Chicago’s Southland residents are irate about their property tax hikes. Wait till they see how their money is being spent. – Wirepoints

By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

South Cook residents are right to be irate about their sky-high property tax hikes, where residents in the worst-off cities saw tax bills more than double in just one year. The median Dixmoor tax bill jumped up by 122% this year. In Phoenix it more than doubled, up 107%. And in Harvey the median bill increased by 82%. We show in the appendix below the 15 cities in Southland with the biggest jumps.

What’s worse is how that money is being squandered. Education is the biggest expense on a resident’s tax bill and a look at the top-paid school administrators across the Southland area shows dozens of officials getting paid big bucks to deliver distressing educational outcomes.

Top of the list is Dolton SD 148’s Superintendent Kevin Nohelty. He’s compensated with nearly $480,000 a year to manage a district where just 14% of black students can read at grade level. Dolton’s assistant superintendent Sonya Whitaker receives total compensation of $310,000. (Amazingly, Dolton spends $25,000 per student, 97% of its teachers are rated excellent or proficient, and 8 of the 9 schools in the district are rated “commendable,” the state’s second-best school rating.)

Thornton Twp HSD 205’s Nathaniel Cunningham gets total compensation of $310,000 a year to deliver 7% black student reading proficiency. Just 5% are proficient in math. Yet the district goes ahead and graduates 82% of its students anyway. (Thornton spends, all-in, $29,000 per year, 100% of its teachers are rated “excellent or proficient,” and all three schools are rated “commendable.”)

We lay out below the top 25 paid administrators from cities with the biggest tax hike increases.

Then there are the pensioners. 

Troy Paraday, formerly the superintendent of Calumet City SD 155, is the highest-paid pensioner in the Southland area and one of the highest-paid in the state overall. He retired at age 56 and currently collects more than $350,000 a year. In all, if Paraday lives to his full life expectancy, he’ll receive a total of nearly $10 million in pension payouts from taxpayers. Meanwhile, in the district he left behind, just 9% of black students can read at grade level.

Joyce Carmine of Park Forest SD 163, another former superintendent, can expect over $8 million during her retirement. 

Bremen CHSD 228 is responsible for 9 of the people on the list of the top 25 pensions, like Willam Kendall and James Riordan, who both retired in their 50s and are set to receive more than $6 million. In that district, just 8% of black students and 18% of students overall are proficient in reading. And yet the district ends up graduating 88% of its students.

Wait, you say. Pensions are paid by the state so the big pensions have nothing to do with property taxes.

Wrong. What most people don’t realize is that as the costs of pension payouts keep rising and sucking up more and more of the state budget, there’s less money for the state to send to school districts to help them cover the big local salaries and benefits being driven up by the local unions and the bureaucrats in more than 850 school districts. So local districts keep hiking property taxes.

It’s a triple whammy. The state has less money for core spending, local school districts keep hiking property taxes and kids never learn to read.

Appendix

Read more from Wirepoints:

• South and southwest Chicago suburbs to be hammered by massive property tax increases
• Jim Iuorio breaks down national, Illinois dismal employment numbers
• IRS migration data: Big blue states biggest losers of people, wealth. Big red states biggest winners. – A Wirepoints 50-state survey