Where's Your Acre?
Lasee’s Notes
School is out. The weather is warm. Summer is finally here and that means its time for many families to pull out the tent, find the cooler, grab the bug spray, pack the bags, and hit the road for the annual vacation.
We are lucky. We don’t have to travel far from our homes to find an abundance of outdoor activities to enjoy. With nearly a hundred state parks, forests, recreation areas, and trails, Wisconsin is the perfect summer vacation destination. Of course, these opportunities don’t come cheap. Taxpayer dollars are spent on improving, maintaining, and expanding our public lands.
The Stewardship fund, the state’s land purchasing program, spends $60 million in borrowed money on land acquisition every year. That’s over $800 million in land purchases for the 20 year program. More than 225,000 acres have been purchased already. That’s a lot of land and a whole lot of debt.
The federal government owns nearly 2 million acres in Wisconsin, for national parks, forests, and trust lands. The DNR owns more than a million acres (that they know of), and the state’s 72 counties own nearly 2.4 million acres for the same purposes.
In the 18 counties which make up the northern part of the state one acre out of every three is government owned. In fact, publicly owned forests, parks, trust lands, fisheries, recreational areas, and preserves add up to nearly 6 million acres – 16% of the state’s total acreage.
Add in the land under public buildings, schools, court houses, universities, etc (but not underneath roads), and the figure jumps to 22%. So more than one out of every five acres is government owned in Wisconsin. That’s more than one acre for every man, woman, and child.
Wouldn’t you like to be able to pick your acre? Think what a prime piece of lake front state forest land in Minocqua would be worth.
I’m not saying we should sell off our public lands. I use our public parks system and the trails frequently. They are a valuable resource that makes our state unique.
The question is how much is enough? How much land should the governments in Wisconsin own? Thirty percent, fifty percent, eighty percent, one hundred percent? Where do we draw the line? I think we should draw a line, instead of the current policy of more and more and more.
Remember as the government buys more land, there is less private land on the tax rolls. Meaning we pay more in our property taxes to make up the difference.
Instead of buying more and more land, we should decide how much is enough and then go about upgrading the land we own. Sell that which has less public value and replace it with land that has higher public value. In Wisconsin we must change the way we view our government. It cannot just be more and more, which is the current way that it is.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lasee’s Notes is a weekly column by Representative Frank Lasee, 2nd Assembly District, covering events in the Legislature and statewide.
School is out. The weather is warm. Summer is finally here and that means its time for many families to pull out the tent, find the cooler, grab the bug spray, pack the bags, and hit the road for the annual vacation.
We are lucky. We don’t have to travel far from our homes to find an abundance of outdoor activities to enjoy. With nearly a hundred state parks, forests, recreation areas, and trails, Wisconsin is the perfect summer vacation destination. Of course, these opportunities don’t come cheap. Taxpayer dollars are spent on improving, maintaining, and expanding our public lands.
The Stewardship fund, the state’s land purchasing program, spends $60 million in borrowed money on land acquisition every year. That’s over $800 million in land purchases for the 20 year program. More than 225,000 acres have been purchased already. That’s a lot of land and a whole lot of debt.
The federal government owns nearly 2 million acres in Wisconsin, for national parks, forests, and trust lands. The DNR owns more than a million acres (that they know of), and the state’s 72 counties own nearly 2.4 million acres for the same purposes.
In the 18 counties which make up the northern part of the state one acre out of every three is government owned. In fact, publicly owned forests, parks, trust lands, fisheries, recreational areas, and preserves add up to nearly 6 million acres – 16% of the state’s total acreage.
Add in the land under public buildings, schools, court houses, universities, etc (but not underneath roads), and the figure jumps to 22%. So more than one out of every five acres is government owned in Wisconsin. That’s more than one acre for every man, woman, and child.
Wouldn’t you like to be able to pick your acre? Think what a prime piece of lake front state forest land in Minocqua would be worth.
I’m not saying we should sell off our public lands. I use our public parks system and the trails frequently. They are a valuable resource that makes our state unique.
The question is how much is enough? How much land should the governments in Wisconsin own? Thirty percent, fifty percent, eighty percent, one hundred percent? Where do we draw the line? I think we should draw a line, instead of the current policy of more and more and more.
Remember as the government buys more land, there is less private land on the tax rolls. Meaning we pay more in our property taxes to make up the difference.
Instead of buying more and more land, we should decide how much is enough and then go about upgrading the land we own. Sell that which has less public value and replace it with land that has higher public value. In Wisconsin we must change the way we view our government. It cannot just be more and more, which is the current way that it is.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lasee’s Notes is a weekly column by Representative Frank Lasee, 2nd Assembly District, covering events in the Legislature and statewide.
posted by John Q Cheesehead | 12:59 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home