Schaumburg panel recommends 5% decrease of property tax levy
Schaumburg's finance committee Wednesday unanimously recommended a 5% reduction in the village's property tax, which would be the largest drop in eight years for the levy that has never gone up since it was introduced against the backdrop of a recession a decade ago.
Such a decrease, which officials said is enabled by the retirement of bonds issued in 2010 to fund street repairs, would be a fulfillment of one of new Mayor Tom Dailly's campaign promises in the spring.
But one of his other promises was to spend more on road improvements.
Schaumburg Finance Director Lisa Petersen and Assistant Village Manager Paula Hewson said Wednesday that issuing bonds, to be repaid by property taxes, is only one way to fund road repairs. There were particular reasons to go that route in 2010 that aren't the same today, they said.
In the immediate aftermath of the recession, matching federal funds were being made available for street repairs that the village would have qualified for by financing its portion of the projects through the bonds it chose to issue, Petersen said.
Other funding sources, not as tied to property taxes, are more likely to be used today even if not exclusively, she said.
This year's proposed property tax levy for the village is $19.5 million, a 17.7% reduction from Schaumburg's first levy of $23.7 million at the end of 2009.
Over the past 10 years, the annual reductions to the levy have been 4.4% in 2010, 6.1% in 2011, 1% from 2012 to 2014, zero from 2015 to 2017, and 1% in 2018.
Changes to the levy were more cautious during the past several years as the state of Illinois considered reductions to the revenue it shares with municipalities, Petersen said.
The full village board is scheduled to vote on the finance committee's recommendation Nov. 12 to set the tentative levy, and then on Dec. 10 to approve the final amount that must be filed with Cook County by Dec. 31.