This is an opinion piece.
These city of Madison and Madison School Districts referendums are going to add a massive tax burden on homeowners and renters. I calculate that taxes will increase by over $1,600 for a typical home and over $600 per year per apartment (which is $50 per month) once fully implemented.
Now comes along Dane County and their allegedly whoas…crying about limits on their ability to tax you and me. (Now I know why Parisi retired as county executive; he saw this coming.) The county budget is up to almost $1 Billion, yes, that’s billion with a “b”. It’s stunning how a county, which isn’t growing in size – villages and cities grow, but the county remains the same size, needs so much more money every year, in spite of the fact that as villages and cities grow, those expenses move from the county to the village/city. Worse the local rag claims the county is a ‘victim’ in this matter.
The headline says that “costs keep rising” as revenue slows. Well, first the county’s web site won’t respond to give me the annual budgets, (they can’t even get that right), but I will bet that every year for the last five years the budgets will have increased. And the county complaining about increasing costs after they hired 233 new employees this year and having added a 20% increase in staff wages and added another 21% to social services and added $30 million more in health insurance costs, is like a teen complaining about her allowance not increasing enough for her to buy everything she wants.
In fact, since 2019 county staff have seen their pay go up 26.5%. How much of an increase did you receive? The state journal talks about ‘looming budget pressure’, but it’s pressure of their own creation, from over spending, too much hiring, adding over $127 million in spending since 2019 (inflation adjusted according to the journal), which when you think about it, is a massive real increase.
And of course the county board’s solution is to consider deleting two deputy sheriffs, while they allocated $30,000 for building six cultural stations to re-educate the public. Likewise, authorizing sheriff department over time to take felons off the streets was rejected. The whole twisted, upside down nature of their arguments and of their priorities is designed to confuse and distract from the outrageous spending increases that have been approved over the years. It’s just all added up and came to a head. Enough is enough. All this government spending has got to come to a stop. Liberals think they can just keep increasing spending using more and more of your money, without consequence, and I guess, in this county, that’s true. Voters here will never hold them accountable.
Meanwhile, seniors on fixed incomes and renters all suffer from ever increasing taxes.
Fun Facts About T. Wall – T. Wall is an Eagle Scout. Wisconsin Right Now is a news organization focused on covering the news from a conservative point of view, in particular on politics and policy issues through analysis and opinions, and is protected by the first amendment of the United States constitution. WRN does not make endorsements of candidates or direct readers to vote for or against any candidate or issue. On October 18 and November 23, 2023 Donald Trump tweeted out on Trump’s Truth Social account T. Wall’s October 6th column on Trump’s property valuations. T. Wall has appeared on Fox News, Jesse Waters Show on Fox, Newsmax, CBS, NBC, Spectrum News 1, USA Today, X.com, YouTube, and numerous Madison and Milwaukee news programs and local newspapers (Wisconsin State Journal, Capital Times, Middleton Review, Middleton Times Tribune, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a dozen other Wisconsin papers) and previously wrote a column for InBusiness magazine and the Middleton Times Tribune for five years each. T. Wall holds a degree from the UW in economics and an M.S. in real estate analysis and valuation and his full time career is as a real estate developer. Disclaimer: The opinions of the writer are not necessarily those of this publication or the left!
