Medford school tax rate $5.42, a drop of 10.7%

The tax rate for the Medford Area Public School District will be lower this year than originally projected and continue the decline in recent years.

At Monday’s school board meeting, board members formally approved the budget with $33,719,803 in total expenses. Finance Director Audra Brooks explained that while she had to use some Federal grant dollars to balance the budget, the district did not use as much as originally anticipated. The district’s tax levy to cover the local portion of the budget is $5.947 million. This is up slightly compared to last year’s tax levy, however growth in the school district allowed the local rates to continue to drop.

Board members set the tax rate at $5.42 per $1,000 of equalized value. This is down from the projected tax rate of $5.52 per $1,000 of equalized value estimated at the annual meeting in August. This compares to the final school tax rate approved last fall of $6.07 per $1,000 of equalized value.

“This is good news for taxpayers,” Brooks said of the 10.7% drop in tax rates. The school portion of property taxes on a home valued at $150,000 of equalized value will be about $813 compared to $910.50 last year a savings of $97.50 to district taxpayers.

The school district rate is just one part of the property tax bill which also includes levies from the county, technical college, state and local municipality. This may be further impacted by the assessment ratio of each municipality which reflects the difference between the locally assessed value compared to the equalized value of property as determined by the state. Equalized value is used for taxing entities that cross municipal lines.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, the statewide average tax rate for all school districts last year was $8.64 per $1,000 of equalized value.

During the finance meeting that was held prior to the school board meeting, board member Steve Deml questioned how Medford compared to other districts in regard to the operational expenses in their local tax levy. He noted that other districts had passed referendums which would impact their tax levies and as a result comparing Medford’s levy with no referendum debt to those districts isn’t comparing like numbers.

Brooks noted that there are a number of districts that passed referendums to exceed revenue caps for operational expenses which also factors into the tax rates.

Brooks said one of the factors that impacts the local levy is the student enrollment numbers which is based on not only the actual student count, but also a percentage of the students taking part in the district’s summer school program and .6 of the enrollment in prekindergarten programs. Based on all these numbers Brooks said the district enrollment is down slightly with the three year rolling average at 2071 compared to last year’s three-year average of 2074. The district is able to utilize a declining enrollment exemption of $30,000 to reduce the impact of the enrollment change.