Property taxes higher despite more private contractors

Like other homeowners, I recently got my property tax bill from the city of La Crosse. I was a bit surprised to see my bill had actually gone up by a few hundred dollars this year. I was surprised in part because of all the money the federal government provided to the city to recover from the pandemic. The city hasn’t spent all of the #25 million in American Rescue Plan Act the feds provided, but apparently it wasn’t used to provide tax relief. Much of what our property tax funds is for protective services. Providing police and fire protection is expensive, making up about one third of the spending in the city’s annual budget. City hall cites increased costs of wages and benefits as the biggest driver in city spending. But shouldn’t some wage costs be going down? The city, in recent years, has privatized more and more services that city employees used to provide. Much of the road work done in the city is done not by the Street Department, but by private companies the city hires. Even licensing your pet is now done not by city employees but by private contractors. It would seem that if we’re spending more to hire non-city employees to do work previously done by city employees, we should be seeing a decrease, not an increase, in our property tax bills.