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BBCHS Is Counting On A Low Voter Turn Out To Get There Huge Tax Increase Passed So Please Get Out And Vote NO This April 17 And Tell Your Friends And Neighbors.
Remember the TV commercial with the boys sitting at a table with a box of cereal and none of them wanted to eat the cereal so they all looked at the smallest and said “Let’s get Mikey to eat it” When it comes to paying for new schools for the residential development coming into the area, Mikey is all of us who currently live here.
Sitting at this table are the school districts, especially BBCHS, the Mayors of Bourbonnais and Bradley, residential developers and all of us who currently live here. The box of cereal is the millions of dollars of costs for new schools. Instead of demanding impact fees on residential developers comparable to communities in Will County and saying no to TIF districts, the people sitting at this table are all pointing to us and demanding that we eat the costs of new schools. (TIF districts allow retailers, which are expanding into the area to benefit from the residential growth, not pay any property taxes to schools. Example: Jewel’s in Bourbonnais was just granted TIF district tax break status, just for moving from one side of the parking lot to the other by the Village of Bourbonnais.)
But unlike Mikey in the commercial who did not question the demand to eat the cereal when the other boys refused, we voters have the opportunity to say no this April 17 to the BBCHS $41,655,000 referenda. We can send this cereal box of new school costs back to those sitting at this table and demand they take responsibility. Those who are benefiting from growth should pay the costs of growth. If we don’t do this now, we will be choking on this cereal box of costs over and over as there will be referenda after referenda on future ballots for planned residential growth already on the books, 6000 homes. Bourbonnais Elementary and St. George are already planning their own property tax increase referenda for the 2008 ballot.