Municipal Services Program Bill Gets Boost from Senator Marklein

Municipal Services Program Bill Gets Boost from Senator Marklein

October 13, 2015

Two weeks ago Council President, Eileen Nickels and Vice President, Barb Daus and I had the pleasure to meet privately with UW President, Ray Cross and Senator Howard Marklein. President Cross and Senator Marklein were both in town for a listening session about the future of the UW system (Council President Nickels and I attended that as well). Prior to the listening session, they toured some local sites to talk about economic development. One of those visits was to a company started by UW students, called Tenex. Tenex is housed in City Hall (more about Tenex and the City’s maker-space at a later date).

Of course once we knew these important folks were going to be in our building, we grabbed some of their time. The first part of our discussion revolved around economic development, and the importance of certain university programs to our local and state economic development efforts.

The second part of our conversation had to do with municipal services program. The municipal services program is monetary support that comes from the State of Wisconsin to cities that host major state institutions, such as UW-Platteville. The program helps to cover extra costs incurred by host cities for police, fire and emergency medical services. Unfortunately, these payments have shrunk over the last decade, resulting in a greater tax burden borne by city residents. Platteville’s payment under the program decreased from 82% of the adjusted gross entitlement in 2000, to just 42% in 2015.

Senator Marklein listened to our concerns, asked good questions and notified us the next day that he had signed on as a cosponsor to AB350, which would restore the full municipal services payment over the course of the next four budget cycles. We are grateful for his leadership on this issue. He has a tough job to do. There are a lot of worthy requests for funds, and we weren’t sure where this would land in terms of his priorities.

UWP is very important part of our community. They will have our support regardless of what happens with this bill. However, if the bill is passed, it will be much easier to fiscally balance the demands that hosting UWP places on our community.