Tax impact for Heights’ single campus drops by 20 percent

As the Wisconsin Heights single campus plan has come into shape over the past few years, the projected property tax load has dropped. Local taxpayers can expect to see a $50 per $100,000 of value savings in their taxes, compared to initial projections several years ago. The District also saved $4.6 million on the total cost of borrowing as bond issues came into focus.

The Wisconsin Heights board reviewed this news at their February 22 meeting.

The District’s original plan was to borrow $27 million with an estimated interest rate of 3.2 percent. They assumed equalized value in the area would increase by 3.5 percent annually.

The new and current plan carves out a place for the District to earn interest prior to officially borrowing funds. This involved a Bank Anticipatory Note for $27 million, and collecting the interest from that. That interest then lowered the amount needed for borrowing. The Anticipatory Note will be paid off in March.

The total amount borrowed will drop from $27 million to $24 million. The drop is driven in part by the interest from the Bank Anticipatory Note, as well $1.4 million in taxes collected from 2020-21.

The District locked in low interest rate on their bond issues, at 1.64 percent.

In all, this means the District has to borrow $3 million less that the original $27 million that was projected.

Most importantly to taxpayers, the mill rate--initially projected to be $186 per hundred thousand dollars of equalized value--will drop to $145. That drop is even more significant when taking into account the District’s projection several years ago of $203 per hundred thousand dollars of equalized value.