Grandstands Should Stay at the Fairgrounds
I'm like just about everyone in 2026, I've hit "subscribe" on a lot of things over the years. One place I subscribe but don't really participate is YouTube. Now I get notifications of various videos and live sessions. One thing that seems to hit my feed is live streams on YouTube for meetings in an adjoining county where I own land and farm but do not reside. Some of the meetings are interesting, particularly the drainage board and plan commission.
Last week I had a notification that caught my attention: Special Meeting of County Council. Who can resist a "Special Meeting"?
I started listening, and the topic was approving a new county-wide wheel tax rate. The county roads in this county are not great, regardless of what the council members say in their discussions, especially the gravel roads. Years of minimal maintenance have led to roadways with berms along the sides that prevent water from entering the side ditches. That, coupled with a lack of gravel replacement, causes real challenges with road conditions.
Unfortunately, the wheel tax wasn't meant to add funds for road maintenance. It was meant to replace funds the county will be losing from both state and federal sources, a fact I learned from listening to the broadcast. Like many of these meetings, there were no hard numbers, just a lot of estimates: "We think we will lose this amount in the end" was said several times.
The meeting itself was narrowly focused, and rightly so, it was called specifically to approve the ordinance. I wouldn't expect a broader discussion of road maintenance in that setting. But the wheel tax exists because of a funding shortfall tied to the roads, and the conversation never made that connection. It stayed entirely about revenue replacement, disconnected from what the money is failing to fix.
The main topic of discussion was a $25 wheel tax for commercial vehicles. One council member was insistent that $25 would be a burden on taxpayers, especially in light of bonds already approved for a new jail. They were firm that they had a duty to help limit taxes. I understand and appreciate that position, but they were arguing over a $20 increase, and only for commercial vehicles. In the end, the council settled on $25 for commercial vehicles and $15 for farm commercial vehicles, a compromise that grew out of their original push to bring all commercial rates down to $15.
A couple of days after watching the meeting, I realized what was happening. It was grandstanding, an attempt to say to constituents, "Look, I'm fighting to keep your taxes low." But were they? They were fighting a wheel tax increase that applied to commercial vehicles only.
For comparison, my own farm semi runs $1,400 a year to register, so the extra $20 is the kind of thing I'd only notice while looking at the total, not the kind of thing that keeps anyone up at night. But it made for a good fight at the podium.
Watching this made me think about how easy it is to grandstand on the small, visible thing while the real problem sits untouched. Twenty dollars makes for a good fight at the podium. Pothole ridden, wash boarded, berm-choked gravel roads don't, because there's no single vote or number attached to them, just years of neglect.
It's a small thing, but it's made me pay closer attention to what gets fought over out loud versus what gets quietly ignored.