By Keene Winters

It is time to pay attention to the city budget. This is the last budget that the Wausau Common Council will vote on before the April 2026 elections. Does your alder vote in line with your values? Does your alder understand that we cannot keep borrowing and spending at this pace?

In the past, this would be the time to talk about “the mayor’s budget.” However, given the disdain and disrespect heaped on the mayor by a majority of the alders, we can safely assume that any proposal from him is dead on arrival. Now, the council owns the budget, and they have a full eight weeks to reshape the document to their liking. Let’s see if this council can make progress on any of these issues:

Mounting City Debt
Unknown Costs of Lead Service Line Replacements
Robbing the Wausau Water Works
Under-Billing for Water
The Structural Deficit
Issuing Debt to Cover Operating Expenses
No Strategy for Economic Development
Tax Rates that Stifle Growth

Mounting City Debt:

Debt is going up again. The city will experience a net increase in outstanding General Obligation Debt (G.O. Debt) because new borrowings will exceed retirements. Outstanding G.O. Debt will go from $69.2 million to $76.5 million—a jump of more than 10%. In addition, little progress is expected on paying down the Wausau Water Works debt. It is projected to go from $147.1 million down to $145.9 million—less than one percent—but that could easily change during the course of the year.

Unknown Costs of Lead Service Line Replacement:

A big question mark surrounding debt is the project to replace all of the lead water service lines in the city. The city still does not know how much it will cost, how much federal aid it will receive, or how that aid will be divided between grants and low-interest loans. We may have to borrow more than we bargained for.

Robbing the Wausau Water Works:

The council has decided that the citizens of Wausau should make a payment in lieu of property taxes (PILOT) from the water treatment and the wastewater treatment plants. Essentially, the utilities are being forced to pay a property tax and collect the money from rate payers. The funds theoretically go for police and fire protection and other city services render to the utilities’ physical plants. In reality, it is just a backdoor way to get around the levy limits and take more money taken from unsuspecting taxpayers, and add it to the General Fund. This budget again takes $2.1 million out of the debt-strapped utilities for other city uses.

Under-Billing for Water:

In June of 2024, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources cited Wausau as billing for 17% less than the water it was pumping. To date, this problem has not been solved. The going theory is that a large number of water meters are not working and may need to be replaced. There is no discussion in the 2026 budget of whether the city will need to raise water rates or borrow more money to address the problem.

The Structural Deficit:

A “structural deficit” occurs when an organization uses one-time money from sources like grants or debt issues to pay for recurring annual costs. Fifteen first responder positions were hired using grant funds. Little thought was given to whether we needed them or not because the city had millions of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars lying around. When those dollars run out, the council expects citizens to pass a referendum allowing them to raise taxes more than the levy limits. It says so in the budget. Estimates of the additional taxes required to solve this range from $1.5 to $1.9 million.

Issuing Debt to Cover Operating Expenses:

The city uses debt to pay for operating costs in two places, road repair and acquisition of rolling stock. Every year the city has to fix roads and replace vehicles. Because the city borrows for these items instead of paying for them out of operating funds, citizens pay both the cost of the repairs and vehicles plus 10 years of interest, making the purchases much more expensive. The amount of debt being issued for these costs are around $3.5 million for roads and $2.0 million for fleet. With a total tax levy sitting at $34.3 million, the city is committed to spend about 20% than it can raise in revenue.

No Strategy for Economic Development:

Since the 2024 election, the only things this council’s Economic Development Committee ever seems to talk about are low-income housing and walking/biking trails. Apparently, we have decided that it is our duty alone to make a dent in the national problem of affordable housing with generous subsidies from the Wausau taxpayers. Remember when economic development meant bringing new businesses to town to create living wage jobs and meaningful new tax base?

Tax Rates that Stifle Growth:

Wausau has raised its property tax rate 13 times in the past 15 years, ignoring the fact that high-taxes handicaps growth. The city budget says that the total equalized value of taxable property in Wausau increased from $4.39 billion to $4.57 billion, or about 4.14%. That means property tax revenue will go up 4.14% without any changes in the tax rate. That’s not enough for Wausau. Out of the gate, the city is proposing to increase its mill rate from $8.71 to $8.75, and we are not done yet. The city council has a history of adding things.

The picture for Marathon County and the Wausau School District could not be more different.

In the last 15 years, they have repeatedly cut their mill rates and have been rewarded with growth in property values. Marathon County reports an 8.99% increase in property values, and its administrator has proposed lowering the mill rate from $3.67 per thousand to $3.50. The school district also reported a nine percent gain in property values and has voted to lower its tax rate from $7.18 to $6.58.

When I left the council in 2016, the city had the equivalent of 325 full-time positions. Now it has 365 people to serve roughly the same population as we had 10 years ago. That’s 40 more people to do the same job that we used to be able to with 325. It is too much!

This is now the city council’s problem. They have eight weeks to come up with a plan to start moving us in the right direction by trimming the workforce, paying down debt, and bringing the budget into actual balance. The staff reductions have to come. The only questions is how bad things have to get before we recognize reality.

If we start now, the manpower reductions can probably be managed through natural retirements and departures. Conversely, if we keep digging the hole deeper, it will come to painful and disruptive pink slips, when the city cannot pay its bills. A no vote on the council’s coming referendum to raise taxes could take us there overnight.

Mayor Doug Diny has suggested places where we could look for cuts, and the council has thrown them back in his face. Diny has suggested processes like zero-based budgeting or consultants’ studies as a neutral way to build consensus on reducing over-spending, and the council has rejected them out of hand. They have even gone so far as to change the city’s parliamentary rules to keep the mayor from speaking at council meetings.

The Wausau Common Council now owns these problems. They always get the final say on the budget. We should be prepared to hold them accountable in April if the mismanagement of city finances continues.

Keene Winters is a former Wausau city alderman. He is also a two-time winner of recognition from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association for opinion page content.

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Opinion: Wausau council must take responsibility for city’s growing debt and spending