May 24, 2019 – West Bend, WI – The City of West Bend is pleased to announce that Menards three-year property tax assessment challenge has ended.
Menards has withdrawn its case that had been scheduled to go to the circuit court in June 2019.
“West Bend has been a leader in combating the dark store theory,” said City of West Bend Mayor Kraig Sadownikow. “I am proud of our city council and staff for their resistance to buckle to the big box pressure to accept a settlement offer. Any type of settlement would have caused a tax shift to other city property taxpayers. This was unacceptable in my opinion.”
“Our City Assessors take great pride in their work and establish fair and equitable assessed values,” said City of West Bend Administrator, Jay Shambeau. “The cancellation of this lawsuit affirms the fact the City of West Bend assessments were proper and fair all along. The residents and property owners in West Bend should find peace in knowing our city staff work hard to establish uniform and law-based assessments on all property assessments.”
Mayor Sadownikow now calls on the Wisconsin State Legislature, “to have intestinal fortitude to adopt statewide legislation which closes the dark store loophole thereby preventing these frivolous and costly lawsuits from reoccurring in the future.”
If the store pays less the public pays more? Why? Because of the greed and gluttony of our government. They can’t stop taxing. They’ll never stop. They take take take.
Maybe Menards realized the legal bill for this challenge would be too great while the city of West Bend would continue forward while using tax payer funded employees/attorneys. I imagine that soon I may be reading a follow up story about Menards moving out of the mayors self proclaimed “proper and fair all along” city, to an adjoining lower tax area. Then the mayor and his administration can drive by an empty store with its missing employees, sales tax revenue AND property taxes.
You’re onto something, Rich. Those were my thoughts as well. So on top of an empty Boston Store and Shopko, we could now have an empty Menards. And with e-commerce being the consumers choice more and more, these buildings will sit empty for a long, long time.