2025 Budget Overview

2025 Budget Overview First, there will be no increase in taxes imposed by the Town of Spooner. Even though these increases are allowed by state law, as long as we are holding our own, there is no reason to impose these tax increases on town taxpayers. The board in its current membership has never raised taxes. The document called “2025 budget for publication” is the required posting, but doesn’t really give a lot of information. But there are some things that need to be pointed out. First the ARPA funds, as required, we spent by the 2024 deadline so these funds are not available any more. Where us see fund balances applied, I believe I was fairly conservative with this. It really is funds from 2024 budget that were not spent or revenues came in that were not put into the expenditure budget. I believe we will have under spent in other areas, but those can be applied at the end of the year. Here is a general list of where these came from. This list is not comprehensive but goes toward explaining the estimate. The important thing is we are not pulling any more out of cash reserves. Even though the Spooner Boat Landing was finished in 2023 the grant money did not come in until 2024. This is around $8,000 that was never added to any of the expenditure budgets When Ojibwa Road was done, a grant of roughly $13,000 came in. The entire expenditure is in the road repair budget but when the grant came in the expenditure budget was never increased to include that amount. So the money really was just kind of sitting in limbo None of the $5000 for legal fees were expended so this just carries over into 2025 budget. None of the $2000 Education Expenses were expended. The town park walkway was budgeted at $12,000 but came in roughly $4,500 less than that. An extra $1,000 was put into the budget for tree removal at the Spooner Boat Landing. The plan was to drop it when the lake froze, but with the weather the way it was it didn’t happen so this just moves into the next year. I could go on for pages but as you can see I believe the fund balance applies are fairly conservative. There is more information in the “2025 Budget” Here is an overview of these. We dropped the education budget by $1,000. Nobody really has any time to go to any training, but an amount should remain in there just in case Election expenses were dropped considerably because of fewer elections in 2025 The assessor costs went up from 9,500 to $24,000. That is because the town is required to have a reassessment in 2025. (Is this a reason to worry? From the town’s point of view – No!!. If everyone’s value goes up equally, the mill rate would drop but everyone would pay the same amount as currently in taxes. The concern is if other components of the Spooner School District or Washburn County do not go up then the town residents would be taxed at a higher percentage of the tax levy. I don’t have a firm grasp on what the larger picture is in terms of equal assessment, but will try to find out before the December meeting. In any case our hands are tied.) The town hall maintenance went up, but that is because in the past there was never a budget for lawn maintenance or snowplowing for the town hall. The bills were paid, but never included in the budget. Now this includes everything under one budget code. The road repair went from $170,000 to $105,000 primarily because of the end of the ARPA funds. It looks like a big drop but it is still a little over 20% increase from the 2023 amount. I think I have touched on all the major increases and decreases but if you have questions email me at gmfrankiewicz@gmail.com or call at (715) 939 -2124 Gary Frankiewicz