This may go down as the Year of the Tax Hike. Governments across Lake County are primed to boost their annual tax bites, or will ask voters next month to approve referendums and their accompanying tax increases.
With the pandemic in the rearview mirror and federal COVID-19 money drying up, taxing bodies are returning to their friendly taxpayers to fund operations. For instance, Waukegan Unit School District 60.
During the coronavirus epidemic, District 60 received $82 million in congressional funding. With that coming to an end, school officials say homeowners will probably see a tax increase on their 2024 tax bills which will be mailed in the spring of 2025.
If that comes to be, the increase will be the first since 2019, officials said last month, while the district continues to spend down more of its reserves. The school board made a conscious decision at the height of the pandemic to keep the tax rate static in order to give residents, many impacted by stay-at-home edicts, a financial break.
District 60 officials aren’t the only ones looking at higher taxes. In an election year, Lake County officials last month adopted an estimated property tax levy for 2025 which is $6.1 million higher than last year’s. The $185 million estimated levy could rise or fall, officials noted, depending on spending needs.
In Lake Zurich, the Village Board OK’d a half-cent sales tax increase early last month in order to pay for Lake Michigan water lines. Nearby Kildeer is expected to follow suit on an increase to the sales tax.
The Lake Zurich sales tax hike raises the levy to 1% on retail purchases. It was allowed without a referendum by the legislature for non-home-rule communities. The increase should help offset state action dropping the 1% tax on grocery sales.
While the state has helped Illinoisans with slight tax relief for buying groceries — something Gov. JB Pritzker crowed about when he signed the legislation this summer — it doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2026. That gives cities and villages time to either adjust their budget forecasting or institute their own sales tax increases. Which is more likely to happen?
What the state still dodges is property tax relief promised for years by Illinois political leaders. Perhaps hoping to soothe homeowners and businesses who have waited in vain for a remedy to high property taxes, there is a statewide advisory referendum on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Called the “property tax relief and fairness,” it’s a phony measure. The question asks voters if the state Constitution should be amended to create an additional 3% tax on income greater than $1 million, “for the purpose of dedicating funds raised to property tax relief?”
The way Illinois governmental bodies and the federal government want to “tax the rich” for everything, from shoring up Social Security and Medicare to tax relief, it may end up they’ll be taxing the rich until there are rich no more. The late British singer/guitarist Alvin Lee of Ten Years After predicted that in the rock group’s 1971 hit song, “I’d Love to Change the World.”
Other referendums on the upcoming ballot include a proposition asking voters in Moraine Township, which takes in all of Highland Park and Highwood, to approve an annual tax levy not to exceed .03% to provide mental health services and facilities. Officials there say it will cost a homeowner with a house valued at $100,000 about $10 a year.
When was the last time a home in Highland Park was assessed at $100,000? Perhaps when World War II was raging?
At least the Lake County Forest Preserves District has some truth-in-taxation on its referendum seeking to issue a $155 million bond issue for land acquisition and improvements to existing forest preserves. District officials say a single-family home with a $300,000 market value would face a property tax increase of just under $33 in the first year of the bond issue.
Mundelein High School, too, is asking taxpayers to ante up more for a $149.5 million bond issue to ease overcrowding, and all sorts of other improvements to the school at Midlothian Road and Hawley Street which opened in 1961. Voters last year vetoed a similar referendum.
For homeowners across the county, tax hikes are in their hands, or in their future. The above governments aren’t the only ones eyeing what have become euphemistically called “revenue enhancements.”
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
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