No Projected Tax Increase

The school district has been a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars and has looked for ways to reduce the impact on taxpayers as we maintain our facilities. Through sound financial management, the district has been able to ensure long-term facility maintenance efforts can continue in a sustainable manner.

If the November 5 referendum is approved, we estimate NO INCREASE over the current mill rate.

Prepared by Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated

  • Hypothetical referendum debt assumes borrowings amortized over 20 years at planning interest rate of 4.75%.

  • Mill rate based on 2023 and Projected 2024 Equalized Valuations (TID-OUT) of $577,568,158 & $600,670,884 respectively, with annual growth of 2.00% thereafter.

  • Assumes operating and community service mill rates kept flat from 2024-25 to 2025-26.

  • Note: Planning estimates only. Significant changes in market conditions will require adjustments to current financing plan. Rates subject to change.

Did you Know?

Last year’s property tax increase was unrelated to the April referendum. It is important to understand the school district tax increase in Cameron this past year was not a result of the April 2023 referendum. For the 2023-24 school year, the District levied $2,181,040 for debt payments. This compared to the $2,184,348 that was levied in the previous year. The District’s debt payment remained flat and, thus, played no role whatsoever in the increased taxes.

The tax increase was 100% the result of the State’s 2023-25 biennial budget. Districts, such as Cameron, who were levying $10,000 per student in 2022-23, were increased to $11,000 starting in 2023-24. Why? The Wisconsin Legislature froze increases in the previous biennial budget because of the Federal money that was being provided to public schools for COVID response. Districts across the state, including Cameron, used this COVID funding to make ends meet within their budgets and this resulted in a funding cliff for public education in Wisconsin. The $1,000 per pupil increase was provided by the state to fill this budget gap. This was the largest such increase since the Revenue Limits went into effect in 1993 and was the cause for the tax increase.

Cameron’s per pupil funding is far below our neighboring districts.

Despite the recent per student increase to $11,000, our district is still funded at a much lower level than neighboring districts. The following statistics show amounts collected by other area school districts for the 2023-24 school year:

Cumberland = $12,480.78 | Chetek/Weyerhaeuser = $12,196.34
Rice Lake = $11,951.60 | Barron = $11,721.81 | Cameron = $11,000.00