Earlier this summer, the newspaper reached out to Leelanau County’s finance department head — then-Interim Finance Director Cathy Hartesvelt — to get estimates on the total amount of money spent on the county’s finance and human resources (HR) departments. According to the county’s administrative department, based on data from Hartesvelt, $692,102 went into these departments by mid-2024.
The county formally began setting up finance and HR departments in May 2021. The previous county board of commissioners — with different elected officials occupying four of the seven positions — voting 5-2 to explore the option. The departments were activated in January the following year.
The county’s interim administrator, Richard Lewis, released some of the expenses noted by Hartesvelt to the paper. She estimated the county had already sunk $440,544 into starting its finance department by late June, just before she was hired as director. The largest single item going into this figure was $267,597 in wages and benefits for the directors, interim director, and assistant director.
Other expenses included professional organization memberships and attending conferences at $3,159; contract services from the Michigan Leadership Institute (MLI) and Rehmann consulting firm at $4,955 and $34,964 respectively; and cost allocations for telephones, computers, and a copy machine at $41,565.
There were also $53,629 in stipends paid to County Clerk Michelle Crocker and Deputy Clerk Jennifer Zywicki over two and a half years for support, including budget preparation and an audit of five months’ worth of payroll. Prior to the creation of an independent finance department, the clerk’s office managed duties like these.
Other more mundane “indirect costs” of the finance departments included purchases that one might expect when setting up a new governmental department, like additional computers, printers, and calculators at $24,564, and office furniture for two rooms at $10,111.
Hartesvelt also estimated the county spent $219,886 setting up an HR department, all of which went to the director’s wages and benefits. Since then, the job title has changed from “director” to “manager.” The interim administrator explained that the job title should be changed because the HR department just consists of one staff member — the director.
The county spent another $2,100 interviewing candidates for a potential administrator/ chief financial officer (CFO) position, according to Hartesvelt. After Sean Cowan resigned as finance director in October 2023, the county board entertained the notion of combining the administrator and finance department head roles.
This was part of the reason that the last county administrator, Deb Allen, stepped down; she was making way for someone with a “deep financial background” to become administrator/ CFO. The county hired Allen’s predecessor, Chet Janik, to lead the search, as Janik is now working as a consultant for the MLI firm. Janik gathered 25 applicants, but after interviewing seven of them in May and June, the board was not prepared to offer the combined position to any of them.
During this time, former Traverse City Mayor Richard Lewis has been serving as interim administrator. Hartesvelt said $31,676 in compensation and employer taxes went to the interim administrator role as of late July.
Per Hartesvelt, then, the total expenses of setting up the finance and HR departments were $660,430, plus “information requested but not associated with the above,” i.e. the MLI contract and interim administrator compensation, for a total of $692,102 as of mid-2024.
A recent ad in the newspaper paid for by the Leelanau County Republican Party claims that the county board of commissioners has spent $1 million on reorganizing the finance and human resources departments “with no results.” Party Chairwoman Laura Tarsa could not be reached for comment on how the local GOP arrived at this figure.
After the county board executive session on Tuesday, Hartesvelt told the newspaper that both the local Democrat and Republican parties have asked her how much money has been sunk into setting up the county’s finance and HR departments, but she hasn’t supplied her estimates to anyone besides the newspaper. The source of the $1 million figure is unknown.
However, Hartesvelt also told the newspaper Wednesday that the $690,000 figure released by county administration did not include some items, like per diem pay for commissioners attending special sessions like finance committee meetings, and the larger square footage space of the new finance department in the county administration office.
Hartesvelt said there were some other additional costs that she associated with setting up the departments, and that she estimates the true costs as being somewhat greater than the administrative department’s estimate, but less than $1 million.
