Brookfield Property Tax Bills To Rise Less Than 2 Percent

After a one-year drop in Elmbrook School District taxes last year, December total bills will increase slightly. Aldermen Tuesday adopted their portion of the total bill, calling it a status quo budget for 2013.

  After seeing a one-year drop in school taxes last year, Brookfield residents living in the Elmbrook School District will see their December property tax bills rise by about 1 percent. City taxpayers in the Elmbrook district will pay a total of about $16.49 per $1,000 of assessed property value, while city taxpayers in the Waukesha School District will pay about $15.89 per $1,000 of assessed home value. For Elmbrook taxpayers, that translates to a total tax increase of about $63 for the average priced home worth $335,000, City Finance Director Robert Scott said. Those amounts may change slightly after the state's tax levy credit amounts are finalized. Aldermen on Tuesday unanimously adopted a 2013 city budget that staff says maintains a …

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Cindy Kilkenny

2:15 pm on Friday, November 30, 2012

I'd love to see a chart re: budget surpluses by all taxing bodies each of the last five years. (I'm so much better at begging than doing.)   more ›

No New Chapter 220 Seats Will Likely Be Added Next Year

Two families urge the School Board to allow siblings of existing Chapter 220 students to join the district next fall. A recent Public Policy Forum report shows Elmbrook's minority student population of 22 percent is less than state average.

For the third consecutive year, the Elmbrook School Board appears poised to allow no new Chapter 220 enrollments, including siblings of Chapter 220 students already attending Elmbrook. Only one board member, Bob Ziegler, spoke in favor of allowing siblings to enroll, citing statistics that show Elmbrook's Chapter 220 students perform at least 23 percentage points higher than their Milwaukee Public Schools peers on state standardized tests. Board members Jean Lambert and Meg Wartman said they could not support it, given the better financial incentives tied to open enrollment students versus Chapter 220. However, the board also has dramatically slowed the growth of Open Enrollment, with many members saying they prefer to focus on increasing …

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$1.2 Million Saved by Closing Hillside School

Savings due to the elimination of 16 full-time equivalent positions, including nine teachers.

Weeks into Elmbrook's first year with five elementary schools instead of six, the district has crunched the numbers on how much the closing of Hillside Elementary is saving the budget. Savings estimates ranged between $1.2 million and $1.3 million during last fall's debate and decision by the School Board. And that's pretty much what it turned out to be. Audited, actual savings — after staffing was set for this fall — is $1,213,301, School Board member Glen Allgaier said. At Monday's annual meeting, Don Bardonner of Brookfield questioned why — after a school closure — the district's proposed 2012-13 budget showed total salaries rising by $206,237 and total teacher staffing decreasing by less than two positions. Keith Brightman, assistant …

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Waukesha School Taxes Going Down Despite Tax Rate Increase

Waukesha School Board approves budget that accounts for a 6 percent decrease in equalized property values. Public hearing on budget is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 2.

Equalized property values in the Waukesha School District are expected to drop an estimated 6 percent, triple the 2 percent drop the district had estimated when preparing the 2012-13 budget. That decrease in equalized property valuations will result in a higher tax rate for homeowners, despite the district reducing expenses by $8.4 million and decreasing the tax levy by $891,000. “The property valuations came as a pretty big surprise to us," Finance Committee Chairman Joseph Como said. "We had estimated a 2 percent drop in valuations. Last year, we had a drop of 1.5 percent so we thought we were being pretty conservative with two percent.” Wednesday night, the school board approved the budget for publication. The public hearing of the …

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Randy1949

6:16 pm on Friday, September 14, 2012

That's a large assumption that assessments will go down enough for the actual tax paid to stay even. In my experience, this has never happened.   more ›

Vrakas Seeks Funds to Study, Upgrade Elections Equipment

Capital funding would "increase efficiency, accuracy and timeliness of vote reporting," Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas says.

Waukesha County should budget funds next year to study and potentially upgrade its election equipment, Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas said Tuesday. Vrakas included $70,000 in the capital budget he plans to introduce Friday, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report. Vrakas said in a press release that he wants to study ways to better automate election results and avoid manual counting by municipalities. "Waukesha County is a rapidly growing County and in recent years the number of reporting units in the County has increased," Vrakas said. "This, coupled with the collecting, tallying and reporting vote totals, have made the process cumbersome. The goal is to automate and streamline the system as much as possible to prevent …

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School Closing, Health Savings Help Balance Elmbrook Budget

The Elmbrook School Board approved a budget that would lower spending and the property tax rate while allowing small salary boost. The budget will be refined for final approval next fall.