THERE ARE LIMITS TO SEWER SOCIALISM.

In Milwaukee, the authorities understand that streetlights are productive assets.

The City of Milwaukee is ready to implement a new street light fee.

Approved as part of the city’s 2021 budget, the Department of Public Works says it will be part of the municipal services bill people will receive starting next quarter.

The charge is $1 per linear foot for a property’s street frontage, or the shorter street side for a corner property.

The average household should owe around $10 per quarter.

Time to update the Community Chest card?

I leave it to people more versed in the minutiae of municipal finance to determine whether this street light charge is a user fee or a new assessment on a property tax.  I wonder, though, what balance the taxing authorities might strike between taxing road access, which is what the Monopoly assessment, or a similar sort of quarterly frontage charge to property owners is, and taxing road use, which is what excise taxes on tires and gasoline (and there has to be a way of metering battery use) do, if incompletely, and what those miles-travelled taxes also intend to do.