Assessment - FAQ

There have been a lot of questions about the recent re-evaluation that happened this summer for the City of Prescott.  We would like to put out some information to help residents understand the reassessment, why it happened and how it is going to affect your taxes.  

What is a re-evaluation? 

A process to ensure all properties are set to fair and equitable assessed values that reflect current market conditions.

Why did the re-evaluation happen? 

Each Municipality is required by the State of WI to keep our values within a certain market range (90% to 110% of of full value). Once values drop below those values for three consecutive years municipalities are required to do a re-evaluation to pull the values up to the market value.  The last time the city did a re-evaluation was in 2017.  The market has changed drastically since 2017 which is why we are seeing the large increases in assessments.

How will the re-evaluation affect your taxes? 

The truth is, is that it may affect your taxes, or it may not.  That all depends on how much your value increased.  Each household will be different and unfortunately, we will not know exactly where the mill rate will fall until December 2023.  What we can tell you though is that the state holds each municipality to levy limits.  Meaning each municipality can only raise their budget a certain amount each year.   This is in place to protect the taxpayers.  Last year the township of Oak Grove did their full re-evaluation.  This is what happened:

This was the effect of two residential home in Oak Grove Township: 

As you can see, with an increase in value of 67.0842% the property taxes only went up $190.99. 

As you can see, with an increase in value of 45.5915% the property taxes went down $748.52. 

Please reach out to City Hall with any questions on this process at 715-262-5544, we are more than happy to walk you through this process.