STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAU) – Stevens Point residents will be seeing a hike in their property taxes next year.

The city's finance committee has approved a budget that would add approximately 60 cents per $1,000 to the city's mill rate. That's about 7 cents higher than a previous estimate.  City Treasurer John Schlice says the city has had to patch quite a big hole. “We plugged a $1.9 million hole in the budget for next year, and put back some things that the residents asked for.” A majority of that tax increase will come from the proposed referendum on the mall that was passed back in April.

Crossing guards, ball diamonds and the assessors office are back in the budget. Schlice says those came out of input gathered from budget hearings from the community. “We had a number of meetings, public meetings where people could come speak and voice their concerns.”

But Stevens Point is facing a problem like many other municipalities. The state has not delivered the city's final assessed value for next year. Schlice says that's unusual, but that they expect to have those numbers by next week.  

The city will hold one final public budget hearing on November 21, with a vote immediately to follow.