slow, slow and steady — nobody make any rash changes or decisions based on where we’re at,” he said.
The county’s health fund balance is still below the $500,000–$1 million target, but programs like Health 360 and the Taylor Health Family Clinic are helping employees shop around for major procedures and keeping costs down.
Sales tax is up 5.2% year to date, though county officials expect that to plateau as wage growth stays modest and higher mortgages squeeze discretionary spending.
What’s next
The budget is still being finalized; the county hasn’t handed out a line-by-line version yet. The key decisions on the debt levy and the highway equipment plan are expected to come up at the Executive Committee meeting Sept. 15, with the full budget to be finalized by November. The radio system study approved at the same meeting is part of a separate, longer-running effort to replace the county’s aging emergency communications network, which we’ve covered in depth here.
For residents, the takeaway is simple: the county is asking the board to borrow for insurance and equipment to keep mandated services intact, and that decision comes with a recurring three-quarters vote that could be reversed in any future year.
For more Price County government coverage, visit pricecounty.fun.
See also: our guide to free camping in Wisconsin
See also: our guide to Price County public records
See also: our Price County Board 2026 roster and meeting tracker