Property owners could be charged for street light usage in Wisconsin city

Marshfield, Wisconsin, is considering charging residents for their street lamp usage, as opposed to it being covered through taxation.

The city is attempting to comply with state tax levy limits and is looking to conduct a four-month study into how to properly charge property owners, businesses, and industrial facilities for their usage of street lights.

"What we want to do is take it off their taxes and make it a separate charge and again hopefully it'll be as fair as possible," said Steve Barg, city administrator. "We'll be very conscious as far as the residents compared to the businesses and make sure they're not paying more than their fair share," Barg added.

Currently, powering the city's street lights costs the local government about $250,000 per year. Authorities assured residents that the cost of the lights themselves are already built into existing taxation and they wouldn't be paying anything more.

The city planned to hire a financial adviser to conduct a study to determine pricing structure based on property type, and if approved, it would begin in October 2023.

"They'll try to figure out a way to divide the benefit most fairly and have to determine how much would they raise, how much would we raise, if we imposed certain charges on certain types of customers," Barg noted.

All input from the public is encouraged, the city administrator noted.

Charging residents for street light usage has become a trend in Wisconsin in recent years. In 2021, Milwaukee began charging residents $1 per linear foot of street frontage per year. For example, a property with 40 feet of street frontage is billed $40 annually, in four quarterly payments of $10.

Corner lots pay for only the shorter of their two street frontages.

Another Wisconsin city, Eagan, charges even more for the luxury of having illuminated streets.

The 2023 pricing structure includes $3.12 per single family home per quarter if using "Community Streetlights," and $8.52 per single family home per quarter if using "Neighborhood Streetlights."

More than 20 years ago, the Washington State Office of the Attorney General described a shift toward charging residents for street lights as due to cities and towns lacking "the authority to operate their street lighting as a utility or to impose a charge on the city's utility customers for the cost of furnishing street lighting."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!