Milwaukee Council Supports Wheel Tax

Just what Milwaukee needs… more taxes!

A veto-proof majority of the Milwaukee Common Council has lined up behind a $20-a-year local vehicle registration fee, raising the likelihood that city residents could pay the so-called wheel tax later this year.

But Mayor Tom Barrett is urging aldermen to vote down the proposed fee and let him find another way to pay for street projects in next year’s city budget — by raising property taxes instead.

1. Milwaukee is going to be like Detroit in ten years if this keeps up. How much do you want to be that BOTH the wheel tax and the property hikes will be implemented?

   Posted by on July 14, 2008 at 0756 hrs




2. I think I prefer the wheel tax, then at least the people who don’t use the roads won’t have to pay for them…

   Posted by Matt on July 14, 2008 at 0910 hrs




3. Owen I think you should look more carefully at this resolution.  This will shift the cost of road repair from potentially massive assessments which often run in the thousands of dollars to essentially a user fee.  In Milwaukee numerous road projects get deleted time and time again (remember the article MKE roads 163 years old).  This has the impact of rising property taxes and larger and larger assessments to pay for road repair (yup gas taxes and user fees don’t pay for em).  With the $20 fee at least people using the roads will pay for them.  Of course it won’t get all users but it didn’t with the massive assessments either and this taxes the pressure off property owners.

   Posted by on July 14, 2008 at 0943 hrs




4. PS If you wish to call it a tax instead of a user fee that fine call it whatever you’d like but the reality is this resolution will ease the burden of many property owners.

   Posted by Dave Reid on July 14, 2008 at 0945 hrs




5. If history is any guide, it won’t help property taxpayers at all.  Whenever government promises to replace one tax with another, both taxes end up going up.  (See: county sales tax, income tax (shared revenue), two-thirds school funding, etc.)

   Posted by Owen on July 14, 2008 at 0950 hrs




6. Milwaukee is going to be like Detroit in ten years if this keeps up. How much do you want to be that BOTH the wheel tax and the property hikes will be implemented?

   Yep.  I already pay an extre $20/year for my car on a state level - why the hell should I have to pay another $20?

   If the government can’t responsibly manage the revenue they already have, then that’s tough.  It’s not my fault they don’t know how to budget and spend appropriately.  I’m betting they could easily find the funds if they rearranged their priorities.

   Posted by on July 14, 2008 at 0958 hrs




7. Do you really think that the “wheel tax” will stop at $20? In four or five years it will be $80 or $100.

   Posted by on July 14, 2008 at 1003 hrs




8. This resolution very specifically replaces the assessment formula with a user fee.  The assessment formula was changed in 2000 and has since created a massive backlog of road projects that have been deleted at the will of the people because assessments have been in the thousands of dollars (due to that 2000 change). 

   When you defer these road project you quite dramatically increase the need for maintenance (note all the potholes) and if maintenance goes up then you’ve add a large pressure pushing property taxes to go up to pay for the repairs.  Further as you defer road rebuilds the cost to do the work increases and as construction costs have been surging in recent years you add yet another pressure onto increase property taxes. 

   Finally it doesn’t say any taxes won’t go up in the future but it clearly shifts a large often un-planned for, assessment, off of the property owner to the actually users of the roads.

   Posted by Dave Reid on July 14, 2008 at 1027 hrs




9. So how long do you think it will take for this money to be shunted to buses or light rail? Sort of like what they do now to the money they get from those of us who use the roads now...remember the highway money paying for MPS?

   Posted by on July 14, 2008 at 1110 hrs