Hoffman Estates, District 300 officials talk Sears deal

Extending the tax-incentive deal Sears Holdings Corp. has with the village of Hoffman Estates could cost Community Unit District 300 $12 million to $14 million annually, school officials said Thursday.

District 300 spokeswoman Allison Strupeck said that money was “the only light at the end of our fiscal tunnel” as the district has seen massive budget cuts the past two years.

“The only hope we have to stop this decimation of the educational system is to ensure this (Sears’ economic development agreement) is not extended,” Strupeck said.

Her comments come following a Thursday meeting between Hoffman Estates and Carpentersville-based District 300 officials where the two parties spoke about the financial impact of offering Sears 15 more years of property tax breaks to ensure the company would remain headquartered in the village.

Hoffman Estates Village Manager James Norris said the parties will convene again, and described Thursday’s meeting as a cordial start at which both sides shared their concerns.

“Next time around we’ll even have more productive discussions,” Norris said.

He and District 300 Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Crates agreed to keep the specifics of their discussions private, Norris added.

Strupeck and Norris said Sears, the village and District 300 need to work together. However, Strupeck said some district officials want to “let the dogs out in terms of asking parents to come together to push Hoffman Estates and Sears to let the EDA expire.”

There are 14 taxing bodies affected by the deal, including District 300, Barrington Township and Poplar Creek Library District. District 300, which is the only one to contact the village, would by far be most impacted by any extension of the Sears agreement.

Sears officials are exploring whether to move to another state after its tax breaks with Hoffman Estates and the state expire at the end of 2012. Village officials want to extend the current EDA, which allows Sears to use property taxes normally ticketed to taxing bodies like District 300 on developing and paying off their debt on the Hoffman Estates property.

An EDA is similar to a tax-increment financing district, or TIF, except the property within an EDA does not have be blighted. The Sears property used to be cornfields.

Legislation in Springfield, sponsored by Democratic State Rep. Fred Crespo, a former Hoffman Estates trustee, would permit the tax incentives to remain in place if Sears agrees to stay at least 15 more years and keeps at least 4,000 jobs at the headquarters.

Despite the incentive package, District 300 received more than $20 million in property taxes between 1994 and 2010 from the Prairie Stone Business Park which houses Sears. If District 300 received its full amount of property taxes, they would have tallied $213 million over 21 years, Strupeck said.

However, Strupeck and other District 300 officials acknowledge the value of having Sears in the community. Without Sears or another development, local governments would receive significantly less from that property.

Norris pointed out how the equalized assessed valuation of the former Motorola building in Harvard plummeted by 85 percent after the company vacated the site.