Property Tax Increasing
Property tax collections in southeastern Wisconsin rose by 6.1% this year, the largest levy increase in the last five years, a new Public Policy Forum study shows.
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Property tax rates also could rise because the growth in property value is slowing due to the economy. In the past, rising levies have been cushioned by increasing property values, which have allowed municipal governments to decrease tax rates by drawing from an expanding tax base, the forum says.
Yeah! Especially with Exxon courageously holding the line on the price of petrrol.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 0655 hrs
And what does that have to do with property taxes, Keith?
How many people out there have had a 6.1% wage increase? You have sky high property taxes in Wisconsin and itr drives people out of their homes.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 0726 hrs
Yes, the Exxon comment shows some real intellectual depth. Nobody’s forcing you to buy products from Mobil my friend. Unfortunately, the organized crime syndicates that masquerade as public employee labor unions don’t offer taxpayers that same freedom. The demands for free health coverage, massive pensions, and mandatory sick days are sucked out of my family budget every year with the threat of confiscating my home if I don’t pay the full tab for all of the demands. It’s a tough, tough business when the public sector decides it needs more of our money to lavish on the privileged class.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 0726 hrs
Stagnant / falling property values have nothing to do with it. The property tax levy is the amount that all the various governmental organizations that get a line on your tax bill collectively decide they “need” in order to operate for that year. Each governmental entity just divides that amount by the total assessed value of the real property in their jurisdiction, multiplies the result by 1000, and that gives the mill rate—basically, the “share” of the pie that each property owner gets to pay.
Changes in property values relative to each other, or even a decline in the overall assessed value of property in a given jurisdiction, may have impacts on individual property owners, with some bills going up. But even in that situation, if the levy is stable, for each landowner with an increased bill, there should be someone whose bill goes *down,” because the size of the pie is fixed. And if the levy is stable, the math should actually work out so that any decrease in the assessed valuation is equalled by an inversely proportionate increase in the mill rate—which would result in no change to the net property tax take.
That’s not what’s happening here. The main problem isn’t a change in assessed valuation. It’s an increase in the size of the pie—primarily because the state no longer has a property tax freeze.
It is true that munis were getting away with raising the levy during flush economic times, and saying to their taxpayers that “we’re not raising taxes” because increasing property values would permit them to maintain steady mill rates. But at the end of the day, the property tax bill, in dollar terms, was still bigger than it was the year before. But now, with people feeling the pinch of gas prices and everything else, I think people are paying more attention to their property tax bills than they were before, too.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 0812 hrs
My last tax bill, due on Jan 1, 2008 was about $100 lower than the Jan 1, 2007 bill. I’m in Walworth County.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 0828 hrs
ditto #3
Yeah! Especially with Exxon courageously holding the line on the price of petrrol.
Exactly Keith… And when the price of gas goes up, families and individuals must make cuts and sacrifices because they have limited means. I’d like to see the government hold the line on spending in fairness to the taxpayers who as mentioned in post #3 face confiscation of their home if they don’t pay up.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 0924 hrs
Well the property owners need to step up to pay for the tax cuts
businesses are getting everywhere to stay in Wisconsin.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 0939 hrs
Gee Dan, doesn’t government have to buy gas?
And if you noticed, many businesses are imposing surcharges.
Plus as pointed out above, with falling collections and no terminations of services the money has to come from somewhere.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 1030 hrs
Now that’s a specious argument… if the taxes weren’t going up so much - we wouldn’t have to have tax cuts for businesses to stay in Taxconsin.
Look at Texas - they dropped their tax rate to almost nothing - and businesses are falling all over themselves to move down there.
Property values, corporate profits of global corporations, have nothing to do with our ever increasing tax rate. The only thing that drives this is the out of control spending the local, county, and state government engages in. The more they tax, the more businesses and people leave, thereby shrinking available revenue to them. Which leads to even more taxes to feed the governments insatiable appetite.
To me the real problem is the fact that it is never enough. They continue to increase spending and no tax rate is ever high enough for them to stop.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 1035 hrs
Keith, when the gas prices went up, did your boss automatically give you a raise. When food prices went up, did they give you a raise? Or did you gut it out and cut back. That is what government should do. Cut government is the answer, and please don’t say they can’t.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 1336 hrs
Keith if you are so worried about that you should be out beating the sidewalks protesting MINIMUM MARKUP LAWS.
If markups are set all along the production and distribution process, when the cost of the raw material goes up so will the profit.
It is something called math, perhaps you have heard of it.
If you would like to lower ol company profits decrease the cost of the raw material. (increase supply)
The one thing you leftoids never get is that the rest of us have to find a way to live within our means, you NEVER place the same burden on our precious government.
Grow up and smell the logic.
Posted by Fred on August 01, 2008 at 1453 hrs
Liberals, in general, cannot understand that one cannot tax ones way to a prosperous economy; taxes are regressive. It’s simple logic that if the government sucks more and more out of your paycheck, one simply has that much less to purchase consumer goods or invest. Why is that so difficult to understand?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 1544 hrs
Yeah, Fred, we all want to grow up to be you.
Dan, did you not read…oh what the hell.
Wasn’t it your hero Uncle Miltie Friedman who fed you the line that you can’t raise taxes on businesses because they’ll just pass it on to their customers.
I always believed that line was mostly crap but somewhat true. For the run government like a business crowd, business is passing along the gas cost increases to their customers. Dan, get out of Nevada, buy an air ticket and find out.
By the way, what do we cut Dan? The county is cutting drug treatment, bus lines, you know. Real unimportant stuff.
You’re so smart. Tell me.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 1547 hrs
Easy Keith: Eliminate all out of state/county travel unless it is an emergency. Next cancel all memberships magazine subscripitions the cities and counties are in. Third, eliminate all uneccessary over time. Reduce road building/repairs unless it is an emergency, lay off seasonal workers, reduce utility costs by adjusting work hours so air conditioning is not operating in the heat of the summer, if a golf course or swimming is not close to breaking even, close it, for the county, close the airport fire department and turn it over to the Milwaukee Fire Department, reduce the number of employees that work with the county board and county supervisor and same with Milwaukee city council and mayor, reduce the amount of supplies that are purchased and finally, lay off all unneccessary staff. I can go on and on. But you get the point.
And Keith, that is what they are doing here. We are cutting costs instead of raising taxes and the sun still comes up in the morning and the government still continues running.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 1742 hrs
And continuing on with Dans theme: Do Milwaukee Sheriffs deputies really NEED $651,000 AND 59,000 dollar a year back drops and pensions?
Do the City and County Public Works Departments really NEED 30.00 an hour plus Benefits for picking up garbage and filling potholes? I must tell Dan though that Milwaukee only paves and repairs 4 miles of streets per year, so cutting back there is not an option.
Does the City of Milwaukee really NEED to run its own Sanitation Department, or is that something that can be outsourced for less?
Posted by Michael J. Cheaney on August 01, 2008 at 1838 hrs
Yes those magazine subscriptions are to blame. Good catch, Dan.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 1945 hrs
Joe Bob, you are as smart as your name. What an idiot. If you add all up all the savings I mentioned and more, you will have savings. Maybe you can up with a more insightful comment, but I doubt it.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 01, 2008 at 1953 hrs
And, trade magazine subscriptions are free.
Besides, if all of these cuts amounted to anything way has the county gone after the essential services I named above?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 02, 2008 at 0914 hrs
“Eliminate all out of state/county travel unless it is an emergency. ”
As far as the city I believe the cost in real dollars of this is very small, and may help land business from China (the delegation was just in town)... might be worth the cost.
“Third, eliminate all uneccessary over time. ” You mean like for MPD? or snow removal? or which category?
“Reduce road building/repairs unless it is an emergency”
Lets see the City Of Milwaukee has been doing this since at least Norquist and this is now leading to HIGHER costs to fix roads that have to be fixed. For example they used to have 15 pothole crews… Today they have 2(or 3).
“close the airport fire department and turn it over to the Milwaukee Fire Department” whats the cost savings here? minor bit of economy of scale? Oh incidentally the current administration has cut MFD staff in each of the last few years.
“reduce the amount of supplies that are purchased and finally” ask somebody at the city for a post it note or a pen… they’ve cut the amount of supplies years ago.
“reduce utility costs by adjusting work hours so air conditioning is not operating in the heat of the summer,” Good idea.. I know there are specific energy savings plans currently implemented but maybe more scheduling can save a few bucks.
I know I missed a couple but these all sound great.. but none are really a solution. Which specific programs/departments that are actually on the property tax should the City cut?
PS I think the biggest savings we could achieve is a combined City/County government… There is actually a duplication in representation, staff, and additional bureaucracy that clearly hurts Milwaukee (just look at the County slowing down development in the Park East).
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 02, 2008 at 1209 hrs
Just remember that these property tax increases have come at the same time that the GOP, with Steve Kreiser’s heroes leading the way, has controlled one or two houses, in position to block them. where have they been?
Ask Scott Fitzgerald chair of the Joint Finance last session and, Dale Schultz and Kevin Gilkes.
Now everyone is starting to see what I have been talking about, the culture of losers in Madison.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 02, 2008 at 2128 hrs
Oh, Gosh—well, Bob went and crawled out from under his rock again to blame me for all the world’s ills.
To set the record straight:
1) I posted earlier, noting that I OPPOSE the property tax increases. Hell, Bob—*I PAY PROPERTY TAXES*—and quite high ones, as long as I’m mentioning it. They’re quite a burden, and I resent them every time I write the check—which I just did again last week.
2) You’ll note that the article said that the big levy increase happened this past year. You know, while the Dems were in charge of 2/3rds of Wisconsin state government, and long after I had left the Capitol. So you lose again, Bob. Sorry that the facts got in the way of your ability to demonize me (and Keith Gilkes, I guess) yet again.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 02, 2008 at 2137 hrs
How much have property taxes gone up the last six years and who has had at least one house of the legislature and could have made a stand? Who controlled both houses when Krieser’s buddies could have made a stand? Instead they actually spent more money than Doyle’s budget.
Read Kreisers and Gilkes and all of their explanations why these weakkneed dweebs say that you can’t possibly have leaders, take a stand, fight for what is right.
The culture is always the same. The big spending democrats vs the big spending GOP. The only difference is what they want to spend it on.
We have to bend over every time cause of people like Kreiser, Gilkes and the rest of that sorry bunch inside the Capitol dome.
It doens’t change, i have watched it for forty years, only when there were some real heroes like Shabaz, Froehlich, Ceci, Tregoning, Sensenbrenner have we had people that acutally believed that we should hold the line. Tommy did at one time too.
But these staffs are always the same, they are there cause they love to pull the levers of government and if anyone comes along that doens’t buy that philosophy they get labeled and libeled by these squirrel chasers.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 02, 2008 at 2154 hrs
Well, no, I don’t expect the right-wingers to understand. Jimmy at #7 hinted to it: “... property owners need to step up to pay for the tax cuts businesses are getting everywhere to stay in Wisconsin.”
Absolutely. When revenue sharing was cut in order to pay for corporate subsidies, the communities had to make it up in property taxes.
And Dan at #10, yes we can cut government back, but those making the heavy campaign contributions want a government that spends, not saves. Get used to it, or change it.
And “reduce road building/repairs?” Have you followed their campaign largess? No chance!
And Joe Bob, Dan is right: “If you add all up all the savings .... ” Yes, and with those savings we can increase government subsidies and no-bid contracts and, well, you get the picture.
We are paying a heavy price for our corrupt government and the right-wingers refuse to address it. They like the cash flow. “Freedom of speech,” don’cha know!
But as long as special interests own our politicians—as long as the politicians work for them and not the taxpayers—LIVE WITH IT. IT WILL NOT CHANGE!!!
Jack Lohman
http://MoneyedPoliticians.netPosted by Jack Lohman on August 03, 2008 at 1121 hrs
And, uh, Sensenbrenner is, um, a, a “hero?”
Give me a break. He voted for the $780 billion drug giveaway in 2003 and recently voted to protect the 17% subsidy for the Medicare Advantage industry. I prefer a different type of hero, thank you.
Posted by Jack Lohman on August 03, 2008 at 1155 hrs
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