Deer Park will try to hike sales tax a quarter-point

The Deer Park Village Board voted Monday to ask residents in November for a sales tax increase - and did so with a whole 11 minutes to spare.

With Monday being the last day for adding ballot initiatives for the Nov. 2 general election ballot, the board was working on a midnight deadline, and then used nearly all of it, debating and going over numbers again and again before finally taking a roll-call vote at 11:49 p.m.

Voters will be asked to approve a quarter percentage point sales tax increase, estimated to raise about $400,000 additionally that the village wants to use for local road repair. Most of that money will come from sales at the Deer Park Town Center.

Currently, shoppers in Deer Park pay 7 percent sales tax, with 1 percent kept locally. The rest goes to Illinois and Lake County.

Village President Bob Kellerman said the sales tax needs to be raised if the village is to pay the more than $11 million needed to repair roads, a project that has been delayed for seven years.

"If you want to vote it down, vote it down," he said of the proposal. "But don't come back and say we have a roads problem."

Some residents in attendance, though, were against the proposal.

Deborah Barry, the secretary for Deer Park Neighbors, objected that raising the sales tax will cause people to got to other municipalities to purchase expensive items like computers and electronics, which might actually decrease the tax revenue raised.

"I think you're putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage," she said.

Barry also believes residents will vote the increase down in November, which she said will cause the board embarrassment.

At the beginning of debate, the board was choosing between two increases - one a half percentage point and the other a quarter percentage point. The half-point increase would have raised an estimated $800,000 a year.

In an earlier meeting, trustees considered other options to raise money, including an increased property tax or a combination of higher property and sales taxes.

"The sales tax was determined to be the only viable revenue source," Kellerman said.

Some audience members, along with members of the board, were unhappy the decision was being made on the last possible night. Trustee Barbara Evans said that the board "hadn't done its homework," and Trustee Maureen Pratscher cited a "lack of preparedness."

Despite the debate, the measure passed 5-1. Trustee Joyce Trost was the only dissenting vote, though Evans had some negative things to say about the proposal even in voting yes.

"Let the people vote it down," she said.