Someone or someones have played a shell game with local school, park, college district and other tax district officials and they all lost.
The shell game involves what the City of Crystal Lake has done to local tax districts and taxpayers with its Downtown Tax Increment Financing district.
And, at least some city council members don’t even know what has happened?
The Downtown TIF district will disappear as of December 31, 2008.
But, there’s a big “BUT.”
All tax districts have to submit their levies into the McHenry County by the 4th Tuesday of December. That’s last Tuesday.
Before many of them did that, tax district “stakeholders” of the TIF district held a meeting this month at city hall.
Some pretty astute representatives of local schools and other governments attended.
One pointed out that by ending the TIF after the levies had been submitted Crystal Lake would get another year’s worth of money from the Tax Increment Financing district.
This past year the city raked off about $900,000 from the TIF.
It was spent on beautifying East Crystal Lake Avenue. Workers put up ornamental street lights and buried phone, cable and electric lines and, maybe, spent it to put in sidewalks on Williams Street previously financed with money from the same 23-year Tax Increment Financing district.
“Not to worry” was the message from CL Finance Director Mark Nannini, as he moved the shells around.
The pea is under the shell where I say and you think it is.
Once we get the money, we’ll send it to the County Treasurer and he will distribute it to School Districts 47 & 155, McHenry County, McHenry County College, the Crystal Lake Park District, Nunda Township, the McHenry County Conservation District, etc.
(That made little sense. Why not have the city send it directly?)
Here’s the County Clerk’s “Tax Increment Tax District Loss Due to Project Area.” In other words this $900,000 would have gone to each of these districts this year, if there had been no Downtown TIF and if everyone had paid what they were billed.
- Grade School District 47 – $341,361
- High School District 155 – $233,419
- McHenry County – $86,680
- Crystal Lake Corp Fire – $45,908
- Crystal Lake Park District – $43,828
- McHenry County College – $35,791
- Crystal Lake Public Library – $32,723
- Nunda Township Road & Bridge – $26,964
- City of Crystal Lake – $26,374
- McHenry County Conservation District – $18,645
- Nunda Township – $9,051
- Nunda Township Cemetery District – $153
Tax district losses from this TIF diversion ought to be similar for the coming year.
Because the money went for beautification, your tax rates were higher than they would have been otherwise, causing you to pay higher taxes than you would have otherwise, regardless of where you live in McHenry County.
A swifty thing happened between the TIF stakeholders (read “tax district officials”) meeting earlier this month and now.
The pea was not under the local tax district’s shell.
It was really under the City of Crystal Lake’s TIF shell.
The money won’t be distributed to the local tax districts who provide services to Crystal Lake residents.
Your taxes will again be higher than they would have had this $900,000 gone to local schools, the park district, etc.
Crystal Lake will again apparently spend it on TIF beautification or something else in Downtown Crystal Lake.
I emailed Nannini,
“What will the Downtown CL TIF money to be collected next year be spent on? And how much is expect to be collected?”
No answer as of Christmas Day, when I posted this story.
Was there a massive cost overrun?
Was this the plan all along?
Will administrators say elected officials were kept in the loop?
That they just didn’t figure out the implications of ending the TIF a couple of days later.
Or could this have been done on the say-so of appointed city staffers or would someone like Mayor Aaron Shepley have been informed?
If I were on the city council and something of this magnitude had been done without my knowledge, I would be hopping mad.
And, the next city council meeting would be worth attending.
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The game illustration is from Ron Allesi’s Quality, Used, Rare & Antique Magic web site. The game costs $35.
