River News: Our View

It’s time to ask Oneida County some tough questions, and we’ll start with the biggest one: When are the overlords in the county courthouse on S. Oneida Avenue in Rhinelander going to start giving taxpayers and residents in the Lakeland area their fair share of county services, based on the amount of property taxes they pay?

The answer is: Don’t hold your breath. For decades the city of Rhinelander and its adjoining towns have all but sucked the tax blood out of our veins. If Oneida County was a horror movie — and we’re not too sure it isn’t — it would be called the Vampires of S. Oneida Avenue.

If they aren’t taxing us and shorting us of services, they are busy trying to dictate how we live our lives with oppressive rules and regulations, many of which the residents of Rhinelander don’t even have to abide by.

Just for starters on the fiscal side, the town of Minocqua alone provides about $4 million in property tax revenue to the county, the Lakeland area in whole much more. How much of that does everyone think we get back in the form of services?

For those answering “not much,” you get a ribbon. What do you want to bet that if some enterprising newspaper undertook an actual accounting of revenues versus services coming back this way, the net outflow to the Rhinelander area would shock the conscience of the most callous among us. Boris Karloff himself likely never dreamed of such a vast river of blood money.

On the regulatory side, the latest egregious example of the county’s unacceptable treatment of the Lakeland area was its refusal to deny the conditional use permit (CUP) for Kirk Bangstad’s Minocqua Brewing Company, and to give him more time. 

This despite Bangstad’s ongoing violations for a year and a half. This despite his failure to live up to his own agreements as conditions for his administrative review permit (ARP). This despite a well thought out and formulated recommendation from the town, written by Minocqua town chairman Mark Hartzheim, that articulated the substantial reasons why the CUP should be denied.

This despite another well reasoned presentation by county board member and Minocqua supervisor Billy Fried. 

Most of the details about this matter have been reported in this newspaper, but we’ll just note one fact that Fried raised.

That fact is, the county ordinance declares that “an applicant’s failure to demonstrate, by substantial evidence, that the application and all applicable requirements in this ordinance and conditions established by the county relating to the conditional use are or will be satisfied shall [emphasis added] be grounds to deny the conditional use permit.”

In fact, the committee had just revoked Bangstad ARP because of multiple violations and failure to live up to his word, all of which constituted substantial evidence he could not be trusted to live up to his CUP. 

The county attorney, Mike Fugle, obfuscated the code’s language, saying that evidence of failure to comply was just one reason to deny a permit, advice that contradicted the plain language of the ordinance that such evidence shall be grounds to deny.

As we previously reported, the county attorney went on to shut down the meeting, we believe illegally by ignoring parliamentary procedure and state law. But whatever the final legal judgement, make no mistake, this was a county attorney out to do whatever he could to make sure the committee that day would not deny that CUP. That means he made sure the zoning committee did not follow the county code. It means Fugle and ultimately the committee turned its back on the town and its residents.

The committee always makes a big deal about following town recommendations except in the rarest and most extreme circumstances — mostly when towns go rogue and stray from the county code — but apparently that doesn’t apply to the town of Minocqua. In this case, the town was pleading with the county to follow its own code, but the answer to that plea, which should resonate far and wide among law-abiding residents and business owners (some of whom have been shut down for far less) was: Drop dead.

It’s a familiar refrain broadcast this way from the county.

We must emphasize that we do not hold Fried, or members of the zoning committee at the meetings (committee chairman Scott Holewinski, or supervisors Mike Timmons or Bob Almekinder) responsible, though they have to be cited in the process, if any are issued. That’s because they were following legal advice, bad legal advice to be sure, but legal advice nonetheless.

They are solid public servants. No, the fault lays at the doorstep of the corporation counsel, who decided to swap principle for so-called legal strategy. That never turns out well for the people, only for lawyers, and it’s always sad when it happens.

The only thing the zoning committee supervisors are really guilty of is not having a stiff enough spine to resist Fugle’s advice. It speaks to a major issue in this country — the undue influence of attorneys, who often run government under the guise of giving legal advice that can’t be ignored. 

Well, lawyers love to lawyer, and so the county attorney ruled the day: The carnival barker sided with the snake oil salesman and conned the committee. The people of Minocqua and the rule of law were the losers.

All that said, no one should mistake the Bangstad situation as our only grievance against the county. It’s merely a quintessential example of how the county treats the people of the Lakeland area — as subjects to the royal kingdom housed under the Tiffany dome.  

We’ll get to the brass tacks in an upcoming series of articles, but here are a few short examples of what we are talking about.

First, we are old enough to remember, and so will other long-time residents, when Oneida County circuit court held regularly scheduled court sessions in Minocqua, saving many people with minor business before the court from always having to drive to Rhinelander.

And then, poof!, it was gone, just like that. Something about budget cuts, despite the fact that the Lakeland area’s contribution to the county’s tax base was significantly growing as a share of total revenues at the time. Funny how that happens!

Then, too, a few years back, the county came up with the bright idea to tax property owners an additional $1 million a year for 10 years to pay for county roads. They quickly scheduled a referendum. The thing is, the town of Minocqua doesn’t have any county roads, except for a short stretch of Hwy. J.

So the county essentially wanted the residents of Minocqua to cough up $250,000 a year to maintain a couple of miles of road. It would have been a massive subsidy to the rest of the county, particularly the Rhinelander area. They must have been laughing out loud in the county courthouse, at least until voters showed them they weren’t suckers and defeated the referendum.

Also a few years back, there was a major attempt to build a new highway department. As we editorialized then, a new highway department wasn’t needed, but — if they were going to build one — do you think proponents ever talked about relocating the department to the Lakeland area? Of course not, but one wonders why not, what with the growing movement to decentralize government offices and spread them around to redistribute power, infrastructure, and resources fairly.

Really, when you think about it, what services do we get from Oneida County anyway, other than snow plowing? Complaints have been lodged for years about the unequal flow of economic development dollars to the Rhinelander area, to cite just one more example. It’s time to do the math.

Actually, the only thing the county has generously provided is a zoning office. But don’t be fooled. That’s for the convenience of their staff, not residents. The zoning code is an overly restrictive ordinance that seeks to restrict property rights, and how nice of the county that the one county office it gives the Lakeland area is a regulatory and enforcement office. 

Gee, thanks.

Meanwhile, when a zoning matter comes before the county board — a rezoning in the Lakeland area or a proposed shoreland code change — county board supervisors from Rhinelander weigh in on matters they shouldn’t be talking about, much less voting about.

It’s even worse when supervisors who represent Rhinelander run their mouths and vote on matters related to the shoreland zoning code, which does not apply to the city of Rhinelander or to their constituents. It’s the perfect example of how Rhinelander wants to control the regulations and rules by which Lakeland area residents live their lives, just as they want to control the revenues and expenditures of Lakeland’s property tax dollars — all to the detriment of the Lakeland area. It’s time for an accounting. 

It’s time for the Vampire Reign to end.