District 207 has received questions from a few community members and parents about the 2022 property tax bills that were recently sent by Cook County. While each individual property tax bill is unique, and there are many factors involved in determining a tax bill, the district wanted to provide some general information that might be helpful.
Cook County follows a triennial reassessment cycle, meaning property is reassessed once every three years. The 2022 tax year is the reassessment year for properties in our District.
Another key piece of information is that a property owner’s tax bill is made up of many different taxing agencies including District 207, which represents approximately 28% of the overall property tax bill. Other taxing agencies include the elementary district, the municipality, Cook County taxing agencies, and miscellaneous taxing bodies like the sanitary district.
In order to help limit the property tax impact on residents the Board of Education abated $2.3 million on the Debt Service Levy in 2022, negating the increase that would have come from the sale of the last voter approved bonds, plus partially negating the impact of bonds previously sold.
In addition, the district’s PA-102-0519 Recapture Levy dropped by 32.84% (this is a fairly new law which implements an automatic levy increase to be applied by county tax extension officials each year in the amount of the aggregate property tax refunds paid by a taxing district in the prior year for certain types of refunds).
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the district’s property tax levy for 2022 increased by 3.82%.
Despite those limiting factors within District 207, the district has heard from residents that their tax bill increased by a large percentage, significantly above the 3.82% increase the District is receiving. Residents have asked how that is possible.
The amount of taxes that any individual property owner pays is based mainly on the increase in their property assessment (value of property) compared to the assessment of all other properties in the district. The assessment increase on all properties in Maine Township, which is determined by the Cook County Assessor’s Office, was 25.1% this year during the triennial reassessment.
There are several other factors that can impact an individual’s increase in property taxes, especially given several decisions that significantly impacted residential assessments (homes) more than non-residential (commercial property) recently.
- The increase in residential assessments are more than double the assessments of non-residential. Residential property assessments in Maine Township increased by 30.1%, while non-residential property increased by 14.7%.
- In Maine Township, the Board of Review reduced non-residential assessments by 23.6%, while reducing residential assessments by 1.6%.
- In the North and Northwest Suburban re-assessed area (which District 207 is located in), 22.4% of residential properties saw a decrease in their tax bill and 69.2% of commercial properties saw a decrease in their tax bill.
- The assessor’s office reversed the COVID-19 reductions on properties that were in effect and increased the assessment due to the booming housing market.
- Some taxpayers are granted property tax exemption which means their rate is frozen. Those exemptions impact all of the other properties as their rate increases to make up for that difference for the taxing bodies.
The Cook County Treasurer’s Office provided information to the public recently and the district disagrees with the statement in that release that states: More than any other factor that drives up property taxes is the amount levied by each of the country’s governmental units, such as schools, village and city halls, libraries and fire districts.” While this statement may be true on an aggregate of all properties, the single largest factor increasing an individual tax bill for 2022 is the assessment of that property and how that assessment compared to the other properties in their taxing area.
In an effort to be transparent and share factual information, District 207 has put together examples of how the assessments impacted various properties. Please note these examples are only for the District 207 portion of the tax bill.
In addition, District 207 provided information to the Board of Education regarding the tax bills (including backup material) and that memo is available for the public to review.