Lake County Citizen's Group Exposes Assessment Abuses

Another side heard from on the property tax discussion.

When it comes to property assessments, many homeowners feel utterly powerless. Assessments are carried out, for the most part, behind the doors of a veiled bureaucracy that is mostly unaccountable, opaque and often unfair.

After six months and hundreds of hours of research, the Citizens' Action Project (CAP) has found in a White Paper that there are serious problems in the Lake County assessment system that results in inaccurate assessment, lack of due process and uneven treatment of similar properties. CAP is calling for immediate investigations by the county board and state legislature into these practices.

"The major part of the problem -- at least in understanding the assessment process in Lake County -- is that few assessors can provide a consistent explanation on how they arrive at assessments, the process of valuing a property for tax purposes,'' according to CAP's white paper.

CAP examined home assessments because it was the collective experience of far too many Lake County taxpayers that this process was unfair. It was discovered during citizen assessment appeals – most of which were summarily rejected without much examination – that assessors were adopting methods that ran contrary to Illinois state assessment guidelines.

Like most Lake County taxpayers, CAP members are alarmed by the rate of increases seen in assessments – ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent. Illinois property taxes, according to the Tax Foundation, are among the highest in the country. If homeowners are going to be able to afford to stay in Lake County, the assessment process needs to be brought under control.

CAP has support from State Senator Michael Bond and Larry Leafblad, Lake County Board Member and Vice Chair of Revenue, Records, and Legislative Committee.

The Citizens Action Project is a newly formed volunteer organization dedicated to fairness, accountability and transparency in public agencies. The group has filed for 501(c)4 status under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. To read the complete white paper, go to www.citizensactionproject.org.

Residents can learn about tax assessment procedures and receive answers to their property tax questions

In an effort to help residential property owners understand the assessment process, their new property tax assessment and the tax assessment appeals process, the Lake County's Chief Assessment Office will hold a public information meetings for homeowners. The meeting will be held Saturday, November 17 at 10:00 a.m. At the College of Lake County Grayslake Campus in the Building C Auditorium.

At the meeting, the Chief County Assessment Officer will explain assessment procedures, provide the recommended steps to review a tax assessment, outline the assessment appeal process and answer questions from residential property owners.

"When property assessment notices are distributed, many residents do not understand what the assessment notice means or how they should evaluate their property tax valuation. We want to answer questions and provide property owners an opportunity to learn about how their property is assessed, their role in the tax process and how to evaluate their property's assessed value," explained Chief County Assessment Officer Marty Paulson.

Residents who cannot attend the public information meeting still have an opportunity to meet one-on-one with Lake County assessors at one of the five remaining Tax Assessment Help Centers. The Lake County website - www.co.lake.il.us - has information about dates, times and locations for the Tax Assessment Help Centers. Anyone can visit the Lake County website at www.co.lake.il.us/assessor for relevant information or contact the Chief County Assessment Office at 847.377.2050.

Where does your Tax Dollar go.

NOTE: In view of the discussion on foreclosures I have decided to rerun this post from 2005 about where your tax dollars go in the last few weeks. So I decided to go back to a post I ran back in May 2005 based on an excellent article in the Daily Herald. So here it is.

Where do your tax dollars go, is a pressing question in Round Lake right now. How do I know this? Because I am getting all sorts of calls about it! I have reproduced a chart from an article that appeared in the Daily Herald on where your tax dollars goes. Its interesting to see that county wide the typical tax bill has 68% of the total dollars goes to schools. Only 10% goes to municipality's. I felt that this article was one of the best I have read on your tax bill, its written quite well and make the process reasonably easy to understand.

I had a blog post on the article when it came out and have created a complete PDF of the article I am going to upload it here so you can download it from this blog.

I also recreated the graphic above, and did not do a real good high resolution job, so my apologies for the bitmaps. I aim to have high graphic standards on the site, and this is clearly not cutting it.

Please note I was able to upload the file here it is!
Article on Taxation from Daily Herald.pdf

Potential Lakewood SSA Bond Refinancing?

Six years ago when I was the chairman of the Planning Commission Lakewood Homes presented a proposal for building 800 homes in the area where they currently exist. We insisted (I was not Mayor then) on a variety of things that I concurred with, the two commercial parcels, the extension of the Cedar Lake Road, park set asides, and the impact fee structures. I won't go into the tactical reasons why going ahead with Lakewood at that time was important to the village, (that's a whole other post). Eventually the decision was made that to achieve the major objectives with SSA financing. The SSA is basically an addition to your tax bill to pay off bonds that were floated for your specific neighborhood, village etc. I won't go into the way SSA's can potentially help buyers get more home for less etc here (also another blog post as well). By the way not one trustee who voted yes on Lakewood is still on the Village Board.

Now fast forward 5 years later, Lakewood is built out, Fremont Township's assessments are some of the highest around, and the SSA is tacked on. You get high tax bills.

I have been working with some Lakewood residents who have contacted me about some issues specific to their homes and purchases, so it has led me to doing some global thinking about how we can lighten the load for the Lakewood Homeowners with the SSA's currently in place.

Speaking with the company that handles our bonds, Speer Financial, they were of the opinion that currently there is the ability to "refinance" the existing bonds. While not going into the obscure technical details we can reduce the interest rate by almost two points. At the moment with some quick calculations this can reduce the SSA total by $3.6 million over the life of the SSA.

Obviously a potential saving to the residents of Lakewood of any amount on their tax bills would be a positive. I am not sure how much impact this would be on the tax bill but we are going to find out.

I directed the Village Board Finance Committee chaired by Trustee Sherry Perkowitz and with Vice Chair Trustee Brian Brubaker to look into this and report back to the board as quickly as they can to see if this is feasible and firm up the process so we can act to cut the total owed and the rate.

Warning from the Recorder of Deeds for Lake County

Our Village Clerk Jeanne Kristan (pictured) attended the monthly Lake County Clerks meeting where Mary Ellen Vanderventer spoke. Ms Vanderventer is the Lake County Recorder of Deeds. She wanted to pass along some valuable information to residents so Jeanne asked me to mention this.

"Take a moment to call the recorder of deeds at 847-377-2575 and the ask the staff to see if there have been any "liens" placed against your property. Unresolved liens can hold up refinance or selling your home, in addtion many times a lien has been placed on a property and the owner is unaware of it.

Also if you need a copy of your deed the recorders office will send you a certified copy (free for seniors). Please do not fall for recent scams asking for large amounts of money to process your request for a deed, contact the recorders office directly and get it safely and easily."

I recently became aware of liens placed by a concrete company on 37 homeowners because the developer has not been paying the contractor. The village is putting pressure on the builder to bring this matter to a close and have the liens removed quickly. So it can happen to you.