EDITORIAL: Navigating a voyage from Washington to Port Washington

Your tax dollars at work.

Come next spring, Port Washington residents will be able to look eastward to the lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor and use that expression, not as a pejorative comment on government waste, but as a point of pride.

By then, work is expected to be underway to restore the deteriorating 90-year-old structure that is an icon of a community defined by its enduring relationship with Lake Michigan. The work will be paid for mostly by every American taxpayer, rather than just city taxpayers.

That’s true because, against daunting odds, Port Washington has been chosen to receive a $2.2 million grant of federal money awarded by the State of Wisconsin that will cover most of the cost of repairing structural damage and painting the lighthouse. City officials were all but turning cartwheels over the grant approval when it was announced at last week’s Common Council meeting.

The lighthouse was not a source of civic gaiety before the grant came through. The city acquired the pierhead structure when the federal government put it up for offers in 2018. There was no purchase fee, but it came with a price tag, a big one—more than $2 million in deferred maintenance the city was obligated to pay for.

Port officials did the right thing; there was no way it would have been tolerable to have the lighthouse in the control of a private owner, which was a possibility. But their acquisition, though an aesthetic and emotional asset, was a fiscal liability.

The city basically could not afford the lighthouse. There was not enough money in the budget to even start working on the maintenance list. Meanwhile, the structure—the city’s official symbol—turned shabbier by the season as rust spread over its once white steel plates.

Grants were sought in hope of getting help to at least start the rehabilitation project, but without success. Then came that $2.2 million blockbuster.

It seemed to come out of the blue, but in fact it came out of what some politicians have demonized as the Washington, D.C. “swamp”—the government bureaucracy often disparaged for wasteful spending of taxpayers’ money.

The genesis of the funding that will restore the Port Washington lighthouse was in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in 2021. Most of the $1.2 trillion went to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The bureaucrats of that agency divided up the money and sent it to the states, including Wisconsin, where Madison bureaucrats decided how the state’s share would be spent.

The money was, of course, intended to be used by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation for transportation infrastructure, so how can $2.2 million of it be spent on the Port lighthouse?

The grants are awarded under the Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP), and in the fine print of the guidelines for grant applications is a category for preservation of historic buildings related to transportation.

Port Washington’s public works director, Rob Vanden Noven, had been leading the frustrating search for lighthouse funding. When he learned of what he called the “relatively obscure” TAP grant, he pounced. With help from City Engineer Roger Strohm, he wrote the grant application that was approved to restore the lighthouse, which is on the federal and state Registers of Historic Places and on navigational charts as an aid to waterborne transportation.

The grant will not cover the entire cost of project. City officials are hoping to have room in the next budget to include up to $600,000 to complete the restoration.

The lighthouse adds to the city’s remarkable success in improving its lakefront without burdening local taxpayers. The north breakwater was repaired and turned into what has become a visitor attraction as a scenic half-mile walkway to the lighthouse with federal funds provided in response to a persuasive appeal from Port officials. Grants sought by the city also paid for the conversion of the coal dock into the grand promenade of Coal Dock Park.

Though the anti-government grumblers may be loath to admit it, those federal and state tax dollars have done some fine work.