City working toward ‘creative’ 2027 city budget

CLINTONVILLE – The city of Clintonville is currently working on a preliminary 2027 city budget that Clintonville City Administrator Craig Moser said will need to be “creative” because of the limited capacity the city has to increase the tax levy due to levy cap limits.

Moser discussed the preliminary 2027 city budget with the Clintonville Finance & Personnel Committee meeting, Oct. 12.

Moser told the committee that the state of Wisconsin’s levy cap limits what the city can do regarding increasing the city’s tax levy. He said the city is limited to increasing the levy based on the city’s net new construction, which was only 0.669%. That allows the city to increase the levy by $16,089. But with the city’s debt service scheduled to decrease by $21,540, that decreases the actual levy limit increase capacity to only $5,451.

There are some strategies available to municipalities to deal with this type of a situation on a short-term basis, Moser said.

“Largely through short-term borrowing to increase the debt service levy to try to ensure that at least we don’t lose that capacity and we can maintain it moving forward,” Moser said. “…The challenge is going to be without that net new construction, we just don’t have a lot of additional capacity, so we’re going to have to get a little bit creative.”

Moser acknowledged that he is aware that the 2026 city budget included a large increase in employee compensation due to the results of a compensation study the city had completed in the last few years.

“I just don’t want to speak to that because I haven’t looked at it to deeply,” Moser said. “I’m focused on 2027 because that’s what I need to be focused on at this point. We’re just going to have to get as creative as we can.”

Ald. Jim Supanich said city residents are still concerned about the 2026 city budget because of the 26% increase in the tax levy in that budget. The previous five years of budgets had increased an average of only 8%, he added.

“If you’re going to tell us that we have to raise that tax base again, you’re going to have problems,” Supanich said.

Moser said the city can’t increase the tax levy much because of the restraints imposed by the state of Wisconsin.

“Unless you want to go to referendum, the cap is the cap, and we have to live within it to comply with state law,” Moser responded.

Supanich said most residents expect a reduction in city taxes. 

Budget factors

Moser told the committee that the city’s dental insurance is scheduled to increase 5%, which was negotiated down from an 8% increase.

Medical insurance for city employees is scheduled to increase $12.9%, but the city is scheduled to receive a credit of $65,000 in the first quarter of 2027. The makes the increase equivalent to a 6.6% increase for the year.

“The strategy would be to take that deal for 2027 and go out to market for 2028 because we do not want to maintain that higher base with a 12.9% lift on the medical,” Moser said.

In addition, the city’s property insurance is scheduled to increase by 4.5%.

State aid

The city of Clintonville is expected to receive a little more than $1.5 million in state shared revenue, which would be a decrease of $78,187.

State personal property aid is scheduled to decrease by $1,585, for a total of $93,161.

State general transportation aids & connecting highway aids is expected to increase by $8,600 to $422,636.

CPI

Moser said the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has been determined to be 3.5%.

“We will be obviously very challenged in doing much by way of a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for staff at this point,” Moser said.

Moser added that he has had discussion with the city’s leadership team regarding salary increases based on salary schedule STEP adjustments.

“We’ll have continued conversations around that in terms of what’s better for employee morale, what’s better for the organization as a whole, what financially can we afford,” Moser said.

Moser said he preferred to freeze the salary schedule STEP adjustments this year, and then reevaluate it for the 2028 budget.

“The concern expressed this morning at the department heads meeting was for those long-term employees whose STEP was frozen last year, that’s going to be another hit and not great for morale among the longer tenured employees,” Moser said.

He added that the benefit of a COLA is that all employees would receive it.

Supanich recommended that the city consider a COLA increase for city employees.