La Crosse city council president Dickinson on doubling stormwater utility bill, tearing down Hogan and hiring city admin

La Crosse City Council president, Tamra Dickinson, in the WIZM studio for La Crosse Talk on details in potentially doubling residents’ stormwater utility bill, complaining about traffic and parking, and updates on the tearing down of the Hogan site and hiring a city administrator.

La Crosse Talk airs weekdays at 6-8 a.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk wherever you get your podcasts.

The big topic of the show is on the council’s agenda Thursday, where it could vote to double the stormwater utility bill — which could go from $54 a year to $118. Dickinson talks about what the utility is and why the sudden rise in cost. We also discussed how residents can get, basically, a tax break on that bill through rain gardens and rain barrels — and the city his hosting a workshop on that this month.

Before that, however, we vented about traffic and parking a bit, and Dickinson talked about added police enforcement in the city due to what basically amounts to people drag racing down different stretches of roads. 

We also quickly talked about the council’s work on zoning changes and other things in bringing down the La Crosse School District’s Hogan Administrative, where a new elementary school will go up in two years, and we got an update on the council working group’s study of hiring a city administrator.