County to appraise seized lot in Wausau

By Kevin O’Brien

One of the tax-delinquent properties recently seized by Marathon County will be appraised to help county board members decide if they want to sell the lot for residential redevelopment or hold onto it in case Marathon Park in Wausau expands to the south.

At Tuesday’s meeting of the Human Resources, Finance and Capital Committee, members voted to have an appraisal done on the vacant lot at 1105 West St., Wausau, which is located south of Marathon Park and east of the Highway Department shop. In between the parcel and Marathon Park is the old Wausau Iron Works building.

Under the county’s current ordinance, parcels seized due to tax delinquencies need to be presented to all of the county’s department heads to see if they see any potential value in the county retaining ownership.

In this case, Parks and Recreation director Jamie Polley expressed some possible interest in using the property for overflow parking if a new ice arena is built down the street from the corner of South 17th Avenue and West. The Highway Department shop located at that intersection is slated to be relocated, but if that doesn’t happen in the near future, Polley said the ice arena could be built further to the east on vacant land that used to contain a cold storage building.

Polley said the West Side Master Plan approved by the board in 2022 calls for potentially developing the land along West Street into park facilities, including a new ice arena, grass fields and relocated pickleball courts.

“When I look at these parcels, usually none of them pertain to a park or a vision that we have, but this one kind of stuck out because of its adjancy to West Street,” she said. “With that longterm plan, that area could be redeveloped.”

However, a Supreme Court decision from a case in Hennepin County, Minn., and a new state law has made it clear that the county must sell any tax-foreclosed properties for fair market value and pay the original owner any money left over after the tax debt, penalities and fees are covered.

County clerk Kim Trueblood said the parcel’s assessed value is $34,100, and the amount of back taxes, interest and penalities owed is $26,151, so the former owner could be owed around $8,000, depending on the appraised value.

If the board decides to retain the property after determining its appraised value, county administrator Lance Leonhard said the county would have to essentially “buy” the property from itself and pay the previous owner what is owed under the new law.

“We can’t just keep it for our own use” without compensating the former owner, he explained.

Once the appraised value comes in, Leonhard said the county board could still decide to sell the property using Wisconsin Surplus, an online auction being used to sell other recently seized properties.

Supervisor Gayle Marshall noted that the county board has determined that one of its priorities is to redevelop tax-foreclosed properties and other surplus land into residential developments.

Supervisor Ann Lemmer questioned if anyone had spoken to the city of Wausau about the housing possibility. Trueblood said the city was informed of the property’s availability, but it did not respond.

Polley said she’s not recommending that the county keep the parcel as an “absolutle necessity,” but she wanted to bring up her ideas before it was sold.

The property, which is located on the north end of a residential neighborhood, is currently empty except for some tractor-trailers visible on satellite images.

Under state law, Puerner said the county has 270 days to decide what it wants to do with the foreclosed parcel. That countdown started on Sept. 25, when the lot was seized along with several others using a legal procedure called “in rem,” which allows the county to pursue several tax-delinquent properties in a single court filing.

At the HRFC’s meeting previous meeting on Nov. 11, Leonhard told supervisors that the county has seen a significant reduction in the number of tax-delinquent parcels in just the past month. The county has been paid $500,000 in back taxes and $9,000 in special assessements, he noted. Past-due notices have also been sent to about 1,110 property owners who owe taxes, according to Leonhard.

“The long and short of it is people are paying, as one would hope and expect,” he said.