Businesses contracting with the county question negotiation process By Anna Krejci News-Chronicle Several businesses contracting with the county questioned an unexpected change in their contracts at the county's human services committee meeting Wednesday. The county is requiring businesses that provide services for county-supported patients to operate with a reduced profit margin. By state law, a for-profit business contracting with the county that collects state funds is only permitted to operate with a 7.5 percent profit margin. A not-for-profit business is permitted to keep a 5 percent profit margin. In January, business owners said contracts that were supposed to follow the same profit margin allowances came back with reduced profit margins. The county made a policy dictating that profit margins for not-for-profit businesses contracting with the county would be reduced from 5 percent to 2 percent and from 7.5 percent to 5 percent for for-profit businesses. The contract changes were unexpected for businesses and human services committee members. Business owners and Sup. Mary Marquardt learned about the changes at another county meeting earlier this month and they brought the matter to the human services committee's attention. Representatives of the businesses said they were unhappy that the county did not inform them sooner that their 2004 profit margins would be reduced. Debbie Tegge, president of Country Health Care, a for-profit corporation that provides care for the elderly, including Alzheimer patients, said the change in profit margin hurts businesses because in order to be licensed as care providers, they are required to operate with a profit margin that would sustain their operation for six months. The county's reduction in the profit margin they are allowed to keep makes that almost impossible, Tegge said. "Small facilities, they don't have a fighting chance," she said. She is supporting her facilities for the rest of this year with her own money. In Brown County, she has two in Suamico and one in Pulaski. Other business owners cannot afford to do that, she said. In March, Tegge said Dr. Allen Parks, the county's human services director, met with the businesses contracting with the county and were told there would not be any increases in funding made to the contracting businesses. Despite the financial challenges her business is facing, she said she came to Wednesday's meeting to get an answer as to how the decision to reduce the businesses' profit margins were made. It was the negotiation process that bothered her the most, she said. After working on the 2004 budget with the county for nine months, she learned in January that the profit margin her business could keep would be cut. "To me that's invalid negotiation," she said. Committee members passed a motion to refer questions regarding the profit margin policy to the human services board. In other business, the committee referred a request to the human services board that the human services director clear up discrepancies in pay scales and job titles. Marquardt informed the committee that the position of deputy director of human services had been removed from the Table of Organization and possibly replaced with a new position titled director of community services. The job descriptions for the two positions were not identical. The committee received and placed on file a report from ASPIRO, an intermediate care facility serving developmentally disabled citizens. The report outlined that 24 county patients would not receive day services provided by ASPIRO and that ASPIRO would lose $63,000 in revenue as a result.