Focus on spending

A letter in the Monday, May 11, Daily Herald called for the assessor's office of Cook County to lower assessments during the hard financial times caused by COVID-19. Our new assessor actually said he was thinking of lowering assessments.

Why? Unless the taxing bodies are allowed to lower their requests for dollars, the amount we pay in property tax does not, and will not go down.

If you fill out a spreadsheet and put all of the assessed values in, lower them all 10%, those at the bottom will actually pay more than they would if the assessments were not lowered. This is because the taxing bodies will still get the same amounts as before and the assessed values of those in million dollar homes goes down more than those in $50,000 homes.

It's simple math folks. Lower assessments is not the answer; it is less spending.

David Krein

Schaumburg