Hortonville board sets budget hearing

By John Faucher

Hortonville Village Board set its annual budget hearing for 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 5 in the Community Center board meeting room.

Village Administrator David DeTroye said he anticipates “taxes will remain flat” in an email message with the Press Star.

Last year’s mill rate was $8.42 per $1,000 of assessed value.

“We are proposing currently to come in at $8.51 per $1,000 this year,” DeTroye wrote.

The 9-cent increase will likely be overshadowed by a 15-cent reduction in the Hortonville Area School District mill rate.

DeTroye said during a budget committee of the whole discussion Nov. 5 that the village still needed to calculate taxing information from Fox Valley Technical College, Black Otter Lake District and Outagamie County.

At the Nov. 5 committee of the whole meeting, board members approved a Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) to utilize near cash financing and borrow an additional $100,000 in the 2020 budget to fund equipment purchases for the Police Department and Public Works.

DeTroye said it was also the start of an aggressive five-year CIP plan to rebuild and replace “many of the neglected village roads.”

He said funding for the CIP would grow in future years as long-term debt is retired.

“The long-term goal is to sustain our levy. And we do not want to see a tax increase for our village residents,” said DeTroye.

“My proposal will allow the village to spend 100-150k annually for the next five years in the CIP plan without raising our portion of the mill rate. It is an aggressive plan that will accommodate a village wide reassessment in 2021, and will set the stage for early debt retirement in 2022, and 2024 saving the village hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest,” DeTroye wrote.