The budget vote this summer took place in a June 29 public meeting, and district spokesman Tim LeMonds pointed to a mention in the June 26 staff newsletter, which he called “the primary mechanism used for communicating to all staff.” In that newsletter, a “Budget Update” section on page two includes a mention of the pay freeze in its fourth paragraph among other details of the preliminary budget timeline.
“This effectively pauses our previously planned compensation increases and a few Strategic Equity Projects, not previously approved,” the newsletter states. “Although it is our hope that our budgetary landscape improves by late fall, we also need to be prepared for State budget reductions that may be coming in the upcoming months.”
Another teacher wrote in an email she did not know “anyone who was aware of the pay freeze until we got an email with a preview of our checks and we all realized our salaries were not updated.”
At the time of the preliminary budget approval, district chief financial officer Kelly Ruppel was projecting a loss of $7.6 million in state aid from what had been anticipated in earlier projections. Removing the salary increases saved $7.8 million.
Sadlowski wrote in an email the union is seeking “clarification on whose authority the unilateral change” was implemented. He added that they hope for “a swift resolution that adheres to the agreed upon terms” and that resolving it now would “help to avoid further acrimony than this adverse action has already created.”
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Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Run for office. Spring 2021 elections: Dane county executive.
which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.
While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.
The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.
The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.
“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”
Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.
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