Manitowoc County’s executive is explaining where the first year of sales tax revenue went.
Tyler Martell was on WOMT’s Be My Guest last week, where he explained that the county received $8 million in the first year after implementing the tax.
This year, the county budgeted to collect $8.15 million, but he estimates it could be closer to $8.5 million.
“The state doesn’t tell you how much sales tax your county actually collects,” he explained. “We had to budget based on a guesstimate based on other counties.”
The first year, that money went into the county’s general fund, which includes the sheriff’s office, the county clerk, clerk of courts, and other funds including Human Services.
“When we voted on it as a county board…it was under the pressure of we have this huge budget deficit in Human Services that we were not expecting,” he recalled.
While some of that was due to what Martell described as “some errors,” a majority of the issue was actually out of the County’s control.
“The costs are exploding in Human Services,” he stated. “And those are mandated costs that we really don’t have a say in whether we spend at the local level. They are coming from state regulations and state mandates.”
Last year, the county had a surplus from the county sales tax, which he said was used for less county borrowing, one of Martell’s goals in his presented 2027 county budget.
You can hear more about what County Executive Martell said of the process by listening to the entire Be My Guest episode on SeehaferPodcasts.com.
