RTA Sales Tax Could Displace Property Taxes Financing Sheriff’s Department

RTA locoI’ve shared what the McHenry County Board could do to cut property taxes big time.

They’ve already sliced $3 million of their $79 million real estate tax bill by zeroing out the levy for the Valley Hi Nursing Home.

That’s the pretty much self-supporting $10-11 million operation that has about $42 million in the bank.

It’s not a big secret that I think the County Board should eliminate the levy and rely on passage of a new referendum, should a very future board think some of the property tax support should be reinstated.

More recently I identified another opportunity to cut property taxes while looking at a proposal from the McHenry County Department of Transportation to “expedite” right-of-way purchase to widen Randall Road from four to six lanes.

$5.7 million was to be taken from the RTA Sales Tax Fund.

When the Regional Transportation Authority sought to extract still more money from our wallets, they got the support of DuPage County State Senators.

In return for selling out their constituents and the residents of the other collar counties, the part of the RTA Sales Tax allocated to local County Boards was changed from having to be spent entirely on transportation to having to be spent on transportation and/or public safety.

“Public safety” certainly covers the Sheriff’s Department’s expenditures.

The Sheriff’s Department’s budget this year is $33,785,810.

32% comes from us real estate taxpayers.

Do the multiplication.

That’s $10.8 million.

When I investigated, I found that RTA estimates the 2016 collection for McHenry County will be $10.4 million.

Pretty close match, don’t you think?

Using the RTA Sales Tax to replace the real estate taxes we pay to finance the Sheriff’s Department would cut the County’s tax levy from about $76 million to about $66 million.

You could talk to or email your County Board members about this strategy to cut property taxes.

Contact information can be found here.

Their budget meeting starts at 8:15 AM, the time this is being posted.


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