County board made the wrong decision on highway department

To the Editor:

The Oneida County Board has debated what to do with the old Oneida County Highway Shop for more than a decade. It’s starting to look as though it may have passed on a chance for a silk purse in favor of mending a sow’s ear.

It’s interesting that your August 20, 2024 article “Highway Department Facing 9.5M Three-Year Shortfall” was published on nearly the tenth anniversary of the Board deliberating on whether to sell the existing highway shop and build a new one on a vacant 35-acre parcel of county property. As others may recall, back then the county board received an offer from Kwik Trip to buy the existing highway shop. Ultimately, in 2015 the board voted 10-9 to reject Kwik Trip’s offer and instead patch up the old shop. At least one board member who advocated selling and rebuilding took a mighty beating in the press. No need to mention his name, or the publication that pilloried him.

The recent article prompted me to look for information on the Kwik Trip offer. I located an article from the Rhinelander Star Journal from August 22, 2014 on the topic. 

That article stated that, at that time, it was estimated that a new facility could be built for $6 to $14 million dollars. It was also reported that Kwik Trip was prepared to pay $2.3 million for the old facility. Using the average cost of $10 million to rebuild, that means that the county could have had a brand-new facility for $7.7 million dollars.

Your August 2024 article reports “In addition, (Oneida County Finance Director Tina Smigielski) wrote, the highway department facility is outdated and in need of significant repairs totaling an estimated $10.8 million over the next three years.” 

That’s in addition to what’s already been spent on the old facility. If memory serves, the board has already spent several million dollars on the old highway shop over the last decade. That means that, instead of building a brand-new facility with decades of life, the board chose a path that seems to be leading to the county spending millions of dollars more than the cost of a new shop propping up the old one.

The old shop will turn 70 years old in 2025. Taxpayers should wonder how many more years that old shop will last, and how many more millions will be pumped into it before it has to be abandoned. 

After all, nothing lasts forever. Not even the patience of the taxpayers.

Tom Wiensch