Door County tax levy rises while the tax rate falls under the approved 2024 county budget

Christopher Clough, Green Bay Press-Gazette
·5 min read

STURGEON BAY - The Door County Board approved the county's 2024 budget without making any last-minute changes in its meeting Tuesday.

The vote to approve the budget was 18-0 with three county supervisors absent. While there were no changes or discussion of the budget by supervisors during the meeting, nor any comments from the public during a pre-meeting hearing, it already had seen some relatively minor changes since it was presented to the board in September as the board's various committees went through its items.

Here are some highlights of the 2024 budget.

  • The county will have a total of $107.3 million in expenditures. The biggest slices of that pie go toward transportation ($19.6 million, or 18.22%), public safety ($19.4 million, 18.05%), capital improvement projects ($17.8 million, 15.96%) and health and human services ($16.4 million, 15.32%).

  • $31,665,832 of that is coming from the county tax levy, the maximum allowed by state statute and a 3.18% increase from about $30.7 million in 2023. About $75.7 million in county revenues will cover the remaining expenditures.

  • The tax rate, however, will fall to 2.61% for 2024, a 15.95% decrease from 3.105% in 2023. That means a county property owner would pay $2.61 per $1,000 of equalized assessed value of the property, or $522 for a $200,000 property.

  • That's because assessed property values in Door County continue to rise steeply. The equalized, assessed value of taxable properties in the county rose 22.76%, from $9.88 billion in 2023 to $12.13 billion. Equalized property value in the county has risen every year since 2015, when it was about $6.84 billion, and thanks to a spate of new developments, increased housing demands and recent property reassessments, it's jumped dramatically in the past few years, from $7.71 billion in 2021 to $8.41 billion in 2022 (9.1% increase), then leaping to $9.88 billion (17.52% up) in '23 and now $12.13 billion.

  • The budget includes $6.2 million in revenue it projects to receive from this year's county sales tax. Last year the county budgeted for an expected $4 million in sales taxes but received a record $6.126 million from 2022, with the extra proceeds applied to this year's levy. Like property values, sales tax revenues increased dramatically in the past few years, rising from $4.43 million in 2020 to $5.68 million in '21 before jumping again in '22.

  • County employees will see a 4% increase in wages, along with tiered raises based on job performance. The pay raises add about $1.1 million to the tax levy.

  • The total amount of wages, including benefits, is about $40.5 million (about 37.7% of the total budget), a 6.43% increase from just over $38 million in '23. About $27.2 million of that is in wages, $12.2 million in benefits. Staffing levels have remained steady.

  • The cost of the medical plan for county employees is rising 12.2%. Full-time employees who sign on for the health plan will pay 15% of the bill, or about $2,000 of the $13,000-per-year premium for a single person, $5,100 of the $34,000 for the family plan. Part-time employees pay a larger share.

Capital improvements

  • Of the $17.8 million in capital improvement plans, about $4.67 million will be paid from the tax levy.

  • The biggest capital project is the most visible one, the construction of the Door County Historical Museum and Archives building on North Fourth Avenue in Sturgeon Bay that includes tearing down the former Younker's Home Store and constructing a new building that would connect to the existing museum next door.

The total cost for the museum and archives is estimated at $6.4 million, with $450,000 coming from the 2024 tax levy, while the other $5.99 million is mostly money that's been set aside by the county for years. County administrator Ken Pabich previously told the Advocate he hopes to put the project up for bids to contractors in December.

  • A little more than $3.6 million from the levy will go toward eight proposed county highway projects, all considered mostly maintenance work. The state would chip in $725,386 to two of the projects, bringing the total cost to more than $4.3 million.

  • The 2024 levy will contribute $390,000 toward construction of an addition to a maintenance garage for the Facilities and Parks Department that was supposed to be built this year but wasn't because bids on the project were higher than budgeted. The total cost is set at about $1.12 million, with $690,000 carried over from last year's budget and $100,000 from the county sales tax reserve fund.

  • A $1 million expansion and remodel of the Door County Library building in Sturgeon Bay isn't impacting the levy directly, being paid with carryover funds from last year's budget.

  • $1.2 million is budgeted for a variety of projects at Door County Cherryland Airport, including runway reconstruction and construction of a snow removal equipment building. The 2024 levy will pay $100,000 of the bills while the remaining $1.1 million is carryover from last year.

To read the entire budget as presented to the board before approval, visit the county website at co.door.wi.gov, click on "Our County" and "County Board of Supervisors," then click "County Board Reports & Misc" and the link for the proposed budget.

Contact Christopher Clough at 920-562-8900 or cclough@doorcountyadvocate.com.

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This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Tax levy rises, tax rate falls under Door County's 2024 budget