Preckwinkle: Long-delayed Cook County property tax bills hitting mailboxes next week

The long-overdue second installment of Cook County’s property tax bills will be mailed Nov. 14 and due Dec. 15.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle made the announcement Friday morning, about a half hour after the Cook County Township Assessors’ Association held a meeting to discuss the status of the bills, which are normally due Aug. 1.

Technology upgrades that were expected to modernize and unify the assessment, billing and appeal process have taken much longer than initially anticipated, county officials have said.

The upgrades have been years in the works and all the bugs are still not worked out.

“The property tax system is being moved off of the old mainframe and there have been technical challenges that came with it,” Preckwinkle spokeswoman Cara Yi said earlier in the week when asked for a status update.

The county initiated a program allowing local governments to access funds for short-term borrowing to make up for the absent property tax revenue. It’s unclear how many loans were issued by the county.

Officials from several Northwest suburban school districts planned to dip into reserves rather than take out the loans.

“At this point in time, (Maine Township High School) District 207 has sufficient reserves to provide the cash flow needed to offset the late taxes,” said Mary Kalou, the district’s assistant superintendent for business. “Situations such as this have occurred previously and are one of the reasons why the district carries reserves.”

The uncertainty was also affecting real estate transactions in the county as well because buyers didn’t know the amount of property tax liability involved with the purchase, real estate attorneys reported.

“It didn’t cause any deals to fall through yet, but I’ve seen closings delayed for a week or so because the buyer needed additional cash,” said Ernie Rose, an attorney with the Arlington Heights-based firm DKMO. “It’s not stopping deals, just causing headaches for consumers.”

Property owners should expect bills to be higher because of inflation growth. Taxing bodies are allowed to increase the amount they are seeking in property tax revenue by the rate of inflation or up to 5%, whichever is less.

The delay in billing is also causing a delay in refunds and rebates, Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi noted on his website.

“Due to a countywide technology upgrade, processing of certificates of error applications are temporarily on hold,” a note on Kaegi’s homepage reads. “This means that no applications or refunds will be issued at this time. Applications can still be filed, but they will be processed at a later date in the order they were received.”

Texas-based Tyler Technologies is responsible for designing and implementing the new system for the county. Several county leaders have grown increasingly critical of Tyler as the failures mounted this year with some suggesting the county claw back some of the money already spent.

When asked for a comment about all the delays and setbacks, Tyler officials sent a brief statement saying they were “fully committed” to successfully launching the new integrated property tax system.

This isn’t the end of any billing delays, though. Township assessors were told during the meeting first installment bills for 2026 will be due a month later than usual on April 1, instead of March 1.

The second delay was requested to give taxpayers a “buffer” between paying the second 2025 bill and the first 2026 bill, Wheeling Township Assessor Ken Jochum said.