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Imagine paying 40% less in property taxes to get the same or better education results. Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski joins Scott Slocum on WJOL to talk about why Illinois schools should follow Florida’s lead. 
Wirepoints piece on the subject:
Summary and audio linked here.
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
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Audio and summary
It is relevant to recognize that certain legislative measures had at one time been enacted, Measures which capped taxation and spending by public taxing bodies according to a ratio that related spending to the means of the taxed community. Think of it this way: What percentage of your home value would you be willing or able to pay annually to have a fire department? If your home value is $200,000, would you pay 100%? Of course not. If your home value is $1000 would you pay 100%? No, cheaper to let it burn. Somewhere between zero % and 100% there… Read more »
In its infinite wisdom, erstwhile Illinois legislators devised a taxation maximum ratio formula for Fund Accounting school expenditures and debt. The formulae created maximum percentages of EAV (equalized assessed value) which could be taxed, or against which debt could be incurred. Examples include 4% of EAV (that is, 1.333% of your total home value) was maximum rate that could be taxed for the General Education Fund (all purpose spending), and 13.8% of EAV (that is, 4.6% of your total home value) was the maximum debt which could be incurred by the school district. School boards now make extraordinary efforts to… Read more »
Imagine the Illinois Video Poker and Lottery actually paying 100% of your schools budget and stop this nonsense of paying with property taxes altogether.
I don’t know if they still do this but Forsyth County, just north of Atlanta, Georgia adjusted real estate taxes so those homeowners over the age of 65 were not taxed by the school district for the county. It did not seem to hurt their education system.
why decrease the tax burden on those most able to afford it? Retirees in IL have ALL the money
Correct and they are the ones that vote democratic, but when there retirement incomes start to be taxed watch what happens the demons will start losing the hold.
don’t have to imagine … living it …
Susan is one of the smartest people on the planet when it comes to school entitlements and how to oversee what is really at the root of the problem. Taxpayer dollars spent in the wrong direction.
Percentage of Household incomes in Woodstock spent on property taxes is >100% higher than American mean and median.
This significant portion of hh budgets (>9% in Woodstock vs. <4% in America) has caused a decades- long degradation of local economy and home values.
So, how do we get the changes made?
1. Elect school board candidates whose households do not receive remuneration from school and its defined benefits system. 2. Insist on a forensic audit of school expenditures and timecards. 3. Scour consent agendas for anomalous spending. 4. Watch out for improper interfund transfers (used to evade Fund accounting maximums). 5. Attend school board meetings and distribute written documentation to Board members (so they cannot plead ignorance, only indifference): *Your school’s national peer comparison of spending. (Nces.ed.gov) * Your school’s FTE (full time equivalent) employee count over past decades, along with enrollment numbers. Note ratios of employee-per-pupil (not just teacher-pupil ratios)… Read more »
You will probably find the school board made decisions years ago to fund some big school boondoggle based on growth rates. They bought land, started to build and the growth hit the wall when all those companies bailed out. Sears, Motorola… Now the school board says it isn’t my fault we’re doing the best we can. In the mean time people are running from their homes across the border. If the State/Locals can’t find a way to entice businesses to locate there isn’t it fait accompli? If you try anything drastic you’ll run head long into a court system that… Read more »
Everything you described has happened here. There is a guarantee that zero contributory growth will happen in Woodstock D200 taxpayer district for the next 31 years, that guarantee is TIF. Any real estate development here will be non-contributory and create an even larger tax burden for non-TIF properties: non-TIF taxpayers are forced to subsidize new school enrollment and other mandated social-service provision to TIF free-riders. But one thing can have effect: litigation. Taxpayer objection lawsuits. Yes it is expensive, time consuming, and schools use taxpayer’s own money against us to hire the most expensive lawyers in Illinois to drag out… Read more »