Lac du Flambeau school board approves 2024-25 budget

The school board for the Lac du Flambeau public school district last approved the district’s budget and property tax levy for 2024-25.

After district administrator Josh Ernst gave a brief overview of the district operations and the different funds it works with budgeterily during the nearly 20-minute long budget hearing, board president Gary Smith convened the annual meeting where a tax levy of $9,008,000 was approved. 

The 2024-25 budget is $17,079,795. 

The budget reflects a decrease from last year’s which was a little more than $19.5 million. 

The tax levy is up just over four percent but increased property values mean that for 2024-25, taxpayers in the Lac du Flambeau school district will be paying less in property tax than they have in at least 10 years. 

In 2024-25, the owner of a $100,000 home will see a $628 tax bill from the district compared to $667 for 2023-24. 

For the 2014-15 school year, the tax bill for the owner of the same $100,000 home was $749. 

Once the vote on the 2024-25 budget and property tax levy was finished during the annual meeting, Smith adjourned that meeting and convened a special meeting of the school board where the budget and tax levy were officially adopted.

Board raises

Also approved during the annual meeting was a $100 raise for each member of the school board. 

Ernst said he’d checked into what school board members of the five public school districts that make up the Lakeland consortium are paid and discovered pay for school board members of the Lac du Flambeau school district “is definitely the lowest.” 

He said the North Lakeland school board salaries recently were increased from $1,200 per year to $2,400; the school board president for the Minocqua Hazelhurst Lake Tomahawk school district is paid $3,600 per year while the other four members are each paid $3,500 per year; Lakeland Union High School board members are paid $2,400 per year with the board president at $2,500 per year and at Arbor Vitae-Woodruff, the five school board members are each paid $200 per month. 

“Just wanted to make you guys aware,” Ernst said. “A little bit of a discrepancy, I think, between the Lakeland consortium. Something to consider.”

Smith said in the nearly 30 years he’s been on the school board, there has been one increase in school board salaries. 

He said during the tenure of Ernst’s predecessor, Larry Ouimette, he didn’t believe there had been one. 

“I think it’s been 12 or 15 years since we had an increase,” Smith said. “I know we’re not in it to make money but we are definitely way behind compared to the other districts.”

School board member Mike Zimmerman made a motion to increase the pay of school board members to $200 per month and it passed unanimously.

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].