Examining property assessment in Milwaukee County communities
Milwaukee County municipalities may stand to benefit by working collaboratively to conduct property assessments, either with an in-house or contract assessor. Milwaukee County’s 19 municipalities currently use a mix of […]
Black News 
Milwaukee County municipalities may stand to benefit by working collaboratively to conduct property assessments, either with an in-house or contract assessor.
Milwaukee County’s 19 municipalities currently use a mix of in-house assessors and contract firms to separately determine property values. Though this approach maximizes local control, it also limits economies of scale, and leads to quite different approaches among neighboring communities. It may also at times affect the quality and uniformity of assessments.
The state Constitution generally requires that properties of equal value within a given municipality are subject to the same level of taxation. To do this, the values of properties must be assessed at the same share of their market value. That principle is particularly challenging to achieve in Wisconsin, where property assessment is divided among more than 1,840 cities, villages, and towns.
In each municipality in Wisconsin, the assessor is responsible for discovering, listing, and valuing all parcels and property. Wisconsin is one of only eight states that handle property assessment at the municipal level, as most states handle it at the county level.
Across municipalities in Milwaukee County and statewide, the scope of this work varies enormously. The city of Milwaukee has 151,672 parcels reported to the state Department of Revenue, while River Hills has 663. In Milwaukee County, only the cities of Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, and West Allis employ in-house assessors. Other municipalities opt to contract with private companies for assessments.
This approach offers some advantages, including that its use of mid-sized to large companies helps to compensate, at least in part, for the lack of economies of scale at the municipal level. It also delivers low costs. The tradeoff for this low-cost approach is that in some cases it may affect quality, assessors and other experts said. It can lead to out-of-date or incomplete property information and involve inadequate methods of valuing property.
Changing the current system would be difficult, in part because any change would likely include an increase in costs for some communities. Should local leaders wish to consider potential assessment alternatives, options could include municipalities partnering to form a new commission that would hire its own assessment staff to value properties. This approach could improve the accuracy and uniformity of assessments but could involve a substantial increase in costs for most of the 16 municipalities that currently use a contract assessor.
Another option would be for communities to continue using a contract assessor, but instead do so by pooling their buying power to achieve a greater economy of scale. This could allow for greater oversight of the contracting and assessment process, and assessment companies agree it would likely result in some savings (or improved service) over municipalities’ already low costs for assessment. However, this approach would not necessarily resolve local leaders’ concerns about the contract assessment model.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum is not advocating for or against any change to the current system. Rather, we hope our report will provide insights for taxpayers and help municipalities meet their constitutional mandate of delivering accurate and uniform property values.
This information is provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members as a service of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. Learn more at wispolicyforum.org.
