Brown County Moving Ahead With Sales Tax Bump For New Expo Center

Brown County taxpayers will again spend an extra half cent in sales taxes on purchases.

The Brown County Board of Supervisors approved the move Wednesday night. The half-cent measure goes hand in hand with a diversion of hotel room taxes that will help fund a $93 million expo center that will replace the aging Brown County Veterans Arena, built in 1958. Individual communities can now use room tax revenue to pay for local projects involving tourism.

The deal was contingent on approval from Green Bay’s City Council, which gave its OK on Tuesday. It was the last of six Brown County communities that needed to sign off on the plan.

Before his Tuesday vote, Green Bay Alderman Joe Moore said the new center is important to attract more investment into the Green Bay area, “whether they be developers, whether they be general workforce or whoever they may be. There are very few communities in the state of Wisconsin that can say that they just invested $220 million into themselves.”

County Executive Troy Streckenbach said besides the expo center being funded by the 10-percent room tax, the extra sales tax will go to infrastructure improvements, “such as our roads, addressing our jail overcrowding and paying down debt. And ultimately lowering our tax rate.”

“At the same time we tied that to building the new expo hall through the new room tax,” Streckenbach added.

The new tax structure will begin in January 2018.