My property taxes are up - so why are the schools cutting programs?

(reprint with permission from the Legislative Action Committee.)

Last year’s[*] tri-annual property reassessment raised local tax bills by 30% or more for many Oak Park homeowners. With more than one-third of that money going to Oak Park Elementary School District 97, it's hard to understand why our schools are cutting teachers and programs. Could the cost of public education be rising that fast?

The short answer is "no" - school costs are not growing 10% annually. The actual figure is closer to 2% for school operating costs and 4% to repay bonds for school repair and construction. That’s largely driven by rapid increases in the salaries, insurance and other overhead costs that make up two-thirds of the school district budget. Also contributing is a growing need for special services for disabled, gifted, bilingual and other exceptional students.

So why did so many property tax bills go up so much more than the 6% increase in District 97’s share of your taxes? Among the more significant contributing factors:

• A shift in the property tax burden to homeowners from businesses and commercial property owners. The proportion of Oak Park property taxes paid by homeowners grew from 69.6% to 74.5%. This was because business and commercial property owners were much more successful than homeowners in appealing proposed property tax increases. Homeowners saw assessed values rise 43.3% while multi-family buildings rose only 24.3% and commercial properties less than 5%. As a result, homeowners on average saw property tax bills grow 15.5% for the year while businesses saw taxes fall 9.7%.
• A shift in the property tax burden to Oak Park from other communities. Oak Park homeowners are now paying a higher proportion of the tax levy for Cook County and some other government bodies that include communities beyond Oak Park because the value of Oak Park properties has risen quicker than for many other communities.

Despite these large increases in local taxes, Oak Park’s schools are starved for funds. Even with $3.6 million in budget reductions, expenses rise about 3.5% while various tax caps hold revenue growth to about 2%, effectively cutting about 1.5% annually from District 97’s school budgets. Clearly this is not sustainable for Oak Park schools or Oak Park taxpayers.

For the sake of our children and our community we must stabilize school funding. That will require changing the state school funding policies and laws that rely excessively on local property taxes - while producing budget deficits for 80% of school districts.

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* Editor’s Notes: Oak Park Township’s last reassessment was in 2002 for taxes payable in 2003. The next township reassessment is in 2005 for taxes payable in 2006.