Milwaukee Wheel Tax Proposal Wins Support: Committee Backs $20 Fee for Street Repairs

By Larry Sandler, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jul. 17–A proposed $20-a-year local vehicle registration fee passed its first hurdle Wednesday, winning the endorsement of a Milwaukee Common Council committee.

The council’s Public Works Committee voted 4-1 to recommend adoption of the so-called wheel tax, which would be imposed on more than 330,000 cars and light trucks kept in the city.

If approved by the full council later this month, the fee would raise $6.6 million a year for street work. Slightly more than half of that amount would be used to eliminate special property tax assessments for street repaving and replacement, and to reduce assessments for sidewalk and alley projects.

“We must address the crumbling infrastructure head-on,” council President Willie Hines Jr. told the panel, referring to the deterioration of city streets. “The city assessments are too high, they’re too punitive, they’re too painful to our residents.”

Speaking against the measure, Ald. Joe Dudzik said adding a new fee was “a bit over the top.” Dudzik, who is on leave from his job at the Department of Public Works, said the city should put more emphasis on routine maintenance, such as filling cracks, to reduce the need for major street projects.

Dudzik was the only alderman to vote against the wheel tax. Voting in favor were Ald. Bob Bauman, the panel chairman and the measure’s chief sponsor, and Aldermen Bob Donovan, Robert Puente and Willie Wade, all of whom are co-sponsors.

The fee proposal moves next week to the council’s Finance & Personnel Committee, where only two of the panel’s five members, Bauman and Ald. Nik Kovac, are co-sponsors. Dudzik is also a member of that committee. The chairman, Ald. Michael Murphy, and Ald. Milele Coggs have not yet announced their positions.

If the measure reaches the council floor July 30, its 10 co-sponsors would constitute a two-thirds majority of the 15-member council, enough to not only approve the fee but also to override a promised veto by Mayor Tom Barrett. The mayor has asked the council to defeat the fee and let him propose more street funding and lower special assessments, financed by small property tax increases over the next six years.

Barrett and other opponents argue that the city shouldn’t add a new tax on city residents only, when the streets are also used by suburban residents’ cars and by large trucks.

But Hines said Barrett’s approach was misguided because the homeowners who pay the special assessments must also pay regular property taxes.

Also Wednesday, the Public Works Committee recommended confirming Barrett’s nominations of environmentalist Benjamin Gramling to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District commission and attorney Claude Krawczyk to the Harbor Commission. Gramling is the sustainable development program manager at the 16th St. Community Health Center. Krawczyk, a former president of the Milwaukee Christian Center, lost two races for Bauman’s downtown seat.

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