| By Neil Johnson, reporter/anchor, Big Radio |

The city of Milton’s 5.6 million-dollar 2024 budget has passed with no big changes — at least none in the coming year.

City Treasurer Kelsey Bannach says staff recently learned Milton’s average property assessments now lag about 22 percent behind prevailing market values. She recommends a citywide property re-valuation by sometime in 2025.

To play assessment catch up, it’ll cost $25,000 in consulting fees, but the city will split that tab over the next two years. That’d put a reassessment on the tax rolls for the 2026 budget.

Milton’s neighbor, the city of Janesville, completed a citywide property revaluation this year.

It resulted in an 43% increase in assessed home values for the average Janesville homeowner — although homeowners in some of the city’s older neighborhoods who’d been assessed for years at a rate far lower than local fair market value saw their on-paper home value climb much more than that.