The City of Wauwatosa has received "a high volume of submissions" from property owners questioning or seeking to contest their new assessed values in the current revaluation process, and officials have responded by extending filing deadlines and moving back the start of the review hearing process.
The initial deadline for property owners to file objections or notices of intent to object to the city's new assessments was Aug. 16. Now that deadline has been moved to Aug. 26, at 10 a.m..
The city's Board of Review had intended to begin the process of considering those objections on Aug. 18. Instead, it will convene its first full two-hour meeting at 10 a.m. Aug. 28, with individual objection hearings to be scheduled this fall. (The Board of Review still met on Aug. 18 at City Hall, but only to take up organizational and procedural matters, such as naming a chair and reviewing new policies.)
In addition to mailing the new assessments to property owners, Wauwatosa made the records available online in the city's searchable database.
This is the City of Wauwatosa's first revaluation since 2019. Wisconsin municipalities are required by state law to conduct revaluations regularly to ensure assessed values do not fall too out of line with market values — within 10% above or below. In July, when property owners were notified of the new assessments, the city said assessed values of Tosa properties had risen by an average of 54% from the previous revaluation. Some individual property owners saw values rise even higher, while other properties lagged behind the citywide average.
More recently, the city has advised residents that the Aug. 9 and 10 storm and flooding will not affect this year's revaluation, which uses sales data from previous years to estimate new assessed values current to Jan. 1, 2025 — before the flooding.
Tosa Forward News asked city officials for the number of assessment inquiries and objections so far in the revaluation process, and this story will be updated as further information is received.
Property assessments do not directly determine tax collections or tax rates, though they can affect the distribution of the tax burden among taxpayers across the whole municipality. A property owner whose value rose faster than a neighbor's may see a tax bill proportionately higher than that neighbor.
The ultimate effect on individual tax bills depends on any changes the Common Council makes to the municipality's budget and its level of overall taxation. Those figures will not be considered or adopted by the council until later in the year. As the citywide value of all taxable property increases, tax rates would need to be lowered to keep the tax levy unchanged. Gradual levy increases are common to keep pace with annually increasing municipal costs.
The city also only controls the portion of property tax bills that contribute to the city's tax levy. Other taxing authorities, such as Wauwatosa School District, set their own tax levies and then adjust their rates accordingly after the city completes its revaluation.
Wauwatosa voters this year approved an operational referendum allowing the school district to raise taxes collected by $16.1 million in the coming school year, resulting in an estimated increase of 10% in Tosans' tax bills, according to the city's assessment page. As with the city's property taxes, it is too early to calculate precise school tax bills, because the school district's 2026 tax levy won't be finalized until later this year.
- If you have questions or concerns about the revaluation, tell us about it by emailing editor@tosanews.com.
