SHEBOYGAN, WI (WHBL) - The Sheboygan city council got their first look at the 2017 city budget at Tuesday night's meeting.
Mayor Mike Vandersteen says that residents should be seeing no increase in their tax rate this year. "For the citizens, the tax levy is going to be flat. We're basically taking advantage of the new construction, and businesses like Polyfab and Acuity, those are starting to come on our tax rolls." Vandersteen has said that those ew buildings will help boost Sheboygan's assessed value enough over the next few years, and will help get the city's budget stable again.
Vandersteen says they're going to be increasing borrowing this year on capital improvements. "We've really held our debt down for the last 19 years to a very low level, and one of the bad things about that is we haven't invested in our infrastructure and now a lot of that is needed." This year's capital borrowing is going to be $6.3 million dollars to pay for a number of projects including new body cameras for the police department and some needed new equipment and trucks for the fire department.
City Administrator Darryl Hoffland has placed the full budget document online at the city's website, and will be offering up a Youtube video describing the budget process and more. You can find links to both at http://www.sheboyganwi.gov/2017-executive-budget-release/