Frequenty Asked Questions
Anytime we take on a project such as this, we must be prepared for the
inevitable doubters. There are those that doubt the accuracy and validity
of the information we present. They will question our sources, our motives,
our integrity, our honesty, and sometimes even our right to look deeper into
our own governments and demand accountability. We recognize that we cannot
alleviate all doubt about all things, but we may be able to put some fears
aside by talking about how we do what we do.
The Sources Of Our Data
We made a decision very early on in this project to only get information
from authoritative government sources. Our intent is to provide raw, factual
data that is then personalized as much as possible. To this end, we have not
included data from bloggers, television/print/internet/radio media,
politicians, or from anyone other than government sources that make their
data publicly available to everyone.
All information regarding assessed property values, levies for schools,
technical colleges, and county and municipal levies for 2007-2010 was
received from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue via their
Government Publications
page.
Various information about school district taxation came from the Wisconsin
Department of Public Instruction via their
Wisconsin School District Taxes and Levy Rates
page.
Because complete 2011 tax data is not yet available from the Wisconsin
Department of Revenue, it was necessary to assemble this information from
various sources including the ones named above, but also the
Wisconsin State Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
In addition, our volunteers sent email messages to most of the 1900
municipalities in Wisconsin requesting their data for the 2011/12 tax year.
Many responded in a timely and accurate manner, for which we are very
grateful.
In the absence of factual hard numbers received from municipal
sources, we are forced to calculate what we believe the 2011 figures to be.
These calculations are done based on 2010 tax data, historical increases and
decreases, and known average savings experienced by municipalities that
enacted many of the cost saving tools in Act 10. We realize that these
calculations and estimates cannot replace real numbers, and we will continue
to collect this information and update our database for the length of this
project, and beyond.
Additional education and knowledge was received from the
Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. While we
very much appreciate their research and the educational opportunities their
web site provides, we did not use any of their research or data to perform
our calculations or estimations.
Information about Act 10 in general, was taken from the
Wisconsin Reforms and Results Web Site.
No data, numbers, statistics, estimations, etc. from this web site were used
in our calculations. Some information from this site is repeated on our
About Act 10 page, but none of this commentary
or information was included in our data.
How Do You Get Your Funding?
We the People of the Republic is a privately-funded, independent, grassroots
501(c)4 "Tea Party" organization that relies on the generosity of
our fellow Patriots to produce tools like iSaveWithAct10.com. We operate on
a shoestring budget. If you would like to
make a donation to We the People of the Republic, you may do so here.
Please note that donations are not deductible for income tax purposes.
If You Believe You Found a Problem...
We make every effort to verify the quality, accuracy, and truthfulness of
the information we present. We have many thousands of bits of data that go
into the process of calculating your savings under Act 10, and we must pull
this information from various government agencies. This is a time intensive
and manual process. We have many checks to make sure the data is valid and
cohesive, but with 1900 municipalities in Wisconsin reporting tax data
for many years - to different agencies - in different formats, there are
bound to be errors.
Our goal is not to slant the results of Act 10 to favor any one party or
person. We are a non-partisan organization. Our goal is, to the best we
absolutely can, estimate your personal savings under the reforms enacted by
Act 10. If you feel we are estimating your saving incorrectly, it is
possible that we have bad data from your municipality. We encourage you to
contact us via email
to let us know about your findings. You may also use this email address for
any concerns you may have about this site, or to learn more about our
organization.
