Skip the 'balloons' this tax levy season

Local schools are busy trying to figure out how to stay in the black next year, at a time when tax increases make many of us see red.

As they work out their tax levies for 2009, some school boards show that they really get it - that they see and feel the human suffering felt by some of their constituents who are dealing with layoffs, foreclosures and investment losses.

Others, not so much.

Northwest Suburban High School District 214 is one that deserves praise. Rethinking its earlier proposal to levy 6.3 percent more in property taxes for the next fiscal year, the school board instead raised the tax levy 2.8 percent last week. An average owner of a house with an assessed value of $300,000 actually will pay $57 less to the high school district next year because some new buildings will go onto the tax rolls.

We're thankful the District 214 board had the good sense - and good fortune - to build up enough cash reserves to cover $3 million in expenses to make up for the lowered levy. "The economy can't be like this forever," said Superintendent David Schuler, calling this taxing level a one-year deal meant to recognize "the challenges residents are facing."

We appreciate the gesture - and Schuler's optimism - at a time when home values are dropping.

And we're irked at school boards that don't make even a small effort to follow his lead.

Those school districts levy double-digit increases - 38.6 percent in Carpentersville-based Community Unit District 300, 20 percent in Elgin Area School District U-46, 15 percent in Palatine Township Elementary District 15.

Don't panic - your property taxes won't actually go up that much. The school districts are engaging in the time-honored practice of balloon levying.

They ask for a lot more tax money than they actually expect to receive. That way, they wring out every last cent of tax money that they're eligible to get based on the value of all property in the school district and on a tax cap that limits tax growth to the rate of inflation.

What does District 300 think it really will get? A 9 percent increase in tax dollars. In U-46, it's around 6 percent. Even those numbers don't reflect what will happen to your property tax rate, or how much your property taxes actually will increase.

But they sure aren't likely to go down.

School districts that balloon levy often frame it as a way to collect the tax money they're entitled to. Without it, "that money would just be lost," U-46 Chief Financial Officer John Prince said.

Actually, that money would be in taxpayers' pockets.

This year, setting a tax levy based on true numbers and on conservative spending is one gesture suburban residents will appreciate.

And it's a gesture that surely will pay dividends in good will for school districts in the future if, as Schuler assures us, this challenging economy doesn't last forever.