Consider the Levy

Jo Egelhoff writing at Fox Politics reminds us that at budget time you should always remember the levy:

If there’s nothing else you remember about your property taxes, remember this: It’s the tax levy, friend, the tax levy. (“Stupid” is memorable, but perhaps a little too harsh and Clinton-esque.)

An individual’s tax payments, are ultimately determined by two things:

1. Total tax levy required by the community
2. A property’s value, relative to the rest of the property in your community.

Given even these couple of numbers, the very best way to judge a community’s budget is to look at the increase in the TOTAL TAX LEVY. (well, I suppose in the history of the world, a decrease has been registered - somewhere!)...

At budget time, look for information about the increase in new construction in your community. This is really important and often a hard number to find in print.

Because unlike increases in value from reassessment of existing properties, new construction is real growth in a community. And if the TAX LEVY rises by less than the increase in new construction, then on average, an individual property owner’s taxes really are going down.

So remember the levy compare it to new construction.  Got it.  So how does my city, De Pere, stack up?

De Pere Unified School District passed a levy increase of 3.36%.
The City of De Pere passed a levy increase of 2.49%.
Brown County passed a levy increase of 2.5%.

OK, so what about new construction?  The Wisconsin Department of Revenue provides Net New Constrution figures for 2008-2009.  The report dated 8/14/09 shows that net new construction added 1.133% in De Pere.  For Brown County the number was 1.469%.

Seen in light of those net new construction numbers, the levy increases passed by De Pere City and Unified School District and by Brown County are even more disheartening.  And by Jo's rule of thumb above, taxes are increasing even faster than the levy percentages seem to indicate.