School board approves property tax levy

With an operational referendum on the horizon, the board of education met Monday, Oct. 28 to formally approve the School District of Rhinelander’s budget and tax levy for 2024-2025.

The vote came during a special meeting convened immediately after the annual meeting of the electors.

During that meeting, business director Bob Thom provided an overview of the budget as well as the district’s property tax and state aid history. He also touched on the district’s enrollment history and how it has impacted the revenue limit.

The tax levy was set at $26,577,654. 

The total budget is $38,281.502.

In the early 2000s, the district had over 3,000 enrolled students, now there are approximately 2,300, Thom explained.

“For the last four or five years, we've been around that 2,350 mark,” he said. “This year, our three-year average is 2,335 students, and that gives us a revenue limit of $30,640,000. So we will have a revenue limit increase of $713,244. And as we've been talking about for a long time now, to operate the district with an increase of $713,000, it’s not working out very well. You can see going back the last 10 years, there's a revenue limit. Many years it’s gone down. A lot of years it's less than 1%. So we’re really not getting the revenue we need.”

Similarly, the percentage of the school budget that comes from the tax levy vs. state aid has also changed dramatically.

In 2005-2006, 57 percent of the school budget was covered by property taxes and 43 percent was covered by state aid.

Today, district property taxpayers are burdened with 76 percent of the school budget while state aid covers only 24 percent.

Thom also noted that the equalized value of the property in the district has increased. 

“When your property value goes up, your tax rate goes down,” he noted.

In 2023-24, total equalized value of property in the district was listed at $3,309,510,142. For 2024-25, that figure rose to $3,575, 554.131.

With a tax rate of 7.43, the owner of a $100,000 home can expect to pay $743 in property taxes to the district, before the school  tax levy credit, compared to $730 a year ago.

According to information distributed at the meeting, the 7.43 mill rate is the district’s lowest in the last 40 years and has remained relatively consistent over the last few years. The 2023-23 tax rate was 7.30. A year earlier it was 7.34. In contrast, from 2013 to 2020 the tax rate was between 10.15 and 11.69. 

On Oct. 21, the board voted 8-1 to hold an operational referendum in April 2025. While the exact language to be placed on the ballot has yet to be determined, the request will be to exceed the revenue limit by $3 million per year in 2025-26 and 2026-27 and then $7 million in 2027-28 and 2028-29 when the current $4 million referendum expires.

According to a memo from Thom to the board, the 2023-24 school year ended with a deficit of $3.2 million which reduced the fund balance. 

“We cannot sustain this deficit level for three more years. We have made reductions for 2024-25 and have a deficit of $2.7 million budgeted,” Thom wrote. “There will be a new state budget starting in July of 2025. We expect some increase in school funding in that budget, although no guarantee. The $3 million referendum would get us back to a balanced budget and any new state funding would provide for increasing costs over the next four years. 

The referendum gives the district the authority to levy $3 million but the district does not have to levy all of the money if the budget picture improves, he noted.

Heather Schaefer may be reached at [email protected].