By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — The Dunn County Board has repealed the sunset provision of the vehicle registration fee ordinance, making the $20 annual fee permanent, instead of allowing the fee to expire as of December 31.
The $20 vehicle registration fee has been in place since 2020, said Dustin Binder, Dunn County highway commissioner, at the Dunn County Board’s May 18 meeting.
Binder said he was asking the county board to continue the vehicle registration fee without the sunset clause.
The $20 per vehicle fee raises approximately $740,000 per year, and the money is used for transportation purposes only, such as road construction, winter road maintenance, shouldering, chip sealing or crack filling, he said.
Dunn County has 36,000 vehicles that are registered at 8,000 pounds or less. The ordinance excludes larger vehicles such as semi-tractor-trailers, dump trucks and municipal trucks, said Binder, who has worked for Dunn County for 14 years and accepted the position of highway commissioner in March.
State law only allows the vehicle registration fee to apply to vehicles that weigh 8,000 pounds or less.
Transportation funding from the state has decreased or has stayed stagnant, and there has been no increase in the gas tax since 2006, Binder said.
The cost of road construction has increased exponentially. The cost of asphalt has recently increased by $10 per ton, and Dunn County uses 20,000 to 30,000 tons of material for eight to 12 miles of roadway per year, he said.
“We need to do something to offset the drastic increase in costs,” Binder said, adding that he does not foresee a decrease in the cost of paving and maintaining roads.
Safety concerns
Monica Berrier, county board supervisor from Menomonie, said she had been asked by a constituent if Dunn County’s deteriorating roadways were a safety concern or whether it is a matter of aesthetics.
Binder said the deteriorating county roads are a matter of public safety.
Depending on the average daily traffic count (ADT), roads must be built to Wisconsin standards, Binder said.
The funding that is available is going to dilapidated roads that are more than 40 years old, he said.
All of the money for reconstruction goes into rebuilding dilapidated roads, and no money is available for pulverizing and repaving, Binder said.
Dunn County is rebuilding roads now that are 40 to 60 years old, he said.
ARPA funds
Larry Bjork, county road supervisor from Menomonie, noted that county Highway E had been rebuilt a few years ago and that it serves as a commuter road for people going between Menomonie and Eau Claire for work.
Bjork said some of his constituents have asked why the $20 vehicle registration fee is needed when the county has put $3 million of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds toward roads.
The money from the vehicle registration fees is used for both road construction and road maintenance, Binder said.
The highway department has experienced a decrease in the amount of tax levy received, but the highway department has experienced increased costs, he said.
The ARPA money is back-filling the county’s highway needs. The highway department is not improving the roads the way they should be, which would be 25 miles per year, Binder said.
“When the ARPA funds are gone, (Dunn County) will be in a dark place,” he said.
Kelly McCullough, county board chair, previously served as chair of the highway committee for many years.
The time between replacing roads steadily increased the entire time he was on the committee, McCullough said.
“The vehicle registration fee brought it down from ridiculous to still not good enough,” he said.
The recommendation is to replace roads every 20 years, but Dunn County is on a replacement cycle of rebuilding a road every 42.5 years, Binder said.
State legislature
Luke Wilsey, county board supervisor from Menomonie, said that people in his district are upset about the vehicle registration fee because they do not see it being used.
Wilsey said he had talked with Clint Moses, state representative for District 29 (R-Menomonie), and Moses had said no one has asked him about more money for roads.
“Have you asked?” Wilsey asked.
All 72 counties in Wisconsin are asking for more funds for transportation, Binder said.
As Binder had noted earlier, the state legislature has not increased the gas tax in 16 years, not since 2006.
The state’s levy limit law also restrict’s the county’s ability to increase the tax levy to cover increased expenses.
According to state law, municipalities can only increase the tax levy by a formula that uses the amount of net new construction. Municipalities that do not have very much new construction cannot increase the tax levy enough to cover any increases in their expenses.
In municipalities where the tax levy remains relatively the same from year to year, if the cost of health insurance for employees increases, for example, there is less money available for services for residents, such as clearing snow from the roads in the winter or fixing roads in the summer.
The federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has money for transportation, but municipalities must apply for the money, and it is not guaranteed — and Dunn County is not the only county asking, Binder said.
Representative Moses has been invited to the Dunn County Board’s annual meeting with area legislators in the spring, which has been meeting every year since Moses was elected, and transportation funding is one of the needs that has been discussed, McCullough said.
BIL
The money available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is 80 percent federal funding and 20 percent local funding, said Gary Stene, county board supervisor from Colfax.
And Dunn County is struggling to find the 20 percent, Binder said.
Using the information that is available — at a cost of $55.24 per ton for asphalt, and with Dunn County using 42,000 tons of asphalt, the vehicle registration fee covers one-third of the cost of the asphalt, Stene said.
(The cost of 42,000 tons of asphalt at $55.24 per ton is $2.32 million.)
If the vehicle registration fee were put strictly toward asphalt, it would pave 3.5 miles of road, Binder said, noting that it costs $200,000 per mile to pulverize and repave a road.
In 2005, the highway department had a budget of $12 million. The highway department’s budget now is $14.5 million, he said.
The cost for building roads and for road maintenance and equipment has gone up exponentially. There has been a 132 percent increase in the coset of asphalt from 2005 to 2022, Binder said.
42 years
Tim Lienau, county board supervisor from Menomonie, asked about the statistic of repaving the roads in Dunn County every 42 years.
The county is able to repave from eight to 12 miles per year. Dunn County has 425 miles of road. Using an average of 10 miles per year, that amounts to 42.5 years before a road is paved again, Binder said.
If roads have a 20-year life cycle, that is double the age of the life cycle, Lienau said.
Ideally, Dunn County would be repaving 25 to 30 miles of road every year, Binder said.
Is there any pending legislation for a gas tax increase? Lienau asked.
Every year, the state legislature discusses the gas tax, but the gas tax is never adjusted, Binder said.
Dunn County has been applying for every grant that is available, both state and federal, he said.
Highway B
The Highway B project in 2023 will be four lanes from Highways 12/29 to Andersen Windows, a stretch of one and a quarter miles, Binder said.
The Highway B project will cost $10 million, and Dunn County will pay 20 percent of the cost, he said.
The highway department is doing what can be done to generate additional funding, Binder said.
If a highway is 40 years old, does the blacktop turn to gravel? Lienau asked.
Today’s asphalt does not last as long as it used to, Binder said, and only has a 20-year lifespan.
Michael Rogers, county board supervisor from Menomonie, said he was “okay with the wheel tax.”
People can either pay more in property taxes or they can pay the vehicle registration fee, which goes directly to the highway department, he said.
“I support (the vehicle registration fee) but I don’t really want to,” Rogers said.
Brian Johnson, county board supervisor from Colfax and chair of the highway committee, said that the highway committee has asked Binder to report annually on what the vehicle registration fee money has been used for in the highway department.
Approval
The Dunn County Board approved eliminating the section of the vehicle registration ordinance that contained the sunset clause for ending the vehicle registration fee as of December 31, 2022, on a vote of 23 “yes” to six “no.”
Voting against the motion were county board supervisors Larry Bjork, Patrick Breslin, Sean Breslin, Ron Score, Luke Wilsey and Korlee Witzel.
Voting in favor of the motion were John Calabrese, Tom Gilbert, Andrew Hagen, Joe Hartung, Vaughn Hedlund, Brian Johnson, Michael Kneer, Donald Kuether, Tim Lienau, Diane Morehouse, Randy Prochnow, Tom Quinn, Hilary Robinson, Michael Rogers, Gary Stene, Mark Thomas, Carl Vandermeulen, Ann Vogl, Jim Zons, Robert Bauer, Monica Berrier, Gary Bjork and Kelly McCullough.
