Scott Coffey, President of Cary School District 26’s Board, has actually led the cutting of school budgets,
In the discussion of the Woodstock School District’s excessive classroom space, he makes a point, which does not seem to have been given consideration by its Superintendent or Board.
You can read it below:
Woodstock North High School has many fewer students that its capacity.
Susan, can you provide some clarity on the following:
“Dr. Moan said that the $3 million projected savings included no teachers losing their jobs”?
I take that to mean that the administration has not yet estimated the savings to be generated by reducing the number of teachers employed and not to mean that no teachers would be losing their jobs.
One of the problems with the process described is the review date of May 2017 for any changes.
Reduction In Force notification requirements under SB-7 require RIF lists to be determined 75 days prior to the end of the school year.
The month of May is way too late for the Board to begin the initial reveiw.
Putting together RIF lists together is incredibly complex given the issues of seniority, performance, and qualifications.
Waiting until May to approve any changes may prove to be both logistically and legally impossible.
No changes are to be approved in May!!!
The time line is to merely present the possible consolidation option to the school board in May.
At that time the school board will hold even more public hearings to investigate public opinion.
There is no date set for any voting decision from the board .
The Superintendent needs time to develop / organize parental and teacher objections to the changes.
Just comments already posted on this blog are evidence of that.
Teachers have learned plenty from the Alinsky currently in the White House.
I would not be surprised to see a sudden surge in ‘Public Service’ announcements by the Illinois Teachers Association in an attempt to put a damper on the rising taxpayer revolt.
So we start with an incorrect assumption made by someone who isn’t even in the school district and decide that it is significant enough to give it a separate blog post?
This only shows that this blog is nothing more than a rumor mill.
Scott Coffey has actually cut District 26 school taxes, so I thought his advice might be useful to others.
Concerned Voter:
And what have you done to attempt to educate your fellow voters?
For days I have been unable to post reply comments under the D200 consolidation post, so I will reply to those comments here if possible.
Cv I will try to answer all your questions to your satisfaction.
How do you propose to be an effective Board member when you will not even consider opposing views as proven by your response?
I disagree that my response proves any such thing.
When I hear opposing viewpoints I try to look up the issue and understand better the details being presented.
If I am wrong I want to know and change position accordingly.
I think my lengthy responses on this blog prove I will spend a great deal of personal uncompensated time to find objective outside sources to support any actions I would take which spend Other People’s Money.
This school board handles a $100+ million annual budget.
That total budget amount (almost doubled from 2006 with flat enrollment) has been increasing at obscene levels relative to the means of this community.
I believe that the parties who insist on spending at those levels owe it to those from whom that money is extracted by force of law to investigate rationale for spending, and look at more cost effective alternatives with much more care than is being shown.
How do you propose to be an effective Board member when you are actively sueing the very body that you intend to serve?
I do not intend to,serve the board, but rather the taxpayers of the community and the students who attend d200 schools.
Joining a tax rate objection lawsuit indicates that I do not believe we have an effective Board at present, and that their failure to comply with State tax rate restrictions hurts all community members, including children.
I have talked to the board for my 3 minutes at most school board meetings over several years, including about my belief they were levying illegal taxes.
They evidently either believe they are taxing legally, or they simply do not care. A lawyer believes the board’s taxation to be illegal, and many plaintiffs have joined his suit in agreement.
This suit appears to be the only way we can stop this board from performing illegal excessive taxation.
How do you propose to be an effective Board member when you have publicly stated that the agreement between the Village of Lakewood and D200 is of no value when it clearly does protect the taxpayers of D200?
I disagree that it protects the taxpayers of D200.
The agreement may be unenforceable, as attorney Carl Gilmore remarked when he cast his dissenting vote.
The provisional amount per student and the inflation index included are inadequate to cover our costs.
I prepared a detailed report on the costs to D200 taxpayers from other taxing body subsidization we will need to pay on behalf of Lakewood , as well as enormous lost revenue cost of giving up all property tax potential from the development of the intersection of two heavily trafficked major roads.
An effective board member would have listened to early information in time to have halted the improper Lakewood TIF as advised by attorneys paid by D200.
Instead, Camille Goodwin was allowed to stall right up to the deadline to file suit and pressure the board to sign this IGA at 11th hour.
I propose that effective Board members would take their responsibility to protect their community from this sort of ‘legal ‘ robbery a lot more seriously, and find ways to fight to defend their taxpayers.
Cv I will try to answer all your questions to your satisfaction.
As to State Funding, you will have to explain to me the relevance of GSA proration when it was always common knowledge that such proration would occur.
Even if funds from the State were delayed, as you pointed out there are large fund balance surpluses to bridge funding through such an event.
In 2013 D200 got $5.4 million GSA,
2014 $8 million,
2015-16 budget indicates, GSA revenue of $14 million, received on time.
I strongly disagree that any relief has been provided to taxpayers.
This district increased spending far above the means of the community in 2006-08 in anticipation of projected new enrollment in the thousands.
After the crash made it apparent that zero new enrollment would or could occur, the then-board irresponsibly increased annual spending and even borrowing ( technically within the law due to loopholes, but unethical in that D200 was already in debt far above legal borrowing capacity).
Ever since, we have been made to pay ever higher amounts heaped onto cost amounts too high to begin with.
You cannot assert that a flat levy which maintains an unsustainable,property tax rate environment is “relief”.
We are getting $8 million a year more GSA and the levy has not been lowered?
Calling That ‘relief’ is sophistry.
You refuse to acknowledge a crisis, and refuse to acknowledge the distress caused to much of this community by property tax rates which are so high that people in other States do not even believe could be true.
That is why I have to come on strong.
Few people are speaking to the Board or to teachers on this issue, and the refusal to lower levy is evidence we are not being heard…or that you heard but simply do not care.
Cv, I will try to answer all your questions to your satisfaction.
about Loss of EAV tied to high property tax rate, you are right that foreclosures contribute mightily to plummeting EAV.
But what causes the foreclosures?
Why are we still near the bottom of our EAV history while, the rest of the nation has enjoyed full recovery?
( you know about the large Equalization factor in Dorr and Seneca townships applied to assessed values which is responsible for the entire bump in EAV this year?)
If our home values start to recover here finally due to general national price inflation, we will still be rising less by average 3% annually in relation to homes across America.
That means that every year the conversion value of a home investment here to a home investment ‘there’ will cost more to the Woodstock homeowner.
Everyone everywhere underwent the crash of 2008, but Woodstock has behaved differently than most of the nation AFTER the crash.
While communities everywhere else prudently cut spending, D200 increased hiring borrowing and spending.
And as our home values continue per to fall, it exacerbated the property tax rate crisis that the school board has increased spending.
Because, levy is the numerator and assessed taxable value the denominator, and the rate rises as the levy rises, or taxable values fall, or both.
As the rate rises, fewer people can afford mortgage payments.
Think of it like this: a mortgage interest rate of 7% here compared to a mortgage rate of 4 % elsewhere. And a rate with a history of rising annually for a decade.
( Few people can get annual assessment reductions fast enough to keep up with the plummeting home values here, so must pay the higher tax rate on the old, higher assessment).
Then foreclosures, homes underwater so people are ‘stuck’, an inordinate amount of investor-owned rental property is allowed to deteriorate, adjacent home values suffer.
It creates a vicious downward spiral of values.
Back to the question, what caused the continued foreclosures in Woodstock while the rest of the nation enjoyed property value recovery.
I cannot find factors other than the extraordinary( I mean extremely outside normal ranges) property tax rate inflicted on Woodstock homeowners in the past decade since the crash.
Can you point to another factor which would cause such an amount of local property value distress, lagging value appreciation all over America, for all these 8 years during a national upswing in prices?
Here is a good reference to the problem:
“Small Homes, Public Schools, and Property Tax Capitalization ” by Ryan Gallagher, Haydar Kurban, and Joseph Persky 2013
CV I will try to answer your questions to your satisfaction.
Please try to understand my abrupt way of speaking is due to trying to convey a lot of information as rapidly as possible to a hostile audience.
Our 4.6% property tax rate is evidence that those empowered to tax are hostile to suggestions of lowering spending.
Nattress, yes, spell check changed it.
As you know, at that same meeting Nattress argued in favor of the lower, tuition based payments rather than the true cost which we taxpayers will need to pay per TIF student : levy/ enrollment, corrected for 800 pre-k/k at $2500 each.
At school board meetings we are given 3 minutes to speak and then must shut up.
(So you see, in answer to another of your questions, the three minute public comment rule means I can only waste three minutes of board members time. And that is only if they bother to listen).
Nattress questioned me so I answered.
When we were disagreeing about costs to taxpayers, Camille Goodwin told me this was not the time or place for such debate so I shut up.
After the meeting I went to,the press table with information the Board refused to consider.
Tif PILOTs : payments in lieu of taxes.
I thought Nattress was stating that he knew of some law which allowed circumvention of the strict statutory guidelines severely limiting the amount of money which schools are allowed to be paid by tifs ( this is in order to protect tif bond holders).
I believe I said then that if he this to be true, then it might be OK.
You ask if I’ve ever contacted board members?
I have, and several have replied.
I emailed Nattress after that meeting, after I looked up information on legality of TIF circumvention make-whole agreements, but received no reply.
I emailed him a legal opinion on Make Whole Agreements (which are IGAs trying to circumvent TIF statutes restrictions on PILOTS).
The opinion was that tax payments related to tif must be prorated to ALL affected taxing bodies, not just the school.
At Illinois-tif website
Article titled “Legal Opinion on Make-Whole Agreements
Also in email to Nattress was info on Park Ridge school district v. City of Park Ridge 2003 IGA .
Because it is being amended after being disputed by both parties to the agreement, after the tif failed to be as profitable as predicted, schools are already receiving less than promised.
AND, these Park Ridge citizens are taxpayers who have to pay the school costs out of one pocket or another.
MUCH different than two adversarial municipalities (Woodstock and Lakewood), one of whom would have to pay for school costs with NOTHING to gain.
Now, Park Ridge is again lowering payments to the school against the terms of that agreement.
Taxpayers are eating it.
Finally, I strongly disagree with you that the d200/Lakewood tif IGA will”make Lakewood hold to their promise that they are going to build low income housing for adults with physical and mental impairments.”
I believe that is NOT what the tif agreement says or does, and Lakewood made no such promise.
Lakewood Resolution to build Low Income Housing in TIF district does not restrict the nature of low income housing to be built there to comply with affordable housing act.
Chico, I have suggested charter schools in discussions of what to do with shuttered buildings.
I have researched charter schools and read some very bad results as you say, but also some very good results.
Charter schools couldn’t form unless a critical mass of parents want an alternative to the public schools.
But please remember that the charter schools we read about may be in areas far different than Woodstock.
We have a crisis level property tax rate of 4.6% of fair market home value.
This in a community of $57,000 median income.
The property tax takes an enormous chunk of those household incomes, tax money that provides no additional value compared with any normal-tax-rate community which provides fine educational value for far lower cost.
2/3 of property taxes go to schools.
Because this school district has refused to lower spending, desperate households are seeking any alternative which might allow survival.
If charter schools can provide fine education for better value, parents can vote with their feet. That is, if they had such a choice.
But remember, this is a suggestion related to the disposition of school buildings which would be closed in order to save property taxpayers enormous expense of keeping under-used properties open . (3300 new capacity created in 2007 is unused) .