Matthew Crowe - Mayor Menomonie, WI

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Menomonie, WI
Matthew Crowe - Mayor Menomonie, WI

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Mayor of Menomonie, WI. Husband and father of three. Public servant focused on bringing the community together.

When we all work together, we can accomplish great things!

11/03/2026

Today is Election Day for the General Partisan Midterm Election. Get out and make your voice heard the best way you can, which is to vote! Rain, sleet, snow or sunshine, if you haven’t voted yet, make a plan to vote!

Polls are open until 8:00 pm. As long as you are in line before 8:00 pm, you can cast your vote. Make it happen!!

11/02/2026

A couple more posts left to wrap up the presentation from the State of the City Town Hall event almost two weeks ago.

North Menomonie is doing well with new businesses like The Pressery Coffee & Co. , Victory Revival, Culver's and Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Off Broadway strip mall is full. Heller Road and Oak Avenue will be repaved with new sidewalks, curb and gutters paid for by funds in the TID and not going against the tax levy. We are strategically working to attract more commercial businesses where the old KOA campground was and looking at new housing developments in North Menomonie.

We are also looking to attract our next “home run” in the Tech and Industrial Parks to help with our tax base and lift the tax burden on the residents while providing new and good paying jobs.

Catching up with our housing stock, attracting young families to rebuild our aging workforce and revitalizing Downtown Menomonie, will allow us to attract new businesses in the Tech and Industrial Parks. The City sees revenue and the residents get major tax relief from the businesses we have like Walmart DC, Anderson Windows, 3M, Philips Plastics, Cardinal Glass and others. These are all home runs that we have hit in the past and we look for more that fits our culture and makes sense for Menomonie.

Hitting another manufacturing “home run” in the future and having our local businesses expand will help the City’s revenue, tax base and overall quality of life by providing better services.

11/01/2026

Here is the agenda for tomorrow’s City Council meeting. A reminder that the meeting is at 6:00 pm. We are moving up the meeting one hour early to help setup the election equipment in the council chambers for the November 3rd midterm election.

We will be discussing the draft operating budget for 2027 and some of the options that the city has. Please join us for this discussion and we hope to see you there!

City Council packet is in the comments below ⬇️.

10/31/2026

Happy Halloween from my family (The Mario Brothers Crew!) to you and your family. We had a great time trick or treating in Downtown Menomonie and at The Neighbors of Dunn County yesterday. We hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween trick or treating today in the community!

10/30/2026

Our Historic Downtown Menomonie is the heartbeat of our local economy and one of the main takeaways of the town hall meeting last week is the strategic plan for downtown revitalization.

There is lots of activity going on downtown with new investments like Foos W**e Club, Lumberjax Bakery (two locations) and Dodo’s Thai Restaurant and Tiki Bar with food from Chef Stacy at the previous Parrot Bay Tanning Salon. We also had the successful Murals in Menomonie event this past summer to help beautify our downtown.

The biggest upside to downtown, will be the 2029 highway reroute. The state DOT highway will no longer go through or downtown Main Street. The highway will be rerouted to Crescent Street and Main Street will be the cities jurisdiction. This means we will be able to make Main Street and downtown, look and function the way we want it to and close off the streets for more parades and festivals.

The City has $1.1 Million in funds for the downtown Tax Increment District (TID) that we will use for downtown improvements and beautification including better streets, curb and sidewalk for better accessibility, trees to help shade the businesses, walk in pavilions and more.

This investment and highway reroute will help make downtown and Menomonie a destination city and help bring in tourism, more festivals, more investments and revitalization.

Exciting things to come to our downtown in the near future!

10/29/2026

Building out our infrastructure, including roads,
water, sewage and other essential services are the foundation of a strong community.

• These systems support residents and businesses every day, even when we don't see the work required to maintain them.
• Infrastructure investments help protect the services we already rely on while preparing for new housing and business development.
• Planning improvements today can help prevent larger challenges and expenses in

We are Investing in Reliable Water Supply

• Reliable water is essential for homes, businesses, public safety, and future community growth.
• Well No. 9 was drilled and tested in 2026, with construction of the treatment facility planned for 2027 and operation targeted for early 2028. This was the first well drilled in Menomonie since 1994 when the population was just over 14,000. We are just over 17,000 and the percentage of residents who have automatic lawn irrigation systems has increased dramatically over the years causing increased demand on the system.
• The well is designed for 900 gallons per minute which meets demand for needs for today and adds capacity as community needs grow.
• The City has received a Public Facilities Community Development Block Grant for $1,000,000 from the state to help support this infrastructure investment.

More infrastructure projects to come with a 5 year road improvement plan, which will be paid through Tax Increment Districts (TID) and not on the residential tax payers.

10/28/2026

The third and final topic of discussion at the Town hall last week was economic development.

I think it’s important to understand the definition of economic development and what we are trying to accomplish with new construction, development and redevelopment here in Menomonie.

Economic Development:

“A deliberate, multidimensional policy process that improves a communities economic well-being and overall quality of life.”

The two questions we need to ask ourselves when it comes to economic development:

Does this improve a community’s economic wellbeing?

Does this improve quality of life?

Nothing here that states that we have to compromise our values, rural culture or historic heritage. The deliberate policy process, brings intentionality and strategic planning to which developments we bring to the table to improve our economy and quality of life. Making sure we are being proactive with attracting business and development to Menomonie and not just waiting for what falls in our lap.

Over the next few days, I will be posting what we discussed around economic development at the town hall, what the strategy is and how it all ties together with our other two previous topics.

10/27/2026

The City of Menomonie currently has approximately $2.35 million in affordable housing funds. These funds are collected through our tax increment districts (TIDs). The life of the TID is generally 20 years which collects incremental tax assessed value from new developments, construction and redevelopments and not from the individual tax payer/residents. Per state statute, the city can decide to leave a TID open for an additional year, with all of the incremental tax value going to an affordable housing fund. In 2027, city’s can leave the TID’s open for two years to collect this incremental tax value and affordable housing funds.

The City has brought back the Ad-hoc Housing Committee to make recommendations to the City Council on how to invest these affordable housing funds to make housing as affordable as possible in Menomonie. Please join us for these monthly meetings. The next meeting is November 4th at 6:00 pm at City Hall.

We will be looking at options such as down payment assistance through The Sweet Home Menomonie Program, revolving loan funds for home improvement projects, or new construction and tools like Residential TID’s to help drive down housing costs.

Single family homes present our biggest challenge for affordability. Single family home construction is going for around $300/sq foot. A 1000 sq foot house = $300,000. A 1500 sq foot house = $450,000. The City has 17 building permits for single family homes
under new construction. The average of these homes comes to $358,000. We look forward to tackling these challenges and bringing in a variety of housing options and investing the affordable housing funds to help drive costs and pricing down.

10/26/2026

The second topic presented and discussed at the Town Hall was housing. I’m looking forward to 2027, as this will be the year of housing.

The City of Menomonie is in a housing shortage. The City will need to build an additional 650 homes by 2040 to catchup with current projected growth. We will need more homes to build up our labor market to strategically grow over time.

The City needs a variety of housing from low-income housing , affordable work force housing, midsized single family homes, executive homes and senior housing. The executive and senior housing will free up more single family homes once the families decide to move to the larger executive homes and when seniors decide to downsize to senior homes.

We have some developments in the works for all of these areas. Some are further along in the process and some of these projects will fall through. We have an affordable housing development that we are working on with a potential for a YMCA in the Northern area of the Tech Park on City owned lands.

It is exciting that we have housing developers interested in working with Menomonie to provide much needed housing options. Tomorrow, we will talk about what the city is doing to help make housing more affordable in our area.

10/25/2026

Let’s talk about property taxes as we did at the town hall on Tuesday.

The City is updating property assessments to meet state requirements and better reflect current market values. Every year the City does a property tax assessment. In 2027, the city will conduct a reassessment. This reassessment is mandated by the state Department of Revenue (DOR). As you can see on slide 2 in this post, the aggregate ratio is at 1.0059 in 2021 after the last reassessment. For compliance, this ratio has to be between 0.90 and 1.10. The City has been below the 0.90 for the past five years, at no fault of the cities, which forces the reassessment. Per state statute, the city has an accessor place an accessed value on properties while the state does an assessment on the equalized value of the property. The difference between the two is the aggregate ratio. Let’s see how this affects the mill rate and taxes.

An increase in your property's assessed value does not automatically mean your taxes will increase by that same percentage.

Property taxes depend on the total taxes levied, applicable tax rates, and how your property's value changes compared with other properties.

Equalized values help the state compare property values consistently across communities and are another part of the broader property tax system.

The chart below shows how Menomonie's total assessed and equalized property values have changed over time.

Reassessment and new development are different; an increase in assessed values doesn't necessarily create the same increase in City operating revenue.

Encouraging new housing, business expansion, and redevelopment helps add value to the community and strengthen our tax base over time.

How has the mill rate changed?

The mill rate is the amount of property tax charged for every $1,000 of taxable property value.

The City's mill rate has changed over the past several years, with the presentation showing a rate of 7.22 in 2026.

A lower mill rate doesn't automatically mean a lower property tax bill because assessed property values may also change. With the ratio coming in at or close to 1.0 on the reassessment, the mill rate will go down. This is demonstrated from the reassessment in 2021 with the 2022 mill rate decreasing significantly.

Residents' total property tax bills include taxes from other jurisdictions, such as the county, school district, and technical college, not just the City.

Increasing our tax base through residential, commercial and industrial development, will also decrease the mill rate and taxes.

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Menomonie, WI

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http://www.croweformayor.com/

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