Tower Lakes OKs tax hike for trash pickup

Tower Lakes residents Tuesday voted resoundingly for a tax hike to keep their garbage-pickup funding system as it is.

The tax hike received 179 yes votes and 51 against, winning with 77.8 percent of the unofficial total.

Tower Lakes' whole reason for needing the tax-hike referendum was an example of being burned by good intentions.

The village stopped collecting taxes for garbage pickup in 2006 because it had accumulated enough of a surplus to last through the next few years.

That surplus ran out in 2009, but because the tax hadn't been levied in more than three years, state law required the village to go back to the voters to put it back on bills.

Village President Kathleen Leitner said she and other officials were surprised by the regulation, and hoped they'd done all they could to inform residents of how the whole situation came about.

The tax hike will levy 0.108 percent of a property's equalized assessed value, which should cost the owner of a $500,000 home about $170 per year.

The levy will provide a savings to homeowners by keeping garbage pickup a village service and not billing them individually, Leitner said.