Council approves wheel tax for 2025

The Shawano Common Council unanimously approved a wheel tax — non-government speak for a local vehicle registration fee — at its Sept. 11 meeting following weeks of discussion regarding alternative revenue streams that would allow the city to continue providing current services.

Owners of vehicles weighing less than 8,000 pounds who live in the city limits will have a $40 fee tacked on to the existing state registration fee. Almost 50 other municipalities utilize the wheel tax, even though it’s an option that has been made available since 1967.

The city began looking at the wheel tax in August due to its state-mandated tax levy caps not keeping pace with inflation. According to City Administrator Eddie Sheppard, the cost of the same materials has jumped up, but the state’s levy limits have been about half of that.

“We’ve been discussing this for the last several council meetings as an alternative revenue source for the city,” Sheppard said. “At our last meeting, it was asked, after a great discussion, to bring back a resolution that would look at a $40 registration fee to go into effect Jan. 1, 2025, so that we can build that into our budget as a revenue source.”

The wheel tax revenues, which are expected to be around $315,000 for 2025, can only be utilized for transportation-related expenses like snow plowing, traffic signal repairs, etc. However, it frees up the levy dollars to compensate for increases in other departments’ expenses.

“We’ve been unable to address those increasing costs with the levy,” Sheppard said.

According to Sheppard, the city has fewer employees now than it did in 2012, even as the city has grown with new housing developments and more activities that attract tourists to use the city streets. He believes the wheel tax will help ease budget concerns for the next few years, something that Shawano County is dealing with as it tries to trim its proposed 2025 levy that is almost $3 million above the cap.

Without the wheel tax, the city would have had two other options available to them. One would have been establishing a stormwater utility that would have generated an alternative revenue stream for managing stormwater issues within the city. The state does not mandate such a utility until the city reaches a population of more than 10,000, and current U.S. Census estimates put Shawano around 9,600.

The second option would have been for the city to ask voters to approve an operational referendum, similar to what school districts around the state, including Bonduel, have had to do to ask voters to override the state levy limits. However, that step would require the city to go back to voters every five to seven years to ask for the override to continue.

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com