How Brillion Schools factor into increased property taxes

Jan. 16, 2020

By David Nordby

The Brillion News

BRILLION – Brillion property taxpayers are seeing an increase on their bills this year.

That is in part due to a $432,387 increase in the 2019-2020 school levy from the Brillion School District.

“School property taxes across the state are going up by the most they’ve gone up in a long time,” Brillion Superintendent Dominick Madison said.

The school property tax levy had previously gone down each of the last five years, Madison said.

“It’s always kind of a balance of where it’s going to go up, so state spending goes up, local property taxes goes down, state spending goes down, local property taxes go up,” Madison said.

What the school levied went up by $432,387, a 12.53 percent increase, bringing the school’s 2019-2020 levy to $3,884,172.

“The state kind of tells us what we can do there and that’s what we did. Then the state apportions this dollar amount out to the different municipalities and then between them and the county, they apportion it out to all the property owners within their municipality,” Madison said.

That’s a key factor to why people see different amounts on their tax bill.

“(The number) gets divided out by other entities. It doesn’t get divided out by us, so some people were looking at a 20 percent increase in their school taxes. Some people were looking at a two percent. Every house has some different dynamics that are going to vary,” Madison said.

If the bill is different than the 12.53 percent that the school increased, that goes beyond the school district.

“If your levy is different than that, then that’s really a question for the local municipality,” Madison said. “We put it at 12.5 and then your municipality had to reassess your property values.”

Whether a person lives in a municipality with a TIF district impacts bills, too, he said.

“What you see levied on your property tax bill on behalf of the school district may be more, may be different because there are other things that the municipalities, mainly TIFs, can tack on,” Madison said. “I’m not in any way slamming TIFs … I’m just saying they do impact it.”

Madison said that everywhere there’s been a TIF, it has helped that municipality.

“But at the end of the day, someone still has to pay for it,” Madison said.

So, why did the Brillion school’s levy limit go up?

The $432,387 rise was due to a low revenue increase ($220,208), non-recurring exemptions ($160,133), state aids ($159,102) and community service ($500). A debt service decrease brought the total number down $107,556 leading to the $432,387 total.

Please see the complete article that details what went into each of those costs in the Jan. 16, 2020 edition of The Brillion News.