To the editor:
The recently completed state budget will actually provide some benefits to middle-class taxpayers. My guess is that the theory in Madison is that if they let us keep more of our money, we might spend it at local businesses and support job creation and retention.
The folks down in Oconto have other ideas.
While we enjoy summer, elected officials in Oconto are plotting a way to spend $30 million on a new jail—all without a county referendum. What is the payback on such an investment? About 125 years!
Can you picture all the pomp and circumstance? Oconto’s marching band can play while the taxpayers’ dollars are siphoned into this boondoggle. Of course, a few of the county supervisors will get their name on a plaque. They will be dead and gone, and we will be paying for their ego for decades to come.
It hurts when you are a taxpayer in northern Oconto County. We carry a lot of the county’s freight, with little or no benefit. Townsend actually hired its own police department a few years ago due to the poor coverage provided by the county.
It does not end there.
Wabeno’s School District failed to pass a referendum to raise our taxes, despite declining enrollment. Few of these students come from Oconto County. The referendum will return in April; it is expected to pass.
Townsend got hit with a library bill of over $10,000 so that seven people can have Brown County library cards.
According to people who own property there, the county also botched the Townsend Flowage drawdown, leaving people without use of the water this year. Plenty of taxation, with very little flotation.
According to zillow.com, there are 94 properties for sale in Townsend, a community of fewer than 1,000 people. Gillett, a much larger community, has only about half that many properties for sale.
How many properties will be for sale once this debt is strapped to Oconto County taxpayers?
Enjoy your plaque, Oconto County supervisors. It cost Oconto County taxpayer big time.
Jim Anheuser
Townsend
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