Manitowoc Mayor Justin Nickels
Manitowoc Mayor Justin Nickels is defending his position after property taxes went up for many residents.
One of the first things he said on WOMT’s Be My Guest Program is he only has control over the city’s portion of tax bills, and that’s what he meant when he said, “Assessments of your property do not translate to tax increase.”
“This is my fault that I didn’t explain further; I didn’t think I necessarily had to,” he says. “What I meant was the city portion because that’s the only portion I have control over. Not the school district, not the county, I don’t have any control over that.”
Nickels did mention another article Seehafer News had written mentioning County Executive Bob Ziegelbauer, who said two months ago:
“This is a conservative budget,” Ziegelbauer said. “The bottom line is that the taxes for an individual property throughout the county, the typical individual property owner, will go down a fraction.”
But when a resident sent a copy of their tax bills to Seehafer News, it showed county property taxes went up about 4.1%.
Nickels was saying he was not the only person who said that tax bills shouldn’t go up.
He also says he has nothing against Ziegelbauer and knows how to write a budget better than anyone.
One of the biggest increases was the Manitowoc School District taxes, which went up 46% and allowed them to spend above the state-imposed revenue cap.
Nickels explains:
“Again, I have no control over the school district,” he explained. “I wasn’t thinking of the school district because I don’t have control over them. I didn’t even know what their numbers would be. And shame on me as a citizen, too, that I didn’t even realize that there were actually two referendums on this tax bill. One is from three years ago that we approved, and one is from last April that the voters approved.”
But he says the average increase for the city’s tax bill went up about 5-6%, about $70 more per resident.
He says inflation is a problem, but:
“I’ll argue that you will get great services next year,” he said. “Not a single service is cut. We have, for the first time in a long time, a full workforce. We just announced yesterday that we are hiring our 65th police officer. We haven’t been at full staff in the police department for a long time.”
Other things the city tax bills would do for the city include making improvements to the Lincoln Park Zoo and a new roof for the Rahr-West Museum.
You can read the original story to see why Nickels responded.
