Tama County Administration Building, 104 W State St., Toledo, Iowa. SUN COURIER FILE PHOTO

TOLEDO – Last Monday (Feb. 3) in a vote of 3-2, the Tama County Board of Supervisors terminated the county’s longtime human resources manager while also beginning the difficult work of addressing a looming nearly $1 million budget shortfall.

During the latter part of the meeting which began at 8:30 a.m., citizens paced, leaned against walls, and participated in some mild conversation in the main hall of the Administration Building while the board held a closed session. After returning to open session, District 3 Supervisor Heather Knebel (R-Traer) made a motion to end the employment and all appointments of HR Manager/Insurance Administrator Tammy Wise effective at the end of the business day. The motion passed 3-2, with Supervisors Curt Hilmer (R-Dysart) and David Turner (R-Tama) voting against.

There were two public comments on this decision from former public officials including former Tama County Supervisor Bill Faircloth of Toledo.

“All I can say is you people don’t have a clue. You just let Tammy go. She has been a big asset to this county, and just because she tries to keep you people in line, you don’t like it so you fire her. You’re about the most arrogant pieces of s*** I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Another comment came from former Tama County Auditor Laura Kopsa.

“I think you’ve done a grievance to the county. Tammy was a long, dedicated employee with 25-plus years of experience, knowledge, and she cared about the county,” Kopsa said. “I think you’ve done something very very bad, and the county will pay for it.”

The following day, Tuesday, Feb. 4, a special meeting of the supervisors was held at 5 p.m. in order to temporarily reassign Wise’s duties. During that meeting, Auditor Karen Rohrs was approved to take charge of the position’s emails. The board also decided the duties of both the human resources director and the insurance manager would be handled by PJ Greufe & Associates LLC. This is the firm that, during the Jan. 13 supervisors meeting, was approved to conduct an audit of Tama County’s HR department.

Knebel explained this decision to use PJ Greufe & Associates:

“He does a lot of counties today. It’s not like it’s something new for him. He does all the risk pool counties and other people. So, he’s very experienced with all HR issues. So, it’s not like he’s just an auditor, he can also help us out in the interim.”

Public comments were opened up after these motions were approved, with the first speaker on the issue being Berleen Wobeter – former candidate for Tama County Supervisor (2024) and current member of the Board of Adjustment – who addressed the board’s decision to end Wise’s employment.

“To hear that you terminated her (Tammy Wise) on a vote of three to two, surely if you’re terminating someone there’s some specific irrefutable reason that you all agree on. You just destroyed someone’s career, and it sounds to me like it was, I don’t know, I have no idea what it could be based on that it wasn’t a unanimous vote. I am really disappointed, and I don’t think this smells right,” Wobeter said.

Former Tama County Supervisor Kendall Jordan also spoke, asking questions and raising concerns about the Iowa Codes listed as reasons for why the supervisors went into a closed session ahead of firing Wise.

Other business

Another big topic during the Monday, Feb. 3 meeting was money. The agenda item to decrease the Secondary Roads transfer from the general fund saw much opposition from the public.

When this agenda item came up, Chairman Mark Doland provided opening remarks.

“We had a discovery about a week ago that our financial situation is such that we’re not in a great financial position. We started, this board started in the 2023, 2022, 2023 fiscal year according to the budget that was proposed and passed last year and published in the newspaper and then this is filed with the department of management,” he said. “We started out with an ending fund balance of $14,563,000. Currently, the projected balance from that $14 million that we’re projected to be at, at the end of June 30, 2025, is negative $948,000. And so, that is a spending rate of over $6 million a year, above what you had budgeted for. And so, there is some grave concern for our financial condition. We are trying not to end up with negative $948,000 this year. So, this board over the last week has been in discussions, particularly with department heads. We held a department head meeting last week to address and just ask that people if they don’t have any mandatory spending that has to be done, that they would cut back on some of that. A few ways that we can alleviate some of the ongoing pressure for the budget. We have a payroll that goes through every two weeks for almost $400,000. Our ending fund balance as of, I think it was, Jan. 17 was just over $400,000. Which is just barely enough to cover payroll that went out last Friday. So, this, this is the condition I guess, and it prompted some quick action to try to figure out what are some ways that we could spend less money right now. Just to make it through to the end of the 2025 fiscal year, June 30, so we don’t go in the hole. We don’t collect taxes again until April 1. So, this is, I guess, the overall picture.”

Doland went on to state, “We don’t have a whole lot of detail as far as like, where did all this money go?”

After some discussion about how much to decrease from the Secondary Roads transfer, the topic was tabled.

It was approved to decrease the county’s monthly contribution to the health fund by approximately $300,000. A cap was put on how much is taken out so that the health fund does not dip under $2 million. This is just a loan, and all money taken from the health fund will be paid back.

“There are other avenues to try to recoup some of this money, to put us back on a better footing at least for now to the end of the year. Some of those discussions are happening,” Doland said.

Citizen Richard Arp of Dysart spoke during the public comment time.

“I’d like to know, in the future, why we, as the people in the county, didn’t realize that the last two years we’ve been overspending by $6 million? Why has the public not been informed? To know that, we needed to have taken steps last year, not wait ’till this year when we’re in the red,” he said.

District 1 Supervisor Curt Hilmer, who represents Dysart and was a member of the previous board, responded.

“The outside auditor, she came in and talked to Laura (Kopsa) and I guess what was the meeting was we need to ‘tighten up, tighten around the belt.’ Me personally, I don’t know how Dan (Anderson) and Bill (Faircloth) looked at it, but like I said from the first year I was [elected], not knowing anything, basically about that. As long as those budgets came in 3%, 5% from the year back, in my mind I thought it was, we’re in good shape,” he said. “When I left that meeting I didn’t understand how bad we were. It was bad. She told us we were trending downward, and we should just tighten our belts a little bit, and I thought I was doing that as a representative keeping the budgets of the department heads in line. So, I feel terrible.”

Doland later spoke further on the subject.

“This was planned to go in the hole $950,000. I don’t know why anybody would have approved this. It would either only be for two reasons – one, incompetence, or two that this was done intentionally. And we don’t know the answer to that,” he said.

As a department head, Sheriff Casey Schmidt (R-Dysart) spoke up himself.

“It was nice having that department meeting on Friday, and while me, personally, I don’t think it’s going to be beneficial at this point in time to point fingers. I think identifying the issue, fixing the issue, and then moving forward collectively is what’s best for everybody. It’s not gonna be fun. It’s not gonna be pretty, but moving forward, we know what needs to happen as department heads,” he said.

Also during the meeting, Tama County Engineer Ben Daleske gave his report saying that they continue cutting brush and have started stockpiling rock.

Representatives from ITC were on hand to answer the supervisor’s questions about a line going through the county that was scheduled to be rebuilt. After some questions and discussion, the utility permit for the project was approved.

The supervisors approved legal bills.

A resolution to create a trust fund for the Emergency Medical Services was approved.

It was approved for the salary employees’ pay cycle to change from every two weeks to simply being paid on the 15th and 30th of every month.

Claims totaling $138,485.01 were approved.

Editor’s note: Since this story went to press in last week’s edition of the Tama-Toledo News Chronicle, Hardin County Supervisor BJ Hoffman advised Tama-Grundy Publishing that Hardin County does not use Paul Greufe as the county’s Human Resources consultant/attorney as is indicated in this article in a quote by Heather Knebel. “Several years ago we severed our relationship with Paul and are using Ahlers & Cooney. I am certain not all Heartland (Risk Pool) counties use Paul and I’m hard pressed to believe it’s more than a couple as I know Ahlers & Cooney’s footprint has grown exponentially,” Hoffman said in his message to the newspaper.