WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAU) — Wausau residents will be asked to support a significant tax increase in 2016.
Seven-point-three-seven percent. That’s how much Wausau property taxes could jump next year if the city council approves the budget as it stands right now. That’s a 64 cent increase up to $9.41 per thousand dollars of valuation, just to support most existing city services.
The council met as a committee of the whole, and kept several items while cutting and delaying others. The short-handed committee recommended the increase to the full council on a 6-2 vote, with David Oberbeck and Keene Winters voting against the big jump. Winters says he cannot support this budget. “A 7.37% increase in people’s taxes, I think that number’s outrageous. I voted no many times, and I certainly will vote no on the main budget.”
The projected 2016 Wausau tax levy will go up $824,000, not counting any possible increases from Marathon County, or the public and technical schools. Wausau home owners with a $150,000 house will see a $96 increase in the city portion of their tax bill.
Alderman Romey Wagner expected a tax increase. “It would be great if we didn’t have to raise the tax levy, but I think we all knew we would have to.”
There are still opportunities to fine tune the budget, but right now, residents are facing a 7.37% jump, or a $9.41 per thousand tax rate. That’s 64 cents per thousand higher than last year.
Police Captain Matt Barnes presented some possible cuts in the police budget, including a change in animal control measures. Barnes says, “I’m not arguing on behalf of a trap-neuter-return program, but if we try it, that costs us zero dollars.” Barnes adds, “If you chose to eliminate picking up cats, that’s a $55,000 line item from budget.” Alderman Keene Winters says the general fund savings is not going to be there with the elimination of the cat pickups because the pet license fees are earmarked to animal control. He said, “This is effectively trap, neuter, and release of the council”
Barnes also proposed delaying the hiring of community service officers until March, which would shave off $42,000 dollars in expenses.
One popular but expensive program that got the budget axe is the large item spring pickup, which several council members believe was being abused by people bringing in large refuse from other communities. That cut saves $60,000 dollars.
Alderman David Oberbeck proposed moving several maintenance projects to the Capital Improvements Budget and getting them out of the operating budget. As part of the CIP, they can be bonded for. Lisa Rasmussen made it clear that the nine items already selected for the CIP budget should not be bumped to take care of these items.
Several other ideas were discussed, from closing TID district #5 to delaying non-represented staff raises. The committee did vote to freeze council and mayor wages, end police pickup of stray cats, and delay several parks and street sealcoating projects.
Alderman Keene Winters is highly critical of Mayor Jim Tipple’s administration for not doing enough to cut the budget. “I think once again, the city (administration) put us in a no win position, with very few legitimate options to cut from the budget.”
Finance Committee Chairman David Oberbeck was one of two votes against the steep tax increase. He says they need to dig deeper in the details for more cuts. “The 7.37% or whatever, which I think is a little bit on the excessive side, but we don’t have the details. I think we’ve got to go back through the budget and start analyzing that and bringing forth some amendments in the next Committee of the Whole, which will be November 4th.”
Alderperson Lisa Rasmussen says the prioritization process did allow the council to keep several critical items in the budget. “We’re looking at some very serious cuts, many of which would have been catastrophic to services that we provide to the public in terms of staff reductions in public safety, which would have been detrimental to our blight fight, which would have been detrimental to the progress that we’ve made on drugs and safe neighborhoods, so I think that those things being off the table in terms of cuts are a big plus.” She says, “A lot of the things that were identified as high-priority or condition critical, we did get those things put back in. We also were able to find some additional cuts to ease some of the burden of that, so I think the effort that happened here tonight in terms of ranking these things and prioritizing them was valid.”
Rasmussen says Wausau has reached a point where they just can’t keep cutting without impacting city services. “We’ve held the line for a very long time. We’ve had very, very small rate increase for a period of time, but we are getting to a point where we have cut and cut and cut, yet the expectations of our residents is that in exchange for the tax dollar the pay, they have a very high expectation for services to be delivered, and there’s a serious cost to delivering those services.” She says, “Do we cut services and deliver less, or deliver sub-par services, or do we continue to advance the price tag for those services? And, we found a compromise. We’ve cut some.”
Alderman Romey Wagner encourages more Wausau residents to show up for the public hearing November 4th, especially with a tax increase and so many possible staff and service cuts still on the table. “I’m usually disappointed that only have five or eight people come for that, and I hope that the public comes and they read about the budget in the media, and come and ask questions. Tell us what they like and what they don’t like.”
Winters issued a statement after the meeting saying ““This is a real kick in the teeth to Wausau residents.” He says the council “bought into an orgy of new spending” by blowing through the $600,000 dollars saved with changing garbage collection systems and adding $824,000 dollars more. The tax levy is expected to be 1.4 million higher than the 24.1 million dollar 2015 levy.
