What you’ll pay for the school referendum
Why the $70 million cost averaged per household is so much higher than the school district's tax impact calculator
The Sheboygan Falls School District referendum averages about $13,000 per household.1 The additional taxes would span several years, depending on factors like tax rates, operational costs, and how long until the next referendum. Homeowners can estimate their personal tax costs by comparing their home’s value to the $235,300 district median.2
Residents will pay the tax through higher home property taxes or rent plus the passed-through price, wage, and value impact of higher business property taxes. If you own a home, you’ll see an extra amount on the bottom of your property tax bill. If you rent, your landlord will set your rent rate accordingly.
Household impact of property taxes on businesses
Whether you own or rent, you’ll also be impacted by businesses having to pay their property taxes. All taxes on businesses ultimately translate into costs to households. People in households are the ones to purchase goods and services from businesses, work at businesses, and own and invest in businesses. For example, business property taxes leave companies less money to pay employees and increase their production costs, leading to high prices.
Much of the tax impact on local businesses is borne by households outside the school district, for example, by employees or customers who live elsewhere in the state or country. Similarly, local residents frequently incur the costs of non-local school taxes on non-local businesses. The cross-border tax impacts tend to roughly balance out. If a school district sets high taxes on its businesses to collect extra funds from outside impacted households, the increased mill rate would result in high taxes on its residential properties. The linkage motivates all districts to keep property taxes relatively balanced.
There is no free funding source. All tax revenue ultimately traces back to individual households, and referendums are no exception. Assuming a district hasn’t found a way to get households in other districts to bear a disproportionate share of the tax impact – a reasonable rough assumption for our district – taking the total cost of a referendum in one geographical region divided by the number of households in that same region gives a realistic per-household average cost.
Limitations of the tax impact calculator
If you enter the $235,300 median home value into the tax impact calculator on the school district’s referendum web page, it shows an estimated property tax increase of $58.75 per year for 21 years, which totals $1,234. It’s much smaller than the $13,472 average household cost because it doesn’t include the existing temporary tax increase or indirect taxes.
Existing temporary tax increase
The tax calculator includes only the new taxes beyond what was on your December property tax bill. On the bottom of the bill, there is a section “Voter Approved Temporary Tax Increases”, which shows the additional taxes collected in 2024 to pay toward the $30 million middle school loan. It shows the additional tax you owe next to the district-wide total of $3,430,067.29.
The school district has to tax at a rate at least high enough to pay off the middle school loan by 2036. The district has chosen to go beyond the minimum and set tax rates higher to pay off the debt sooner, which reduces interest and allows for more frequent building projects. At the current payment rate, the district is on track to pay off the loan within four years.3
The tax calculator doesn’t convey that if the referendum doesn’t pass, the “Total Additional Taxes Applied to Property” line will disappear by 2030, causing a big drop in property taxes, or that if it does pass, the additional taxes will remain in effect until the new $70 million loan is paid off.
The additional taxes for an average property multiplied by the years they’d be in effect approach the average household cost figured by dividing the referendum cost by the number of households.
Indirect costs
The rest of the difference between the tax calculator’s cost and the average household cost is what households pay indirectly, as described earlier. The calculator doesn’t account, for example, for where Bemis will get the money to pay the $112,458 school portion of their tax bill.4 Ultimately, it comes back to individual households.
Transparency benefits students
The district’s referendum material should include the full tax consequences of the referendum, including how taxes would decline if it is not approved. The Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty considers it misleading for a school district not to.
Most importantly, transparency builds trust. The school district should be straightforward with its residents. The reality is that the school upgrades are big investments that will cost families many thousands, but the reality is also that preparing our students for an increasingly hi-tech world is worth even more. The balance is meeting the academic needs while keeping taxes from burdening families. A true picture of the tax impact families face helps keep that balance in perspective.
Related post
The school district has not responded to a request to comment. This post was updated with more information about business taxes.
Sheboygan Falls School Board meeting minutes, January 16, 2025. Census Reporter district households, February 2025, which used U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates (2023). Calculation: $70,000,000 ÷ 5,196 = $13,472.
Census Reporter, Median value of owner-occupied housing units.
School District of Sheboygan Falls Financial Statements and Supplementary Information, Year Ended June 30, 2023 (linked to from the district’s Business Services page as “2023-2024 [sic] Signed Final Report and Financial Statements”). In 2022-2023, outstanding bonds were $18 million, and $3.7 million was retired (p. 27). The 2024 tax bills list $3.4 million in additional taxes. Dividing $18 million by either annual rate results in a remaining duration of 6 years or less from the date of the statement, which puts the last year with a potential temporary tax at 2028-29.
Sheboygan County Land Records Web Portal, parcel number 59282918037.