Wausau City Hall. MWC file photo.
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Well that didn’t take long. Just three weeks into Wausau Mayor Doug Diny’s new term, comes a complaint from a city council member.
Tom Neal, in a letter to the Wausau Pilot and Review, objects to the committee assignments handed down by the new mayor. Mayor Diny decided to put three new members on Wausau’s finance committee. There are also three new faces on the city’s economic development committee.
Neal says both committees had members who were removed who’d requested that they be re-appointed to those panels. He says years of experience and expertise have been reassigned. And in a dig at the new mayor, Councilman Neal points out that Mayor Diny has served only one term on the council and that – quote – “the mayor lacks personal knowledge in many areas.”
Mayor Diny is right to put new people on both of these committees. Consider: Despite getting an unprecedented $1.1-million more in state aid, the finance committee still passed a budget that raised property taxes. This is also the committee that maxed out the city’s TIF districts and rolled up $269-million in debt. The finance committee will benefit from new faces… and new thinking.
Wausau’s Economic Development committee also needs new membership. It’s a committee that hasn’t had any success over the last three years. Foot Locker and Eastbay are gone, relocated to Texas. Did Wausau even get to make a pitch before those jobs moved out of town? Weston, not Wausau, gets the new Amazon facility, even though our industrial park has superior highway access. But we also have higher property taxes and the most expensive water in the state. A second building at Riverlife was dropped. Relations with the Wausau Mall developer are tenuous. Without more economic development, fewer landowners will carry a greater share of the property tax burden in the city.
Councilman Neal, if you’d like to make the committee assignments, run for mayor. And the new mayor is completely right to make committee appointments that reflect his concerns and priorities… the issues that he ran on, and won.
Chris Conley
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