Will Woodstock Get Tax Hike Power?

The Woodstock City Council has asked the Census Bureau to count its citizens again.

The Census Bureau estimated Woodstock's population to exceed 25,000 in 2013.

The Census Bureau estimated Woodstock’s population to exceed 25,000 in 2013.

In 2010, the city had 24,770 people.

Those in power wanted 25,000.

That’s because once a municipality gets to 25,000 population, it automatically receives all sorts of new powers.

It becomes a Home Rule unit.

That means it can do anything that is not prohibited by state law.

In practice, it means that cities hike taxes.

Algonquin has done that.

Crystal Lake raised its local sales tax 75%,

McHenry hiked its 50%.

You get the picture.

I went population searching and discovered that the Census Bureau estimated that Woodstock had 25,146 two years ago.


Comments

Will Woodstock Get Tax Hike Power? — 5 Comments

  1. It’s funny how after the Amati scandal happened and I brought up possibly switching to Home Rule so we could get rid of the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners the members of Council said they didn’t want to do it because it would make it easy to raise taxes.

    Now all of a sudden they are interested in Home Rule and have budgeted 60,000 to do a census (despite the fact that we could have done it through referendum).

    I wonder what changed in a year and a half.

    They are now saying it has nothing to do with taxes, which is odd considering they were opposed to it before for tax reasons.

    It’s also worth noting that when the Urban Land Institute did their presentation on how to use the old courthouse (which they admitted would never break even, that we’d have to invest millions of dollars in, that we’d have to continuously subsidize, but we should do it anyway) some of the ways they offered to pay for the Court House “investment” were more TIFs, bonds, and taxes that could get passed through Home Rule.

    In fact, they even joked around about how they were going to move people from Chicago into Woodstock so that we would have enough people to acquire Home Rule status.

    Ha ha ha higher taxes, that’s so funny…

    Except the joke is on us.

  2. When the county is shrinking, do they think that Woodstock would be the only place growing?

    I bet someone is going to show up having 200 aunts and uncles living at their house

  3. Is there a process/protocol by which we can gather signatures, or something, to put a stop to this?

    I’ve read THE STUDY/SPECIAL CENSUS WILL COST THE CITY – US!!! – $60,000.00.

    My husband and I, 27-year residents – are 100% against this.

    Ideas???

  4. Why not attend the next city council meeting, bringing some friends and all express their displeasure?

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