Schaumburg candidates debate tax levy reduction
Though the village of Schaumburg has reduced its property tax levy during each of the five years since it was introduced, trustee candidate Jim Moynihan is calling for quicker progress and elimination of the levy by 2020.
But incumbents Tom Dailly, George Dunham and Mark Madej say the village is already doing everything that responsibly can be done, and that residents would protest the impact on services caused by Moynihan's plan.
The four candidates are vying for the three available trustee seats on the village board in the April 7 election.
Moynihan, the Republican candidate who unsuccessfully challenged Democratic state Rep. Michelle Mussman in the 56th District in November, said he's just moving his platform as a family and taxpayer advocate to a more local level.
One of the key complaints he said he heard from constituents of the 56th District last year was the struggle to keep up with property taxes.
"I knocked on about 12,000 doors, and everybody was burdened by taxes - period," Moynihan said. "We're looking at where can we reasonably reduce or eliminate taxes."
Moynihan said he's happy Schaumburg has aimed to reduce its property tax levy, but he thinks he can impose a structure to eliminate it by a particular year.
He's calling for an immediate 15 percent reduction in the levy - about $3.2 million - based on what he sees as a surplus in the current budget.
Moynihan said he's just agreeing with the original intention of the village to eliminate the levy when the economy recovered.
"Schaumburg never needed a property tax (before the recession), and the revenues from sales taxes are higher than they were before," Moynihan said. "We don't need to add something that we don't need."
The three incumbents said Moynihan isn't seeing the big picture or the practical consequences of his idea.
"What's holding us back is the fact that, like everyone else, all the expenses have gone up," Dailly said. "It's a catch-up game that we're playing at this point."
Dailly added that Moynihan's plan would actually require the village to cut about $14 million from its annual budget - a reduction of 140 people that would likely have to come from some combination of police, fire and public works.
Dailly believes the village workforce is already as lean and efficient as it can be, having been reduced from 615 employees in 2001 to 498 employees today.
Dunham said that if a resident believes that taxes are a problem, he or she is probably thinking about Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54 and Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211, which together form about 70 percent of one's property tax bill. The village's portion is about 6.5 percent and is falling, Dunham said.
He agreed that eliminating the property tax levy is the long-term goal but said he thought there were too many unknowns in the future to predict a specific time that will happen.
"I don't think it's practical at this point in time, and I'm not going to pander for votes by saying that I think it is," Dunham said. "Every time we have proposed the idea of reducing services, we hear from people who don't want their services reduced."
Madej said he was personally hard hit by the recession as were many of the people Moynihan said he spoke to, but that there remain specific expectations of the obligations of local government to its residents.
"I understand how residents want to reduce their responsibilities and the burden of taxes, but there's a bigger picture here," Madej said. "The only way to reduce (the levy) by 15 percent, we'd have to ask our residents to make a big sacrifice in the current services they have."