I want to start by saying that
a) I believe that Marathon County needs to build a new County Highway Facility or substantially rebuild the existing facility either on the current site or on a new site.
b) I believe that the Leadership (Commissioner Jim Griesbach and Deputy Commissioner Kevin Lang) and Employees of the Marathon County Highway Department are hard working and do a great job maintaining our County and State roads and highways.
c) I would generally prefer to use reserves or savings to finance any new or reconstructed Highway Facility rather than incur additional County debt. In fact, last fall during the discussions about the 2025 County budget, I recommended that the County set aside funds from the Highway Reserves for the County Highway Facility to eliminate the need for additional borrowing.
However, I listen to Kronenwetter residents and also often hear from County Board Supervisors regarding the opinions of their constituents. Many residents of Marathon County HATE the wheel tax (registration fee) in large part because it was promised to be in place for only 1 year and because they don’t see any major improvements in County Roads since it was enacted.
The switch from a 1 year to permanent wheel tax combined with virtually no increase in spending1 on County Roads has certainly contributed to cynicism and displeasure among County residents regarding County Government. This is obviously not good for Marathon County.
For example, these comments were made in response to my recent posts on Facebook:
Based on back of the envelope calculations2, the County has about $1.2 million in Highway Reserves paid for by Kronenwetter residents through the wheel tax. Combined with potential federal and state aids, this should be enough to build a roundabout (… it would be the most efficient and the most safe … 3) in Kronenwetter at the X-XX-Pine intersection now rather than in 20 years.
I don’t expect that using wheel tax dollars paid by Kronenwetter residents to build a new County Highway facility in Kronenwetter – which will make driving less safe and more difficult for Kronenwetter residents – while ignoring the requests and complaints of Kronenwetter residents regarding the County X-XX-Pine intersection will be acceptable to most Kronenwetter residents.
I know for sure that it is not acceptable to me.
Next Up: Fighting FOR Kronenwetter, Part 3: Motivations for a relocated County Highway garage.
This post is the opinion of David Baker
Paid for by Baker for Kronenwetter President
https://www.facebook.com/DavidBakerforKronenwetter
REFERENCES:
From the XX-X-Pine Study
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/marathoncountywisconsin/PST045224
- https://marathoncountyspotlight.com/2025/03/18/marathon-county-board-please-use-the-wheel-tax-to-improve-our-roads-not-to-build-a-highway-garage/ ↩︎
- Roughly $20,000,000 in Excess Highway Reserves indirectly attributable to the wheel tax prorated by number of Kronenwetter residents (8,539) divided by total County residents (139,091). ↩︎
- https://marathoncountyspotlight.com/2025/03/15/marathon-county-xx-x-pine-kronenwetter-intersection-safety-study-update/ ↩︎