Prospect Heights will try again for home rule
Hoping to generate more money for flood relief and drainage improvement projects without imposing a municipal property tax, the Prospect Heights city council will again ask voters for home-rule status on the Nov. 6 ballot.
The council voted 4-1 Monday to put the question to residents, with Ward 3 Alderman Scott Williamson being the sole dissenter.
Mayor Nick Helmer said home rule would give Prospect Heights the ability to redirect about $750,000 from its hotel tax and increased licensing of video gaming toward flooding and drainage projects.
"That's a need the city doesn't have money to pay for," he added.
In fact, there are about $8 million to $10 million in identified drainage projects that are unlikely to begin without funding through home rule, City Administrator Joe Wade said.
This will be the fourth time in the 21st century city officials have asked the public for home-rule authority. That request was rejected in 2004, 2008 and 2012, but each time won more support from voters.
Fear that the city will create a property tax has been a leading criticism of past home-rule efforts, Helmer said. Sometimes even when Helmer tells a concerned resident that a property tax is not his intention, the response often is that home rule would give a future board that authority.
"I tell them, 'I can't control that, but you can,'" he said. "'You vote them in or you vote them out.'"
Helmer adds that he doesn't know of anyone who's proposed a property tax while campaigning for a Prospect Heights office.
Helmer believes voters can be persuaded because flooding and drainage problems are as apparent as the potholes that won support for a $15 million bond issue to fund road maintenance in 2010.
"They saw potholes," Helmer said. "We were known as the pothole city of the entire area."
Under state law, any community with 25,000 or fewer residents is not automatically a home-rule municipality. Prospect Heights' population was estimated at 16,180 in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.