JANESVILLE — Rock County Administrator Josh Smith’s budget proposal yields a lower tax rate, but he cautions that there will be a tax increase when property taxes are set for 2024.
Smith has proposed a $4.19 per $1,000 county portion of the tax rate, or $838 on a $200,000 home. That’s down from $866 in 2023. The county portion of tax rate was $5.42 in 2022 and $5.83 in 2021. It has been on a decline since 2014 when it was at $7.
The county portion is one part of property tax bills that go out in December. There are also schools, municipal, and technical college portions.
The tax levy is expected to go up 9.94% in 2024. Within that is just shy of $2.3 million used to pay off debt, including the jail expansion project. Another approximately $5.6 million equals the amount of one-time reserve funds that the county board applied toward the 2023 tax levy.
Smith has recommended $2.8 million from the county’s general fund be applied to “smooth out” the tax levy over two years.
Prior to the adoption of the 2023 budget, Supervisor Mike Zoril proposed what was later adopted as a $5.6 million levy cut, tapping reserves instead to fund that part of the budget. Zoril later deemed this the “Zoril Tax Cut.”
Rock County Finance Director Sherry Oja warned the board a tax increase was likely in 2024.
Oja told the board in November 2022 that it’s “a one-time whatever fund-balance decrease in the levy this year so it would only increase it by the same amount next year and it’s almost going to have a double whammy next year.”
“It is not sustainable to keep using one-time funds at this artificially low level,” Smith told the board last week. “Maybe you can do it for another year. Maybe you can do it for a couple years. You’re going to run out of reserves or you’re going to have to reallocate money. My suggestion is simple to say. If you want to reduce taxes over the long term, cut things out of operations.”
Zoril sent an email to county board members and County Executive Josh Smith on Monday, obtained by Vlogý, in which he sought support from fellow supervisors for a resolution authorizing a “zero percent increase” in the 2024 budget.
Zoril claims “spending” is the reason for the proposal, particularly the $97 million jail project.
“I am not advocating for budget cuts; I am advocating for a staunch halt to its ridiculous escalation,” Zoril said. “The pathway to fiscal sanity lies in eliminating vacant positions and snipping away at non-essential spending. Additionally, a sensible reallocation of funds from the Woodman’s Sports and Convention Center to the debt service levy can further temper our tax increase.”
A public hearing on the 2024 county budget is set for Thursday, Nov. 2, at 6 p.m., in the county board room at the Rock County Courthouse, 51 S. Main St., in Vlogý. The finance committee will meet to consider appeals from other committees at a date to be determined. The budget will be adopted at the county’s annual meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 6 p.m.
As the tax rate has continued to decrease, equalized value — the total value of all property in the county — has continued to increase. The county anticipates its equalized value to be a little under $18.5 billion in 2024, more than three times the $6 billion it was in 2000.
“We are limited by the levy limit in such a way that we cannot go up by really any amount because of the dynamic that goes on (with the equalized value),” Smith said.