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7-20-2006
Property Tax Purgatory for Bourbonnais Township Homeowners.
The Daily Journal has again committed the homeowners of Bourbonnais Township to tax purgatory. It’s continuing dogmatic opposition to impact fees for school construction simply flies in the face of logic and in total opposition to the realities of rest of the Chicago area housing markets where impact fees abound and so do big population gains.
The seven fastest growing communities in the state have the impact fees ranging from $19,000 to $35, OOO. Plainfield, the fastest growing community levy one of the highest impact fees (See Chicago Tribune June 21 Metro Section).
The other common thing those communities enjoy is a level school tax rate because new schools are paid for by impact fees.
The Journal would instead have us pay for the new schools starting with the first phase at BBCHS which will add $565 to the tax bill of a two hundred thousand dollar home. And that’s only the beginning. Wait till you see the grade school projections and the numbers of new schools we will be asked to pay for.
The Journal has suggested that we could save money by consolidating the School Districts in the Township. Wrong. Under present state law, all salary schedules must rise to the level of the top paying district in the consolidation. In this case Bradley, Bourbonnais and St. George elementary teachers would be paid the same top of the line salaries as are now being paid the BBCHS faculty. This would cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.
The Journal’s others suggestion was to have state fix our local problem. Wrong again.
The seven fastest growing communities solved their own school funding problem locally using impact fees which were pioneered by Naperville in the early eighties.
Finally the Journal stated that impact fees of $52,000 per home would have to be imposed on the homeowners to pay for BBCH. This is a purposeful distortion.
Impact fees are amortized over the larger growth census. Therefore fees of $10,000 per three bedroom home and $12,400 for a four bedroom home along with some developer block grants will be good opening points for a sensible financial solution to school funding.