Kane Co. scales back levy, financial policy

After several weeks of debate about what it would take to truly keep the Kane County portion of property tax bills from rising, board members locked in an overall lower tax levy than the current budget year.

The total tax collection from the county’s major levies equals slightly less than $54 million. That compares to a levy that was slightly above $54 million for the current budget year.

Individually, most of the county’s tax levies will increase slightly. The biggest knock comes from a 21-percent increase in the county’s liability insurance levy. That fund pays out workers’ compensation claims as well as most of the county’s legal fees and arbitration costs. That fund took a big hit this year in paying for attorneys on both sides of the lawsuit between the county board and Circuit Court Clerk Deb Seyller.

The levy for Social Security also will rise 3 percent. And the levy that feeds the county’s Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund contributions will ratchet up by nearly 7 percent to keep up with increasing pension costs.

Board members balanced those increases out by cutting the county’s levy for capital projects by $1.5 million. The result is a levy that is basically flat from the current year.

Board members also locked in a change to their self-imposed financial policies that will force more precise budgeting in the leanest economic times. The board had a policy of budgeting in a cushion of at least 2 percent of operating costs in case of any emergencies or cost overruns. The board all but eliminated its cushion for the 2012 budget to keep the operations budget from increasing.

The new policy now allows the board to have a budget cushion of less than 2 percent of operating costs in any year where the equalized assessed value of the property tax base drops. In other words, when home values shrink, so will the county’s wiggle room in its budget.

County Board Chairman Karen McConnaughay said the time is right to think smaller after many years of dreaming big.

“For the better part of 20 years you were growing by double-digit percentages every year,” McConnaughay said. “And your demand for services dramatically increased year to year. We don’t have that problem now. We haven’t had that problem in at least four years.”