Kill the Wheel Tax? Stop the Streetcar!

I don’t have to tell you: these are hard times. Buying a house, renting an apartment, filling your grocery bag, repairing your vehicle: all of these are more expensive propositions than they used to be.

Government shouldn’t be making things harder on people.

Just as families around the City have learned to tighten their belts, we in City Government have to look hard at how we can tighten ours. That’s because, to the extent we don’t – to the extent we continue business as usual – we bury our residents under a mountain of mounting taxes and fees.

Take the wheel tax…please.

The City’s vehicle registration fee, as it is worse known, was established at $20 in 2008, raised (though not by me!) another $10 in 2021, and is proposed to be raised by the Mayor another $10 in his suggested budget for 2026.

That’s $40 in fees for the City alone on top of the County’s own $30 wheel tax and the State’s base $85 wheel tax. Doing some quick math, that’s $155 in vehicle registration fees if you drive a car, even more if you drive a truck, and lord help you if you are trying to help the environment: you’ll pay $75 extra for the privilege of driving a hybrid and a staggering $175 extra if you drive an electric vehicle.

I don’t know about you, but I think we have a wheel problem here.

But what to do about it? The City’s wheel tax raises wheel money, money that’s needed and used to repave, resurface, and repair local roadways.

The Mayor’s proposed increase of $10 per vehicle, for instance, could raise up to $2.7 million, depending on when it’s enacted. That’s $2.7 million we won’t have for roads if we don’t raise the fee.

Or won’t we? I have another idea for avoiding the increase.

STOP THE STREETCAR.

Barrett’s Bird, the albatross that has hung around the neck of every budget director since 2018, is killing us. Largely a device for transporting the unhoused and the well-heeled, the Milwaukee Streetcar costs upwards of $7 million dollars a year to travel two whole miles, mostly in a circle and largely downtown.

What’s more, State Legislation passed in 2023 known as Act 12 prevents the City from levying taxes or using another tool known as tax incremental financing to expand the current 2.1-mile loop into the realm of relevancy.

In other words, future streetcar expansion is, for all intents and purposes, dead in its tracks.

Given that reality, wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to shelve the streetcar permanently (or until things change radically at the federal and state level), take that $7 million annual savings, and do some good with it?

And shouldn’t we at least start with eliminating the Mayor’s proposed $10 increase in the wheel tax?

I know, I know. Our Commissioner of Public Works will remind us that if we stop the streetcar, we risk having the feds attempt to claw back some or all of the $69 million they gave us in the form of a CMAQ grant (never mind the acronym) to help us create the streetcar system in the first place.

Two rejoinders to this argument. First, as running the streetcar becomes, year after year, an ever more expensive proposition, the number of years it will take to make back any money lost becomes fewer and fewer. (E.g., when it cost $5 million a year to run, it would have taken around 14 years to make back our $69 million. At $7 million a year, it would take less than 10.)

But second, and more importantly, have you met our federal government recently?

I don’t see them clawing back bupkis from us. I see them, instead, heralding our newfound fiscal responsibility when we throw in the towel on a flawed transit system…I call it “The Hot Mess Express”…that does nothing but bleed cash, cash that we – and most importantly, our residents – simply do not have.

(Nevertheless, to be cautious, I plan on asking our congressional delegation for their assistance here, and would urge the Mayor to do the same.)

In conclusion, we can’t afford what our residents can no longer endure. For too long, we have reached into their pockets instead of reaching out with more imaginative and efficient ways of delivering city services. This simply has to stop.

Stopping the streetcar, and using the savings to eliminate the Mayor’s proposed increase to the wheel tax, is where we have to start.

N.B.: AI? As if…

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.