CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – If you register a vehicle in Marathon County, you pay $25 extra. It’s a wheel tax, intended to raise more money for road maintenance.
Here are two dirty little secrets that you may not know about the wheel tax.
First, it was supposed to be temporary. Marathon County enacted the wheel tax in 2017. It was supposed to be a one-time fee. But the county board quickly decided that it liked the additional $3-million that the wheel tax brought in. The following year they voted to make it permanent.
Second, if you live in Wausau, none of that $3-million goes towards road work in your city. Under state law, cities must maintain their own roads. Marathon County’s wheel tax is spent totally on roadwork outside the city limits. If you live in Wausau, your wheel tax dollars go to repair culverts and to re-pave roads in Stratford or Edgar, not in Wausau.
You would think that Wausau’s members on the Marathon County board would stand up and stop the fleecing of their constituents. No, not at all.
So there’s a possibility that Wausau drivers might pay twice. One city budget proposal includes an additional $25 for those who live in the city.
For those with good memories, Wausau residents voted on a wheel tax in 2016. City residents were told then that the city wheel tax would only take effect if or when the county’s tax ended. Residents still overwhelmingly voted no.
Mayor Doug Diny said the wheel tax proposal came from the city engineering department. The mayor said he does not support it, to the point that he’d veto the entire city budget over the issue.
The mayor is right. The city is already going through a state-mandated property revaluation. A tax increase is already baked into the cake, and that assumes that the county and the school board show fiscal discipline in the upcoming budget cycle.
The taxpayers are not a never-ending pocket that elected leaders can dig into for more money.
Chris Conley
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