FAIRMONT – The Faribault and Martin County Health and Human Services (FMCHHS) Board approved a preliminary budget of $21.47 million for 2026 at their meeting on Wednesday.

The meeting started with a potential budget of $21.61 million. The largest chunk taken out of revenues for Health and Human Services is from the federal government, with a $877,000 loss in funds compared to 2025’s approved budget. This includes cancelling and sunsetting of programs, as well as reimbursement for SNAP work being halved from 50 percent to 25 percent.

FMCHHS Executive Director Chera Sevcik said when changes to federal and state programs were calculated in expenditures and revenues, they were staring down a potential 15.8 percent increase in local participation funds to $8.71 million.

“We knew [that] was not something we would be able to bring forward,” she said. “We started to look at reductions to our budget and what that would look like.”

To see where current FMCHHS employees were thinking in terms of potential reductions, Sevcik said they sent out a survey to see what staff wanted untouched the most. She said the two largest were continuing with the free health insurance plan for members and not having wage freezes.

“We reviewed each agency position to determine the need,” Sevcik said. “Looked at how we could restructure. We examined revenue generation because we didn’t want to impact positions that can bring in a lot of money. We wanted to really be strategic about how we look at things.”

It was determined that seven full-time positions could be cut to bring the budget down. This would result in 133 total full-time employees, down from 140 Of those, four are vacant, one would be merged with another position and two have employees in them currently. Sevcik said this would save $470,000, but did come with risks.

“The reductions will shift work onto our existing staff,” she said. “Increased caseload, slower response times for clients, may result in more performance improvement plans or sanctions from the state.”

This would drop the local participation fund increase down from 15.8 percent to 6.5 percent, which is the percentage increase in the initial budget brought to the board.

Equipment was the main topic discussed for reduction. Sevcik said they could save $106,000 by pushing back their five-year laptop replacement cycle by one year.

Martin County Commissioner Joe Loughmiller asked if they could save money by changing a five-year replacement cycle to six years or more. Information Technology Manager Corey Survis disagreed with making this change, stating the maximum warranty he can get on a computer is five years, and further usage risks incurring repair costs.

Another equipment piece is vehicles. Two vehicle replacements had been budgeted for around $60,000, since they have multiple cars over 100,000 miles, but they could be cut. The risk with the laptops and vehicles are they would have to be budgeted for 2027 instead.

An optional budget reduction not included in the presented projection was furloughing two hours per pay period by ending the workday at 4 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. on Fridays. This would save around $254,000 for 2026. Faribault Commissioner Greg Young threw his support behind adding this to the preliminary budget.

“I think it makes sense,” he said. “It’s not that much of a detriment. People during the week, they can schedule for that. It would be less of an impact on staff too, for what it’s going to cost them.”

Martin County Commissioner Jaime Bleess said, instead of pushing vehicle replacements back and risking more expenses, they could do the furlough and use that saved money for purchasing two vehicles.

“I would encourage a little investigation on the two-hour furlough and making sure we don’t fall behind on our vehicle replacement,” he said. “They go home early on a Friday, which might not suck for an employee. I think if you asked me if I’d want to do that, [as an employee] I’d be like, ‘Yeah, let’s try it for a year.’ That’s a lot of money without so much logistics.”

Board Chair Bill Groskreutz agreed that the money could be useful, but instead of fully funding two vehicle replacements, he suggested a solution with more savings while also leaving replacements as an option.

“We do the two-hour furlough,” he said. “We’re saving $254,000; $200,000 goes towards the levy deduction, $54,000 goes back into the capital outlay. We have money for a vehicle, if we need it; we have money for laptops, if we need it. Don’t spend it until we need it, but have it there.”

This drew immediate approval from several around the table, including Bleess, Loughmiller and Young.

This new version of the budget brought it down to $21.47 million and brought the local fund usage increase down to around 3.8 percent. This figure is also $500,000 less than they budgeted for in 2025.

After a motion and second, the board voted unanimously to approve this preliminary version of the budget, including the furlough and position cuts.

The budget set is a maximum dollar amount. It can be decreased from here until the final approval but not increased.