Doug Diny
WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — Wausau Mayor Doug Diny says he’s not against the proposed Wyatt Street housing project, but he does think the city could get a better deal for the land.
The Mayor says the city has more than $50,000 tied up in the land between purchase and environmental work, making the $1,000 sale price unreasonable. He says the land was acquired for about $23,000 and has a current assessed value of about $44,000, plus the city has offered to remediate the site as well.
“We’re estimating remediation and fill to be about $25,000. So all in we have $50,000 plus into it. So [selling it] for $1,000, I think some alders thought that deal was too good to be true,” said Diny.
He says he also questioned the marketing of the parcels, which were listed on the city’s Property Disposition Program, but weren’t widely advertised. “If others knew of it, would they have offered the same [deal.] So if it was out there and everyone had a chance and we did get a $1,000 offer, is that the right move? That’s what we want to know.”
Ideally, Diny would like to see the city get the assessed value for the land. “The question is- is it the right price, the right deal, and the right advertising for that particular project.
“Nothing against the individual [developer], absolutely not, I think it will be a good project. Did we get [the deal] right, that’s the question,” added Diny.
The proposal calls for duplexes on the land, one of which would be owner-occupied. Council President Lisa Rasmussen says she’s disappointed in the move.”The parcel in question has not paid a dime in property tax since approximately 2005. It was contaminated, no one was interested in it for over a decade and the city was able to clean the site up to where it could be re used,” said Rasmussen in an email to WSAU News.
“The property does not have lake frontage as was mentioned in the Mayor’s veto memo. The real loss in this is the drama for the guy who wants the parcel to build a nice home on. That individual qualified for federal block grant funding for site work, which was another concern in the veto memo, however the fund source was not local levy dollars. Sadly, a citizen trying to do something positive here is caught in a political game of cat and mouse that originates from the second floor of city hall. That is disappointing,” she added.
Rasmussen also confirmed that the Council will consider an override of the veto at its next meeting on May 27th. This is the third veto of the Mayor’s tenure. The first turned down the hiring of a consultant for other city-owned property and was upheld by a single vote. Another involved a non-binding resolution where the City Council urged Congress not to cut Medicaid funding, which was unanimously overridden and went into effect without the Mayor’s signature.
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