Recap Of The Common Council’s Discussion Around Increasing The Wheel Tax

During the Common Council meeting on 06/19/2924, the Council voted 8-7 to approve a $10 increase to the wheel tax, raising the tax from $20 per vehicle per year to $30.

The Post Crescent posted an article about that on 06/20/2024.

If you would like to review the discussion in more detail, I have prepared a transcript for download:

The resolution to increase the wheel tax was amended slightly so that it will go into effect on 01/01/2025 instead of immediately upon passage.

During the discussion, Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) also made a motion to direct staff to look for offsetting cuts when putting together the 2025 budget with an aim of eliminating the wheel tax, but this amendment did not pass.

Walter Blank of Appleton Concerned Taxpayers spoke to the Council and opposed the increase. He said that he was working with a group of people to get the state to change how it handles shared revenue, a process he expected was going to take around two years. He also thought that there were other options that had not been explored a lot such as trying to share programs with the county and surrounding municipalities.

His wife Deb also spoke and pointed out that 15 of the 24 largest Wisconsin cities do not impose a wheel tax. She also noted that Appleton had used only half of the increased shared revenue funds they had received on infrastructure. She believed the wheel tax was regressive.

ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF THE WHEEL TAX

ALDERPERSON DENISE FENTON (DISTRICT 9): The wheel tax has not been increased since it was first implemented in 2014. It didn’t fully replace special assessments even back then and it brought in even less now. Increasing the wheel tax seemed like the most palatable of the options available to fund road maintenance.

ALDERPERSON MARTYN SMITH (DISTRICT 4): The wheel tax was one of multiple streams of funding for road repairs and it ought to be increased so that it remained proportionate within those streams to the portion it was when it was first implemented in 2014. He did not want to see it dwindle to an inconsequential stream of funding. At the same time, he said he didn’t intend to continue raising it every year and thought it should just be raised every 10 years. [It wasn’t clear to me how that second statement fit it with his argument about maintaining the wheel tax’s proportionality.]

ALDERPERSON BRAD FIRKUS (DISTRICT 3): He explained that special assessments had covered about 35% of the budget for road projects. When first implemented, the wheel tax covered 32% of the budget. 10 years later it covered only 19% of the budget. With a $10 increase, it would cover around 30% of the budget. He wanted the wheel tax increased so that it could carry its load.

ALDERPERSON ALEX SCHULTZ (DISTRICT 9): The city had been going through fee structures recently and making a lot of increases because they had not touched those fees for 8-10 years. He thought the same thing ought to be done to the wheel tax and would have actually supported increasing it to $40.

ALDERPERSON PATTI HEFFERNAN (DISTRICT 8): Labor and material costs have gone up. Inflation has increased. “This isn’t like we are taking this money from constituents to line pockets of any kind. This is something that our constituents use every single day, our roads. Everywhere they gotta go, whether they’re walking, or they’re driving or they’re riding their bikes you’ve got to use the roads to get to where you got to go. That’s the way that we’re set up right now.”

ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION TO THE WHEEL TAX

ALDERPERSON SHERI HARTZHEIM (DISTRICT 13): She thought it was inappropriate to ask for a raise because you weren’t able to stay within your budget. She opposed the idea that the wheel tax should be adjusted for inflation because inflation was caused by governmental policies, and it was inappropriate for the government to be going to residents to ask them to fix the problem caused by the government’s policies.

ALDERPERSON VAYA JONES (DISTRICT 10): The residents in her district were hit hard by the recent property reassessments, and they were concerned that the wheel tax increase was just a continuation of that. They were worried that the city would continue to raise the wheel tax and the city was going to keep coming back for more and more money.

ALDERPERSON CHAD DORAN (DISTRICT 15): He believed increasing the wheel tax was not a solution to the overall problem which was that the city was not keeping up on maintaining the streets as it needed to. If the city was actually going to get where it needed to in terms of street maintenance, it would need to raise the wheel tax to $68 per vehicle per year, something he also wouldn’t support. “The answer here is that we have to take a tough look at what we’re spending money on as a city and prioritize. This infrastructure is one of our core responsibilities as a government, and we are not doing it adequately and have not for a long time. That’s why we’re in the position we’re in.” He felt that increasing the wheel tax was a token-like action that made it appear the Council was trying to do something when it really did absolutely nothing.

ALDERPERSON CHRIS CROATT (DISTRICT 14): He had issues with the wheel tax program in general, particularly the fact that the heaviest vehicles that caused the most damage to roads were exempt from it. Increasing the wheel tax would make Appleton’s wheel tax one of the higher ones in the state and be the highest in the area, well above Kaukauna’s $10 wheel tax. It also wouldn’t really do anything in terms of road reconstruction, adding on $650,000 to the wheel tax fund. He disagreed with the idea that this increase should be considered a “catch up” because if that was the case it should actually be increased to $68. He did not think the wheel tax should be tied to inflation.

ALDERPERSON KATIE VAN ZEELAND (DISTRICT 5): She said that although everyone kept saying material costs had gone up, the data from the state indicated prices were back down to where they were before she was even elected.

ALDERPRESON PATRICK HAYDEN (DISTRICT 7): He was worried that by raising the wheel tax they would end up losing shared revenue funds in the future if the state made changes to how it handled shared revenue.

In addition to the overall discussion about increasing the wheel tax, there was a smaller discussion prompted by an amendment that Alderperson Doran made to direct staff to prioritize cuts in the 2025 budget with the aim of eliminating the wheel tax completely. This amendment failed by a vote of 11-3. Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) opposed that saying, “I think any adjustment that would have to be made to repeal the wheel tax is something that needs to be done openly and on the carpet and with a full discussion instead of asking staff to go do it privately within their own departments as a mathematical exercise. I think that that’s incredibly unfair to staff, and I think it’s incredibly harmful towards any aspirations we have of being a city that repairs more roads than our neighbors.”

Alderperson Kristin Alfheim (District 11) believed such a move would result in the city having to sell parks and get rid of the victim services dog at the Police Department. [Update (06/25/2024): Alderperson Alfheim has asked that this be updated to reflect that she was speaking sarcastically about Alderperson Doran’s past efforts to cut the city’s budget. I did not recognize the sarcasm on the recording, but do hear it now that she has drawn attention to it. The full quote I was referencing is as follows: “Regarding the amendment, if I remember correctly, my colleague in the past conversations about reducing expense which is important issue to him. We would definitely have to get rid of Edison the dog because that doesn’t seem like that would be a priority. We–we’re definitely going to have to sell parks. We’re going to cancel the library project altogether, and we’re going to sell the parking ramps. This is what prioritizing in the method that’s been amended means, having people try and guess what matters in a community, and I think that’s not the direction we should go.”]

Mayor Woodford said that such an amendment would be treated as only advisory in nature. “The mayor develops the executive budget and service plan and submits that executive budget and service plan to the Council at which point it becomes the council’s responsibility to set policy within the budget. So, I would just say that I would treat this action as advisory on the part of the Council if you were to pass it, and so there will be no direction given to staff as a result of the proposed action. We will develop an executive budget and service plan as specified in in the municipal code.”

The amendment was voted down, and Alderperson Doran expressed frustration at the Council not taking seriously the underlying problem of the city not maintaining its roads at an appropriate pace. “If we don’t want to do things like the hard work of really tackling the budget and where cuts should come from, I don’t I don’t understand what we’re doing with these token-like appearance things here to the community to say we’re trying to do something when this really does absolutely nothing.

“It’s frustrating. I’ve tried to offer amendments at budget time as some of my colleagues who spoke before said, you know, ‘We shouldn’t ask staff to make these cuts. It’s on us.’ I’ve done that before, and at that time, colleagues have said, ‘We can’t we can’t do this now. It’s too late in the process. The community doesn’t have time for input.’ It all just points to me how unserious you are about really tackling this this problem. And I just hope my colleagues will wake up to this at some point because we’re just making this worse, and we’re kicking this problem further down the road.”

The Council went on to vote 8-7 to approve raising the wheel tax from $20 to $30 per vehicle per year effective 01/01/2025.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1195550&GUID=AEC1BE7F-94E5-447D-B49F-6CDED9394186