Hot to trot ahead of property tax freeze

Consider yourself warned: Local cities and schools may be looking at preemptive strikes to battle the possibility of a statewide property tax freeze.

O’Fallon residents just had a near miss. The property tax levy O’Fallon city leaders are looking to pass is $6.57 million, but they were facing a proposal to pass a $15.43 million levy.

Huh? Turns out, according to City Administrator Walter Denton, that the staff was trying to give the city leaders some “flexibility” should there be a statewide freeze. They would pass the levy that was more than double what they need, and then in the spring rebate the extra to take the property tax collection back down to the $6.57-million level.

Denton said some city services are totally dependent on property taxes, so the big levy was insurance against future needs. If the state imposes tax limits as expected, O’Fallon will be able to keep making increases up to $15 million because they’d already “taxed” that amount — just not collected that amount.

In other words, the city was trying to circumvent the law that is not yet in place.

Illinois is overly reliant on property taxes, with the second-highest rate in the nation at an average of $3,939 per homeowner. The simple reason why is that the state fails to meet its legal obligation to be the primary funding source of schools, so schools turn to property taxpayers to become the primary consumer of your property tax bill and drive it up.

To their credit, O’Fallon leaders didn’t fall to the temptation.

But what about the many other taxing districts that appear on your property tax bills? If they all start putting in inflated levies ahead of a freeze...

This story was originally published December 14, 2015 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Hot to trot ahead of property tax freeze."