Rising costs of road repair drive city to levy vehicle registration fees

“Road work ahead? Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does!” A widely known meme, this witticism is commonly quoted at a simple glance of orange warning signs. But as the City of Oshkosh sprouts more of these signs on busy roads like Witzel, citizens probably fail to realise these projects are being funded from an essential part of any driver’s life: vehicle registration.

Ross Van Gompel, Director of Finance for the City of Oshkosh, finds that the cost of citywide improvements is rising at a faster rate than inflation, which calls for a new approach to funding. 

“The cost of the road construction projects are going up quite substantially,” he said.

Naturally, this problem needed to be addressed.

“So basically, we’re trying to find money,” he said. “There are really two parts of the funding formula to replace that $3.75 million. One component of that is a vehicle registration fee. If we put into place a vehicle registration fee of 35 dollars a vehicle, that would cover about 40 percent of the funding.”

However, the new Vehicle Registration Fee would not be the only source of funding for improvements within Oshkosh.

“The other 60 percent would be covered by transfers from utilities,” Van Gompel said. “Water utility and sanitary sewer are a separate kind of business operation of the city, and it covers the cost of some of the infrastructure and funding.” 

Van Gompel predicts that these percentages will amount to significant changes, which will help road and sidewalk reconstruction.

“Those two revenue sources combined with the vehicle registration fee would be enough to supplement or replace what we would normally assess, properties budding the construction projects,” he said. 

Although the City of Oshkosh estimates that 46,772 vehicles will qualify for the fee, there are a few exceptions. 

“There are vehicles for school districts and the universities in the county that would be exempt from paying that 35 dollar fee,” Van Gompel said. “Also, vehicles that are over 8,000 pounds, so basically big trucks, would be exempt from that vehicle registration fee.”

The City of Oshkosh plans to implement swift change with the newly gained funds, despite facing some pushback from car owners.

 “Some people responded to a survey, and opinions were split equally. Some wanted to leave funding the same, while some supported this new revenue proposal,” he said. “These funds will allocate more taxes to streets, so, you know, it was kind of across the board, but you know there’s some people that don’t want to do it because people don’t want change.” 

Some of the City of Oshkosh’s constituency has been against the fee for more specific reasons. 

“There’s people that are concerned with how much this would increase our water and sewer rates, and their ability to make payments on water, sewer, and stormwater payments through their user fees,” he said. “So we’ve had some backlash.”

The newly installed fee may seem like a big shift for many citizens of Oshkosh; many areas within Wisconsin have had similar funding practices. 

“The state law allows municipalities, cities, villages, and towns to implement this vehicle registration fee, but it also allows counties to do it,” Van Gompel said. “Right now, there are 38 cities or villages or towns in the state of Wisconsin that use that vehicle registration fee. We would be number 39, alongside 13 counties that do it.”

Van Gompel also pointed out that this fee has been a long time coming.

“The city council directed staff to look at alternatives. We had about 13 different alternatives that we looked at and discussed with our city council from, you know, changing that percentage allocation to maybe establishing either a cap on special assessments, or what we call a floor,” he said.

City Council member Michael Ford believes that this new fee was the best choice to raise funds for his constituents.

“I believe it is a useful tool alongside the utilities for funding the reconstruction of streets. I think, alongside my fellow council members, that this is definitely a reasonable way to raise revenue,” he said.

Not only does Ford see it as reasonable; for him, it is also laid out in a way that poses considerably less stress on those who pay the fee.

“The biggest benefit is that people are no longer receiving nightmare bills because of additional bills that they are receiving,” Ford said.

This new vehicle registration fee will begin appearing on vehicle registration renewal forms soon after July 1, 2024. The City Council plans to receive this money just in time for road reconstruction season, coming up this summer.

“Each year we look at our revenue projections and our expenditure projections and see if we have the right rates in place to cover the cost of not only operations but the cost of other improvements to the system,” Van Gompel said.

by Zosia bowlus-Jasinski & Fahad Mian

Published February 26, 2024

Oshkosh West Index vol 120 issue V