Every year, many governments, including libraries, school districts, park districts, and municipalities, get a chance to raise their property taxes. The village of Skokie, however, won’t raise its levy and hasn’t done so in 35 consecutive years.
At the Skokie Village Board of Trustees meeting on Nov. 4, the village’s finance director, Julian Prendi, explained how the village has frozen its share of property taxes since 1990. The short answer? Businesses in Skokie bring in enough sales tax to keep up with the village’s bills, Prendi said.
“I can say today the predominant funding source of the general fund, the (village’s) operating fund, is sales taxes,” Prendi said. “It has been our philosophy throughout time to push for development and redevelopment and move the tax burden for funding our services to folks that come and shop and enjoy and make use of our town.”
Prendi said the village also gets a good amount of revenue from food and beverage taxes and use taxes. The Illinois Department of Revenue defines a use tax as a “tax imposed on the privilege of using, in Illinois, any item of tangible personal property that is purchased anywhere at retail.”
Prendi briefly explained how property taxes work in Cook County. Local governments determine whether they need to raise property taxes for the next fiscal year, communicate to Cook County how much more in funding they need, and ask the county to add those increases to property tax bills. Most governments raise their levies to keep up with inflation and fund their services.
If the village were to raise the levy at the rate of inflation going back to 1990, Prendi said it would cost Skokie taxpayers an additional $243 million. The average household would pay approximately $432 more in property taxes, and the average business would pay $1,234 more in property taxes, he said.
In 1990, 16% of Skokie property tax dollars went to the village, Prendi said. In 2023, the portion the village took shrunk to 5.6%, though other taxing districts collect a larger share of property tax dollars.
Prendi said the village’s freeze on property tax was done with the intention to allow for school districts and other taxing bodies to acquire a greater share of property tax revenues, as most school districts in the state rely heavily on property tax dollars as their primary source of revenue. In 1990, school districts in Skokie received 55.9% of funding from property tax dollars; by 2023, that rose to 72.07%, according to village documents.
Mayor George Van Dusen, who was a trustee on the village board when it enacted the property tax freeze, agreed with Prendi.
“We decided that we would benefit more from relying on the use taxes, as Julian said, and principally the sales tax, and that that increment would then give the schools, the park district and the library that much more opportunity to increase their service to the village,” Van Dusen said.
“We have always been very proud of our schools, our parks and of course our library. They’re renowned for their service and I think the philosophy that we adopted in fact has contributed towards those units of government being able to give service to the village of Skokie,” Van Dusen said. “It’s always worked out well for us.”
Keeping the property tax frozen is not an easy task, Van Dusen said. “We twist ourselves into a pretzel every year trying to figure out how we meet our obligations and yet at the same time not break the cap on the property tax… You can thank (Village Manager) John (Lockerby), (Assistant Village Manager) Nick (Wyatt) and Julian (and) all of the others on the village staff for everything that they do to help us in that regard.”
