Chequamegon School District Presentation

1. Chequamegon School District Presentation Special Committee on Review of the Managed Forest Law Program Hearing October 6, 2010

2. Chequamegon School District • Newly consolidated effective July 1, 2009 • District contains land in Price, Ashland, Iron, and Sawyer Counties • 800 students • 51% free and reduced rate • 2007 Adjusted Gross Income Per Return • Glidden $29,319 • Park Falls $37,326

3. Significant declining enrollment • Increasing property values • Declining state aids (estimated at 32% for 2010-11) • Higher property taxes

4. 2nd largest district in Wisconsin geographically with 740.64 sq. miles – over 460,000 acres. • District split geographically with Butternut School District (231.21 sq. miles) located in the middle.

5. Nearly 353,000 acres national, state, and county forests as well as Managed Forest Law Program lands. • Remaining 107,000 taxable acres contain roads, lakes, rivers, streams.

6. The Managed Forest Law Program was created to promote sustainable forest management for the nearly 70 percent of Wisconsin’s forest lands that are privately owned. • However, the vast majority of our district is public forest and is already being managed by national forest service, DNR, and county forestry departments.

7. Property Tax Ramifications • 77% of school district is property tax exempt or discounted MFL and agricultural properties. • 23% is taxable; however, this includes roads, lakes, rivers, and streams that are not taxable.

8. Exempt/Discounted Acres Summary • 43% national forest exempt acres • 4.8% county forest exempt acres • .3% other exempt county acres • .6% other exempt acres • 13% state exempt acres • 9.5% discounted MFL acres • 5.4% discounted agricultural/forest acres

9. What to do? • Our district is facing a disturbing dilemma. • As more and more forested properties are taken off the tax rolls, the local home owners are having to pay much higher property taxes to support the school district. • When property is placed in the MFL program, the taxes that were paid by those land owners are shifted to the remaining home owners.

10. More and more forested property in our district is being placed into the MFL program strictly for property tax savings purposes. • See attached newspaper advertisement from the June 25, 2010, Park Falls Herald.

11. The result is home owners pay higher property taxes to make up the difference. • Will the time come when only home owners will be paying the property taxes necessary to support the Chequamegon School District?

12. Some consideration needs to be made for the handful of districts such as ours that are so negatively impacted financially by the vast amounts of federal, state, and county forests as well as the MFL within their boundaries. • Laona receives $125,000 in supplemental state aid because so much of their district is exempt from property taxation and is taxed as forest croplands.

13. Perhaps, the Chequamegon School District could be included in similar legislation.