MONROE — Though school district referendum questions have become a common sight on ballots, this November, Green County voters will also have to decide whether to allow the continued maintenance and operation of the Pleasant View Nursing Home.

The referendum would not cause an increase in county taxes. 

Green County Clerk Mike Doyle said the planned Nov. 6 referendum is the third request by the county to exceed state-imposed levy limits and that the funding has been ongoing for roughly a decade. Lifting the limit would span from 2019 through 2024. 

Members of the Green County Board of Supervisors voted 28-0 in favor of the resolution authorizing the referendum question, which asks for the levy to maintain at an increase of $790,000 each year. The total county levy would be over $13.88 million. 

State statute 66.0602 would only allow the county to exceed the 2019 tax levy by .557 percent, or about $73,000. 

The county Finance and Accounting Committee and the Pleasant View Nursing Home Committee recommended the measure after determining the need for $790,000 above the levy limit each year for six years to ensure the operation of the nursing home continues.

Doyle said Wednesday that the building, roughly 60 years old, may have closed within the last decade if it hadn’t been for the approval of referendum questions by the public. 

The referendum funds would allow for the continued operation of the building, but the question also includes capital expenses, which Doyle said would include needed maintenance updates. 

Supervisors held little discussion about the resolution. Green County Corporation Counsel Brian Bucholtz said during the meeting that initially there was a question of following state law in timing the referendum on a ballot. 

In order to include a November referendum, approval of the language would need to be done in August. 

The budget would not be finalized by that point. Bucholtz said Green County will know the totals by 2019, and that after a meeting with the finance counsel of the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, it was determined the county could include the question on the November ballot. 

The other option would have been a special election, which Doyle said would cost Green County roughly $20,000 to organize. 

Supervisors Beth Luchsinger, Roger Truttman and Aaron Withee were absent from the meeting Tuesday.