Well, it’s finally done. After months of speculation and uncertainty, “Deep Thought,” the abandoned boat that washed upon the rocky shores near McKinley Beach in October of last year, finally sold after a two week auction period run by Milwaukee County. The final sale price? A mere $2,525, a far cry from the $20,000 the county was hoping to gain from the sale. The boat was sold to Jeff Piller, owner of All-City Towing, the same company that pulled the boat from the lake back in May.
Officials previously said that taxpayers will need to cover whatever remains from the $20,000 the county needed to pay to remove the boat from Lake Michigan back in May. With the $2,525 sale, the remaining costs associated with the boat’s removal sits at $17,475, or about $0.02 for every inhabitant of the county.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
But what might $2,525 be useful for in the county budget? The answer is, not much.
The 2025 capital budget of Milwaukee County features 54 line items for 12 different county departments, with the grand total reaching over $110 million. The median cost of a line item in said budget is $579,120. The cheapest line item in the capital budget is a new sprinkler system in the county’s Criminal Justice Facility, which is reported to cost $9,820.
But what about the debt? Surely the sale will help the county pay off some of the money it’s borrowed. Well yes, it might, but not to a very large extent.
Milwaukee County’s debt service for the year 2025 sits at $91,723,375, meaning that the county will pay that amount of principal and interest to various lenders by the end of the year. The large debt is accumulated by the county borrowing money to fund a wide variety of projects (roads, buildings, parks etc).
That huge number spread over an entire year translates to $174.51 per minute. That means Deep Thought’s sale price of $2,525 will cover about 14 minutes and 28 seconds of the county’s debt service.
This, obviously, is not a lot of money to the county; however, officials continue to hold out hope that a donor steps forward to possibly help offset the cost for the county.
“While the final bids did not reach the desired amount, [the sale] does create an opportunity to a generous donor to help offset the costs and support a positive outcome for the community,” a spokesperson for Milwaukee County said in a statement. The winner of the auction was Jeff Piller, the owner of All City Towing, the outfit that finally handled the boat’s removal this spring. He’s said he plans to cut up parts of the boat to sell off for charity and that he is in talks with county officials to potentially contribute proceeds from sales back to the county.
