Fixing the Darn Roads

As of late January, 2024 Oshkosh City Hall is considering changing the way road construction and repair is funded. Currently, our city funds these projects with special assessments - a system where the residents closest to the project have to pay for the bulk of its completion. Whether it be sidewalks, water mains, or the roads themselves, Oshkosh has used this system for some time. If your street gets redone, chances are you could be in for a pretty big bill. 

Over the past decade, the cost of these assessments has only gone up. The City of Oshkosh adopts its plans for road and utility repair in what is called the capital improvement plan (CIP for short). This is a long range budget and planning document for long lead infrastructure items that the city is charged with building and maintaining (think fire stations, roads, city buildings, etc.). Many of the projects in the recent CIPs have seen costs climb faster than the rate of inflation. This is largely due to labor and materials shortages as well as supply chain issues. That has resulted in massive special assessments of $20,000 or more for street repairs. Most people cannot afford that, and city government is looking for alternative means for funding our roads.

City Council has reviewed the available options and has drafted an ordinance which moves Oshkosh to a vehicle registration fee (VRF) system. This is a $35 fee per year for all vehicles registered in the city under 8,000lb. The VRF will also be accompanied by a .25% - .5% increase in utility fees that are levied by the city. According to Finance Director Russ Van Gompel, the combination of these two should replace most of the special assessments in the city. I attended a listening session this week with City Manager Rohloff and Director Van Gompel, and they went over these changes and took questions from citizens. City Council plans to vote on this in late February.

With every public policy there are pros and cons. Let's start with the pros for this proposed system. The first and most obvious is that most of the special assessments will go away. The proposed method is simpler and less arbitrary. Families won’t have to be worried about large assessments they cannot afford if their street gets redone. Second, the city will not have to borrow money for covering special assessments that have not been fully paid off by residents yet. Oshkosh has been doing this recently, and that does return in taxes to pay for the city’s debt servicing fund. Additionally, the city will no longer be putting all its eggs in one basket when it comes to road funding. The VRF and utility fee will split them up. Now to the cons. This $35 VRF (essentially a wheel tax) would be one of the more expensive ones in the state, and it can be regressive as lower income households will bear the brunt of the burden. Appleton, Green Bay, Manitowoc, and Sheboygan all have a $20 VRF. The closest we can be compared to would be Janesville with a $40 VRF. It is also important to note that council can raise this VRF in the future beyond the proposed $35 (it could also elect to lower them as well). 

In short, there is no one perfect way to pay for the roads (if you know a perfect way, please let me know), but it is one of the core tenets of local government. Citizens expect it to fix the darn roads. That need isn’t going away anytime soon (in fact that need is growing). It’s my hope that in the future, the state can offer greater leeway in special assessment relief so the city does not have to levy another tax. If elected to council, I’ll be routinely discussing this with our state representatives.

As always, let me know what you think! Join the conversation by emailing me at jacobforoshkosh@gmail.com or contact me on social media. Header photo is from the Oshkosh Northwestern.