Janesville City Council Special Session: 2027 Revaluation Presentation - August 10, 2026
Janesville City Council Special Session: 2027 Revaluation Presentation - August 10, 2026
On August 10, 2026, the Janesville City Council held a special session to receive a presentation from the City Assessor's Office on the upcoming 2027 citywide revaluation. The presentation, led by City Assessor Michelle Laube and Deputy Assessor Wade Hodgkinson, covered the legal mandate for revaluation, the current compliance status, expected impacts on property values and taxes, and the timeline for the process. Council members asked questions and discussed the implications for property owners.
Discussion Items
-
Presentation on 2027 Revaluation: Michelle Laube explained that the last revaluation was completed in 2023. State law requires assessments to be within 90–110% of market value; the current aggregate ratio based on 2025 sales is 83.04%, meaning the city is out of compliance. Without a timely revaluation, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue could mandate one at a higher cost (estimated $22,000 for this revaluation if done internally). The presentation emphasized that revaluations are revenue neutral: the total levy (budgets) is fixed, so a rise in total assessed value forces the mill rate down proportionally. Overall, the average home value is expected to rise about 25% (from $239,200 to around $300,000). Individual property tax bills will stay roughly the same if a property’s value increase matches the average; properties with above-average increases will see a tax increase, and those with below-average increases will see a decrease.
-
Council Q&A: Council members raised several questions. One member questioned why a buyer paying above market should affect the assessed value of other properties; Laube explained that multiple bidders and supply-demand dynamics set the market, and assessments simply reflect those arm’s-length sales. Another council member noted the importance of distinguishing between market-setting and assessment-following. Laube clarified that the process is not designed to raise taxes but to ensure equitable distribution of the tax burden. She also noted that the mill rate must legally decrease after a revaluation, barring referendums or other levies.
-
Timeline and Outreach: Field data collection begins immediately and continues through end of February 2027. Notices of assessment change will be mailed in spring 2027, followed by informal “open book” appointments and formal Board of Review hearings. The assessor’s office will post a list of arm’s-length sales and an estimated tax calculator on the city website. Laube offered to return for additional presentations on residential/commercial valuation methods and to provide an update when notices go out. She also volunteered to speak at local civic groups (e.g., Lions, Kiwanis) to educate the community.
Key Outcomes
- The council accepted the presentation and expressed support for further educational sessions. Council President Squire suggested a brief update when assessment notices are issued, and Laube agreed to return as needed.
- The meeting adjourned by unanimous voice vote (motion by Councilmember Cast, second by Councilmember Miller; all present aye, none opposed).
- No formal votes were taken on policy changes; the session was informational only.
Meeting Transcript
Member Erdman here. Well, I'm not even gonna do this alphabetically, Councilmember Seaman. Here, Councilmember Miller. Here, Councilmember Pope. And Councilman, uh Councilmember Nino is not here. So there are six present. We do have a quorum. Very good. We'll go right to item number two, which is the 2027 citywide reevaluation presentation by Michelle Lowe Lowby. Is it lobby? Lobby, like a hotel lobby. Lobby? Okay. So I didn't I knew how to spell it, didn't know how to pronounce it. City assessor and Wade Hodgkin, deputy city assessor. And uh so the City of Janesville Assessor's Office will provide a presentation to the council members, and we will have questions and answers uh following for council members only. So Michelle, you're up. Thank you, council member or council president squire and the rest of council. I appreciate you taking time out of your lives to come and learn more about the upcoming revaluation. I anticipate possibly three presentations during this time frame, depending on the desire of the council. So this will be the first of three sessions that we can have on this topic. This session will be more broad and more kind of talking about the tax impacts and things, and then the next session, if desired, would be looking more at residential and commercial properties and how we value those and how to navigate kind of the website and go through that process with you guys. And then also the third session could be just during a normal council meeting. I don't think it would take as long and give you an update that notices are going out to property owners, what we anticipate that average assessment change to be, and um could be more of a brief update at that point. Um so depending on your desires in the future after tonight, we can kind of navigate through this together. So I will get started. So in our office, we're always working on an assessment role, and we create create an assessment role every year. We're either doing it at a maintenance assessment role or working towards a revaluation, and the differences of those are in a maintenance year we capture value changes because of a permit, new construction, or we reviewed a sale and we found some data changes, but in a revaluation, we're doing that, and we're also capturing market driven appreciation, or if the market has come down, depreciation. We cannot account for those things in years that we are not doing a reval. So um the revaluation allows us to account for those changes in market. So in a maintenance year, not most assessments do not change. We typically have about three thousand change notices out of the 25,000 some parcels we have in the city, and then in a reevaluation year, everyone will receive a change notice, and because everybody's value is anticipated to change. So why is a revaluation needed? Property values change differently throughout the city. So even though we all live in one jurisdiction, the values change differently throughout the city, and we use our assessment neighborhoods to kind of calibrate residential values according to the market changes that we're seeing, and that's based off of the sales that occur. We're not anticipating or creating the market, we're just reflecting what has happened in the community. So, and then the revaluations ensure that assessments reflect that new market value, and that each property only pays their total share of the tax needed. So, why reval now? The last reevaluation we completed was in 2023. State law requires that we have our assessments be within 90 to 110 percent of market value, so we can be above or below by 10 percent, and that still falls into compliance. The city's strategic plan says to revalue once every four years, and currently our assessment ratio is out of compliance. So this is our 2026 ratio that you're seeing is at 8304. So we're outside of that 90 percent. So go ahead. How would you how is the ratio calculated? What's the underlying math to that? Sure. So they take we report all the sales that we review every year and report that information to the department of revenue. Okay, they take the total value of all the sales that occurred in the city, and whether that's residential, commercial, agricultural, whatever we call usable, and then they divide that by the assessment. Okay, so that's how they it's a state calculation, correct, and it's an aggregate ratio.
openpublica.com