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High taxes hamper Milwaukee growth
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The city of Milwaukee has a real opportunity to turn its business climate around and begin attracting new businesses to the region.
Unfortunately this opportunity lies in the hands of the governor, state legislators and Milwaukee County government officials, who believe the key to reinvigorating the city lies merely in its marketing, not in actually improving its business climate as a whole.
Milwaukee has a bright future if it can capitalize on the opportunity it has to get back on track. For the first time since the 1970s, the city’s population is growing, but it has a lot of work to do to.
Lowering the city and state tax burden is the key to successful redevelopment of not only the city of Milwaukee, but the state of Wisconsin. In 2007, the state and local tax burden together was 12.3 percent, giving Wisconsin the seventh-highest tax rate in all 50 states.
Milwaukee’s property taxes rank among the highest in the nation, and according to a study conducted in 2000, a family of four from Milwaukee faced the third-highest taxes in the nation. From a non-business standpoint, the thought of paying exorbitant taxes and sending your children to Milwaukee Public Schools is not all that appealing.
It is no wonder new businesses are reluctant to make their home in Milwaukee. The tax burden here simply makes both the city and the state an undesirable place to do business.
A decreased tax burden will make Milwaukee competitive once again. It may seem unrealistic to talk of tax cuts as the state runs a deficit, but if the tax burden remains as high as it is, the state will not be bringing in any tax money anyway, as fewer businesses — and eventually people — will be left to tax.
Milwaukee officials seem more focused on selling the city with marketing attempts than by enacting any real improvements in the business climate. While development groups like the “Milwaukee Seven” are well-intentioned, they merely market aspects of the city almost every other major urban area in the country has, i.e. airports, railroads, etc.
Tax rates are Milwaukee’s biggest hurdle, but the city needs to learn to stop creating obstacles for private investors to redevelop areas of the city. On March 9, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an article about the proposed development of 84 acres of the vacant Tower Automotive facility. This is the biggest industrial site in the city, yet it sits abandoned even though private investors purchased the property last year with hopes of installing “four new businesses” as well as “two industrial businesses” and a possible scrap recycling center.
According to the article, a lawyer representing the investors claims the city bureaucracy “turned on us” a few months after the purchase and barred them from utilizing the facility. City representatives counter that the investors were “headed in a different direction than was initially indicated.”
This is another example of how Milwaukee drives away potential development. Instead of doing everything they can to facilitate private investors and redevelopment of unused industrial land — which the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel calls “one of the city’s biggest economic opportunities” — the city finds ways to make it as tough as possible for the investors.
In an Aug. 30, 2007 blog post on Milwaukee’s Small Business Times website, Christopher Carter, a local CEO, compares Milwaukee’s business development community to that of Texas. He said, “The folks in [Texas’] offices of Business Development and others went above and beyond anything I have ever encountered in the state of Wisconsin.”
In comparison, he said he had to deal “with the hassles of no callbacks, standing in lines with an uneducated person who felt I was bothering her and asking too many questions before she was to go on her cigarette break” in Milwaukee.
With Milwaukee’s uncompetitive high tax rates, it cannot afford to lose businesses due to additional city bureaucracy that creates unnecessary obstacles. At the very least, Milwaukee needs to be much more aggressive in courting investors and business owners. It should not be, as Milwaukee-based Bucyrus International Inc. CEO Tim Sullivan said in a Journal Sentinel article, “like bouncing off the wall trying to get someone to talk to.”
Joe Trovato (jtrovato@wisc.edu) is a sophomore majoring in journalism.
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Joe,
It’s bigger than taxes guy. Taxes are way down the list in terms of the salient issues hindering economic and workforce development. The Twin Cities tax higher than Milwaukee, yet it is ED Nirvana. Boston is higher taxed….and so on.
You know what, Joe and all other tax-whiners; if the Bush tax cuts worked, we wouldn’t be in a recession right now.
Here’s the truth: if you give the rich money, they don’t re-invest it. They stick it in a foreign stock market and make money. They don’t give a damn about America, they give a damn about their cheap-ass ways.
Same goes for the high tax business climate in Milwaukee: shut up! There are advantages to having business in an urban center, think about it. For those advantages, you have to pay a premium.
Is there a reason why they’re the Milwaukee Bucks, not the Beloit Bucks?
I think you can blame the recession on the liberals who forced lenders to drop those nasty discriminatory practices of only lending money to people who they thought would be able to pay it back. Lend to everyone who wants to borrow is the only “fair” thing to do, right?
I guess poverty, crime, lack of education and gentrification don’t matter huh??? Maybe if the these businesses invested in these areas, they would be welcomed with open arms…Instead, they come to better themselves and not the community the company is located in. Maybe thats why peole were upset when Halliburton moved to Dubai from the U.S., but get to eat at the table of the American taxpater.
Hey! Beloit got mentioned! w00t! BTW, not every rich guy spends his money elsewhere.
@10:11,
You could not possibly be more wrong.
How is it that every time some article like this comes out I can perfectly predict what the liberal response will be? Oh right taxes are good? What about the poor? BLAH BLAH. Seriously you sociology majors need a life.
You think taxes are bad now? Just wait until the bills start to come due for the glorious retirement benefits of the public employees.
I couldn’t agree more Joe. Bringing in more business means more prosperity for the region as a whole, which in turn leads to educational improvement, infrastructure redvelopment, etc. The liberals think that there can be a quick fix like simply putting more money in education, crime, or welfare programs, etc. The change comes in its overall economic improvement of the city by empowering people through jobs and workforce development. Can’t do any of that if the high taxes are driving every business away.