001Uh, ask for a roll call, please. here. >> Here >> all right, with that I'll turn it over to Mr. Cashman for the presentation. >> [snorts] >> All right, good evening. Uh so for the uh annual budget hearing tonight, uh we're going to first recap the budget calendar and what we've been working on for the past several months. Uh so back in July, at the beginning of July, you all will remember the preliminary budget. uh that was adopted. Uh that was followed by our budget summary that was published on October 11th. Uh the hearing and adoption is scheduled for tonight where we'll certify the tax levy um as a board and then that certified tax levy will be issued to municipalities uh per Wisconsin statute by November 3rd. Uh we're going to do revenues in
002the budget first. So some changes in our fund 10 revenue from last year uh and and every year uh our enrollment typically changes. We are uh in a declining enrollment situation. Uh I'll bet it's slight. So that that is a piece of our fund revenue that's changing this year. our property values, uh, that equalization aid, I'm sorry, that equalized property value that came out on October 1st has changed from previous years. Our private school vouchers saw a slight change this year and our aid that is issued to us from the state of Wisconsin um, also has changed this year. Uh, the first change in our revenue limit uh, that we'll discuss is enrollment. So, in 2024, our third Friday count was 2,967. Uh, back in July, we estimated that count for this year to be
0032,932. And that estimation was based off of our January 2025 count of our students. Our actual count was 2838, uh, which is down 129 FTE from the prior year. That does not include our summer school FTE. Uh that actually increased by eight to 40 FTE this year. So that's a significant jump uh about almost 30% in summer school FTE which did help offset our our September count FTE. Our revenue limit calculation is based on a three-year average. So while our September FTE is down, our actual FTE that we are aided on is for two [clears throat] 2,980. So significantly higher than what our September FTE was. Um and our total resources, so our entire revenue limit that the state of Wisconsin gives us are our basically over 85% of our revenue is tied to enrollment.
004uh we do uh we did decrease about 3.15% in terms of that FTE but across the state of Wisconsin uh the entire state as a whole is averaging a 3.8% 8% decrease. So we are decreasing less than the state average uh for open enrollment in the district and these numbers were as of last Friday. Uh I I do know that they have changed slightly even as late as this afternoon today um as an improvement to us but uh for the purpose of the annual budget hearing we'll we'll stay with these numbers of 116.2 two FTEES as open and rolling in and 180 FTEES open and rolling out. Um that was a a decrease of 28.4 for students coming in, but also a decrease of 14.8 for students coming going out. I do think it's important
005to note that these students are heavy at the lower levels uh which offers us retainage and um and a longer time period of of actually claiming and getting the the revenue for these students. >> You meant the students coming in were at the lower grade levels. >> Yes, I'm sorry. Thank you. Uh other non-recurring exemptions that we have in our revenue limit, uh we did see a $325 per member increase this year. However, that increase is supported entirely by the local property tax. Uh the state did not increase any aid uh in the pot for any school districts this year. So um we get an extra 325 per student, but we have to tax for that. Uh we do get a declining enrollment exemption of just over $1.1 million. Uh we did have an adjustment
006for an open enrollment that was unaccounted for last year of $45,000. We did not have any rescended taxes and our voucher aid deduction is for 1,176,000. Uh so our total non-recurring revenue limit exemptions is over $2.3 million this year. Other changes in aid that we should note are our personal property aid increased by $280,000. So this increase is on our revenue limit. Uh it's supported and paid for by local taxpayers because of there was no increase in from the state in terms of that aid. Uh last year we received this as a direct revenue from the state. So, we essentially lost $280,000 in revenue that we received last year and they put it on the revenue limit which increased our limit. our aid did decrease from the state uh by about 3.32% or 837,000 and
007our per pupil categorical aid also decreased uh this is the $742 per student that we receive based on our September count and so that decreased almost 72,000. Uh it is important that our change in aid doesn't necessarily correlate to our change in revenue. uh we did have a very slight less than 1% increase in our entire revenue limit uh even with the aid going down but it has an inverse effect with our local taxpayer levy. Uh also the last time that the state did not provide an increase in the equalization aid formula for school districts in Wisconsin was 1718. So, uh, the current bannual budget that we're operating under, um, we haven't done this for quite some time. The voucher program, so this is unique to the state of Wisconsin. Uh, we did have a
008de an increase of 3.8 FTEEs for K8 students that participate. Uh, but we had a decrease of five students uh, in at the high school level. Um, however, the state did put more money into this program for this year. So, while we had a decrease in actual FTE, we did have a slight increase in that uh in that revenue limit exemption, which is also an expense item, an expense line item in our budget. So for equalization aid, so our aid is impacted by several local factors, obviously membership, uh share cost, property values, and then the general pot from the state. Uh and that's based off of how much money every school district in the state is spending. Uh we get an estimate in July. That estimate then carries over to the actuals which are certified
009on um certified in August and September. And then we received this dollar amount on October 15th. And as you can see a decrease from last year of about $837,000. uh property values and how they correlate into the revenue limit. So, we did not see a change in our computer exemption. Uh we also did not see a change in our exempt personal property exemption. Uh both of those stayed at the 41,000 and the $239,000 respectively. Uh we did have the additional $280,000 from uh the Wisconsin Act 12 which is included in the revenue limit as an exemption this year instead of the actual revenue like it was last year. Um and our equalized valuation which is our fair market value of the district did increase 9.41% uh over last year's valuation. So the area equalized property
010value increases which again is the fair market value of the district. Uh so this this year we were at 9.41% so on the higher end of local districts. However, last year we were less than half the state average on the lower end. So it's not a a huge surprise to us um that that caught up with us over a two-year period instead of a one-year period. Um now this this area is important because this increase is is based off of almost entirely commercial residential and new construction property. uh a property which is fairly you know large in our district doesn't really affect it because they they try the state keeps the a values low in terms of fair markets values so that they're tax less to discourage commercial expansion onto that good a property. So
011this is you know a big chunk of this is the city um and and residential homes. It's not a corn field. [snorts] So the revenue limit, so the entire revenue limit and how it's calculated, uh you can see on the top right, our entire revenue limit with all the exemptions is is $ 37.5 million. Uh when we take out the the equalized aid and the exemptions, that leaves us with our allowed our allowable limited revenue, which is also our considered our allowable tax levy. And we will break that down into a general fund, which is for our operations, and a debt service fund, which would be for um for debt, non-referendum approved debt. And so you could see our our levy will be uh the levy I'll presenting tonight is 12,553,289. So the recommendation is
012to exercise our full revenue limit authority for funds 38 and 10. uh also to levy a million dollars for fund 80 to fully support existing and additional community programming and fund the maintenance of the community facilities that we support. In addition, we'll levy $6,317,11 in fund 39, which is referendum debt to be used for future payments. And this also includes a prospective payment from the new debt issuance that will take place in the late spring of 2026. With [clears throat] this levy, we'll see a mill rate of $6.91. That's a 3 cent increase over last year at a modest43% increase. Uh the total levy is 19,870,390 which is an increase of 9.88% on the levy dollar amount. That includes all funds of 10 38 39 and 80. Um, it's important to note that a significant
013portion of this levy is the voucher payment uh for the choice program of $1,176,70 [snorts] as far as the referendum impact on the mill rate. So, pre-referendum, [clears throat] it was communicated to the community that the 2024 referendum would not exceed a mill rate impact of $120 uh per per thousand dollar of property value. So when we look at our mill rate last year for our existing debt prior to 2024 referendum's debt uh and we did do a borrowing in February of 27 million to start phase one of the construction process. Um our mill rate impact last year was $1.91. This year it's $220. So we are the referendum has an impact a mill rate impact of 29. So, we're still way below what was projected. Obviously, that's going to increase as the borrowing and
014the payments increase, but even long-term, the projections that we're using, uh, we should have no problem staying well under the$120 impact that was communicated to families and residents of the district. Uh you can see here these are mill rates from last year of local communities and our projected mill rate of this year of $6.91. Uh last year's state average was $79. I would anticipate us to be under the state average this year at $691. Um and probably right in the middle or fairly similar to where we were last year. Uh districts are kind of all over the board. those who have already approved. Uh most were seeing slight changes uh both up and down in terms of mill rate but nothing significant. Moving on to expenditures. So the general fund expenditures. So this is fund
01510 expenditures. U [clears throat] the most significant uh changes for this year to last year would be uh other benefits under the under the top column there under expenditures. It's that has is showing a significant decrease of 700,000. Uh that's reduced due to fund 73 which is our oped fund already being prepaid. So it's been fiscally advantageous for us to pay that out ahead of time. So currently we are projecting not doing a transfer into that fund this year. Now if there's a surplus at the end of the year, we will certainly put it into that fund, but right now our oped fund is funded for 3 to 5 years without putting anything extra into it. So we're in really good shape right there. Um our open enrollment expense increased slightly because part of the
016bianual budget uh they increase the amount you receive and pay out for open enrollment. Uh the voucher stay roughly the same. Uh non- capital and capital projects there's a slight increase there. Uh that's mostly due to some curriculum expenses that are in this year and our transfer to fund 27 is is decreasing significantly and that's mostly due to the additional categorical aid that we receive in the new bianial budget from the state. [snorts] Now the last slide just showed fund 10 expenditures. The current slide shows 10 our our fund 10 which is operations, 27 which is special ed, 38 and 39 which is debt and 50 which is food service as well as our community expenditures. So you could see our salaries and fringe benefits make up about 60% of all expenditures. However, 20 the
017other large piece of this pie is the 20% for purchase services. purchase services includes our transportation partnership with First Student, our food service partnership with Taher, fairly large expenses. Um, and these are expenses that directly impact our students. So these the the services that we're paying for are people working with kids. And so I would consider those very closely related, if not all-encompassing salary infringe benefits as well. And so when you when you put all those pieces together, we're looking at about 80% of our entire budget is going directly to people and those people are working directly with our kids. So 80% of our budget is is really impacting our students. So, a final summary for the 2526 budget is 43,354,450 in both revenues and expenditures. Uh, creating a balanced budget without a surplus or
018a deficit. At the end of the year, if these numbers hold true, our fund balance will be just under 7 million at 16%. Uh, our levy is $19,870,390 uh with a mill rate of $6.91. Are there any questions? is a voucher school. What other school in our area is a voucher school? >> Uh I believe St. Stevens is also a voucher school. >> Oh, and CWC and Wan is also a voucher school. >> Virtual schools would be a factor in open enrollment. So if a student attends like McFarland virtual that would be an open enroll out for us if they live in our district. >> Yeah mo a high number attend the McFarland virtual. Yep. And that's student count. So if we're counting the students in our FTE that actually open and roll out, but
019we're not counting the students that open and roll in. So with that student count, it includes these kids that live in the district, but um it doesn't necessarily translate to how many heads we have in the classroom essentially. So the head count is slightly different than that. >> Any other questions, comments from the board? I just have your head spinning for me. >> We've got through this and you do a good job. >> Thank you. >> All right. If there's no more questions or comments from the board, uh, ask any of our guests that are here tonight if they have any questions or comments. All right, not seeing any. We will close comments and questions and I will ask for a motion for adjournment. >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second for
020adjournment. All those in favor say I. Hey.