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Tell City keeps getting handed bills it did not run up, starting with a wheel tax the state all but ordered. This page tracks the river town ledger: roads, the hospital, water lines, and the jobs worth protecting.
The state's 2025 road funding law ties new state road dollars to whether a city adopts a wheel tax. Tell City's council delayed one in August 2025 while it looked for alternatives, and by July 2026 local reporting called it likely. Add the 2026 gas tax holiday, which pulls over half a billion dollars from state and local road funds, and the pattern is plain: the state cuts ribbons, river towns get invoices.
When Public Policy Polling surveyed Indiana voters statewide in February 2026, in a poll commissioned by the Property Rights Alliance, 88 percent said they would rather see transportation money go to local road and bridge projects than to the Mid-States Corridor. Tell City's roads are exactly what the district says it wants funded.
Perry County Memorial is the county's only hospital, it runs the ambulance service, and it has stopped providing obstetric and delivery care. In July 2026 the hospital board and the county commissioners held a work session on hospital finances, and the commissioners appointed two of their own members to the board. I am not going to speculate past the public record. I am going to watch it closely, because rural hospital finance is a state policy problem wearing a local name.
Tell City is replacing lead water service lines with a 4.2 million dollar state loan through the state revolving fund. Brushy Hollow residents spent June 2026 documenting sewage backups from failing grinder pumps. And in April 2025 the Ohio neared 49 feet while the levee and the pump stations held. None of this is glamorous. All of it is what government is actually for.
After nearly 20 years and about 6 million dollars, River Road now connects the riverport straight to State Road 66, moving heavy trucks off downtown streets. It got done through an 80/20 state grant program: state money for a local priority, decided locally. That is the model, and river towns should be first in line for more of it.
Waupaca's Tell City foundry picked up work when the company idled plants elsewhere, and Webb Wheel is expanding with 28 new jobs after the county approved abatements with claw-back protections. Abatements should always come with strings that protect the public, and skilled trades here should never be an afterthought in Indianapolis.
What am I missing?
I have walked Tell City parades and met a lot of you at events. What I need now is the block by block list: the alley that floods, the grinder pump that fails, the bill that doubled. Tell me and it goes on the record.
Page last updated July 18, 2026.
