Residents Will See $0 Increase in School Taxes

Business Director Scot Ecker made it plain in presenting the latest version of the Muskego-Norway School District budget for 2012-13 Monday night.

"No one should be paying any more on their tax bill than they did last year," he told the School Board.

That's because the board on Monday approved a $33.1 million property tax levy that's the zero-dollar increase from 2011-12. And that levy was 1.2 percent less than the previous year.

This marks the first time that district had held or lowered its levy for two consecutive years since 1996 and 1997, Ecker said. The big difference from then and now is that the district saw increases in state aid in the mid-1990s.

As recently as July, after seeing state aid projections in late June. That number was as at the beginning of the year.

Ecker told Patch at its last board meeting the district’s state aid was projected to only drop $200,000. While that’s not an insignificant amount, Ecker said the district had originally projected it would lose $1.5 million in state aid.

He noted, however, that while the levy will remain the same as last year, that no guarantee that the property tax rate won't change.

"I'd prefer to talk about the levy and not the levy rate, because even though the rate may go up, with equalized values in the city going down, there shouldn't be a change in the dollar amount on the tax bill," Ecker explained.

Some board members took issue with the reinstatement of $70,000 into the building budgets, and it was ultimately removed. However, the board did approve retoring funding for two "placeholder" spots for full-time teachers.

The budget was approved for publication Monday night, but actual state aid numbers will not be certified until Oct. 15. The annual meeting to present the budget to the public and formally adopt it will be held Oct. 29.