October is a time for temperatures and available sunlight dropping, leaves changing color before falling, apples and pumpkins.

October is also a time for a less exciting yearly feature — county, municipal and school district budgets.

Platteville City Manager Clint Langreck presented the proposed 2024 budget at Tuesday’s Common Council meeting.

The council got an early look at one large aspect of the budget one week ago — proposalsfor the city’s Capital

Improvement Plan.

The biggest aspect of the 2024 CIP is the new fire station scheduled to be built next year at $12.5 million or
$14.5 million, which is estimated to require $3.06 million to almost $4.6 million of city borrowing. The council

was expected to vote Tuesday on whether to build a higher priced fire station at the former O.E. Gray School site, or a lesser-priced fire station in the Platteville Industry Park.

If the council chooses to build at the former O.E. Gray School site, the CIP budget will have to include $310,000,

between CIP borrowing and water and sewer borrowing, to reconstruct Adams Street in front of the fire station.

The council will hold a special meeting Tuesday to review department operational budgets.

The council is expected to vote on the budget Nov. 28.

The Platteville School District will hold its annual meeting, including school district resident voting on the school district’s 2023–24 tax levy, Oct. 25. A Board of Education meeting after the annual meeting will set the budget and tax levy. 

The school district’s preliminary 2023–24 budget will be introduced at tonight’s school board meeting. The school district’s tax levy will be determined after the school district finds out how much state aid it will receive Friday.

The school district will also find out its third-Friday-in-September enrollment tonight. State aid is tied to

school district enrollment.

The Grant County Board of Supervisors expects a balanced 2024 budget, which will be a feat considering some of the hurdles the board needed to tackle:

• A double-digit increase in health insurance costs.

• Expected increases in wages try and retain employees.

• Limited increases in revenue due to modest increases in new construction.

According to Grant County Finance Director Amanda Degenhardt, the budget will even likely see a drop in the
mil rate within the county, with the projection currently to be $2.96 per $1,000 assessed valuation for debt service, compared with $3.54 per $1,000, because of a reduction in debt payments for this coming year.

When the budget process began the initial budget had a $2 million shortfall due to project and program additions. As items were pulled or reduced by departments, that shortfall decreased. Currently, the shortfall is less than $500,000 with optimism that finding the cuts to balance the budget will be done before the hearing.

However, the county had to deal with more issues. Initial projections budgeted for a nine percent increase
for health insurance, partly due to inflation and heavier claims this past year. However, the actual increase in
premiums will be 14 percent, which had to be compensated for in the budget.

County departments budgeted for 4 percent wage increases. That may change, however, as the county is currently having a market study done to see how the employee wages stand compared to the region.

Degenhardt noted that if the projections show there would need to be an increase to closer to six percent to meet the market average, there is probably a way to fit it into the budget.