Public commenter urges Marathon County to require taxpayer ROI in TIF reviews

Peter Weinshank, a public commenter from Edgar, told the Extension Education and Economic Development Committee that the county's current Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) review process does not give taxpayers sufficient protection.

"I call on this committee to rewrite the resolution to require the finance director to factor in taxpayer return on investment as our criteria for voting on TIF proposals," Weinshank said during the public comment period, urging the committee to change the County Board resolution under review.

The committee's finance director, Sam, responded that a formal ROI calculation is possible but depends on what benefits the county chooses to count. "There is a way depending on what it is that's being considered as ROI," Sam said, adding that some TID purposes, such as environmental remediation or blight mitigation, have nonfiscal returns that are hard to express as a dollar figure.

Sam reminded the committee that joint review boards (JRBs) discuss project performance and timelines at annual meetings and that not all JRB meetings required votes: "There are also 40 TIDs within 18 municipalities within Marathon County," Sam said, noting there were 13 joint review board meetings last year but only two that required substantive votes beyond routine filings.

The finance director noted an example of a recent TID closure: when the city of Wausau closed a TID in December 2025, Marathon County received a distribution of $257,238 as its share of the surplus. "So we received a check from them for $257,238," Sam said.

Committee members who spoke agreed ROI calculations can be subjective, particularly when a TID's stated goals focus on environmental or public-health outcomes rather than direct tax-base growth. One member said the package of questions in the Department of Revenue's TIF manual provides a starting point but that the county resolution (R36-25) may lack precise direction on how the finance director should weigh taxpayer benefit.

The County Board is scheduled to review the resolution in August; Weinshank asked this committee to recommend a rewrite to require an explicit taxpayer-ROI factor in future votes. The committee did not take formal action on that request at the meeting; Sam and other members said staff could develop calculation approaches if the board provides clearer direction on which outcomes to count.