McHenry County Blog

Because of severe computer problems with my new Hewlett-Packard computer, I missed the 525th day anniversary of Mayor Aaron Shepley’s and his city council’s (sans Jeff Thorsen) 75% hike of the Crystal Lake city sales tax’s having taken effect.

It was July 1st a year and a half ago, that the cost of shopping in Crystal Lake went up.

But, you know how government is.

If there’s not enough money, don’t act like a family or a business.

Just raise taxes.

And that’s what the Crystal Lake City Council did.

The Cook County sales tax hike went into effect the same day and the Chicago Tribune has been kind enough to keep reminding its readers of that fact.

The same time that paper has been running a campaign to eliminate the Cook County sales tax hike.

And, the Tribune has a half-off stamp on its editorial page reminder. It has had some success in rolling back the tax.

Not so, the paper of record in McHenry County. Apparently a 75% sales tax hike in Crystal Lake, where the Northwest Herald is located, is A-OK.

It’s so OK, in fact, that the NW Herald never ran a story about the tax’s going up that July 1st.

Oh, well. That’s why it’s good to have more than one source of news.

July 1st, a year and almost a half ago, Crystal Lake Mayor Aaron Shepley and all of his city council but Jeff Thorsen enacted at 75% city sales tax increase.

It went into effect the same day as the Todd Stroeger’s Cook County Board’s sales tax hike.

What’s the difference?

One is about to be repealed in whole or part.

And it took legislative action.

The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board has made repeal its number one reform issue since mid-summer 2008.

The Chicago Sun-Times follows along, but thinks only half of the sales tax hike should be repealed.

In Crystal Lake, on the other hand, the Northwest Herald did not even run a mid-summer article informing readers that the tax had or was about to increase.

Shows the difference editorial policy can make.

Certainly it will be hard for some readers to grasp, but three of the four Republican legislators representing McHenry County voted for the tax increases on beer, wine, liquor, candy, soft drinks, etc., not to mention putting slot machines in every location with a liquor license.

The tax hikers and gambling expansion supporters are State Senator Pam Althoff and State Representatives Mark Beaubien and Mike Tryon (seen above from left to right).

All three voted to hike taxes on alcoholic beverages.

But, not to worry, at the same time they gave the liquor license holders the right to put five slot machines in their stores and taverns to make up for the inevitable lost revenue, at least that’s my take.

Here are the tax increases:

• 23 cents a gallon for beer
• $1.39 a gallon for wine
• $8.55 a gallon for liquor

And, as the media has been concentrating on, candy without flour will be subject to the full sales tax now.

Not to mention soft drinks.

That will include Mayor Aaron Shepley’s 75% Crystal Lake City sales tax increase.

They will all argue (Althoff, Tryon) the tax dollars and slot machine money will go for a good cause–roads, bridges, schools, Chicago State University’s $40 million new West Side of Chicago campus, etc.

No, come to think of it, they probably will not defend the $40 million in pork for State Senator Rickey Hendon.

When the Candy Mom came home from Sam’s Club last night with a big box of KitKat, I looked at the ingredients and saw “flour.”

That meant she did not have to buy it before the new tax on candy went up.

She should have bought the almost pure sugar candy you see in the First Methodist Church of Crystal Lake’s Vacation Bible School-purchased paper mache bowl.

The other two legislators, one a Republican and one a Democrat, voted, “No.”

The Democrat, of course, is State Rep. Jack Franks.

The Republican is newly-elected State Senator Dan Duffy.

Incidentally, the Northwest Herald article on the tax hikes today, did not reveal who voted how, but some commenters did.

The Cook County Board voted to cut the Cook County sales tax by 50%.

The suggestion in this article in today’s Chicago Sun-Times proved correct.

The Cook County sales tax hike took effect the same day that Crystal Lake Mayor Aaron Shepley’s 75% city sales tax was imposed.

July 1, 2008.

Both tax hikes have been in effect just over a year.

No one on the Crystal Lake city council has proposed cutting back on the local version, to the best of my knowledge.

Jeff Thorsen was the only council member to vote against the tax hike.

Crystal Lake shoppers apparently don’t care.

While I’m in Woodstock tomorrow, I’ll stop in the Super Walmart and save myself some sales tax.

Somehow it seems appropriate that this license plate,

should be seen driving around Crystal Lake.

This is, of course, an appropriate day to post it, since it has been one year since Mayor Aaron Shepley’s 75% city sales tax went into effect.

It was passed to benefit developers and to do the same thing that the Vulcan Lakes TIF project was supposed to do–turn Vulcan Lakes into a recreational area.

If the owner would like to pass a petition to abolish Home Rule government in Crystal Lake, which is what allowed the city council (with only Jeff Thorsen dissenting) to raise sales taxes 75%, email me. The address is way down at the bottom of the page on the right.

Until I read it in Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown’s column today, I didn’t realize that the Cook County sales tax fight is racial.

Talking about the possibility of a veto, Brown writes,

“That’s unlikely given the current split, now breaking down along racial lines. All the African-American commissioners either backed Stroger or voted present, while all the white commissioners opposed him.

“The two Hispanic commissioners split, with Joseph Mario Moreno backtracking from his earlier vote to repeal the tax increase, which was a flip-flop from his original support for the tax.”

At least that’s the way it appears when one looks at the article on the facing page. (Click to enlarge.)

Take a look at the faces voting to repeal Todd Storger’s sales tax.

They are all white.

Stroger’s supporters are all African-Americans, except one.

The difference, of course, is that the Northwest Herald cares not one wit that Mayor Aaron Shepley and his city council (minus Jeff Thorsen) raised the Crystal Lake city sales tax 75%.

Maybe if newspapers were taxed as they are in other states, the NW Herald would have cared.

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You see the Chicago Tribune’s front page article about Todd Stroger’s veto of the Cook County sales tax repeal on top and it editorial below.

At the bottom of the editorial, you can see that it has been 316 days since Todd Stroger’s sales tax hike went into effect.

Coincidentally, it has also been 316 days since Mayor Aaron Shepley’s 75% Crystal Lake city sales tax took effect.

It’s March 24th, so it must be 323 days since the July 1st imposition of the 75% Crystal Lake city sales tax increase.

Just thought you’d appreciate being reminded.

Those voting following Mayor Shepley’s lead can be found in this article.

I wonder if any of the city council challengers will made an issue of the vote.

Time marches on as our wallets get lighter.

The photo is of the story about the passage of the sales tax.

Here are the justifications of city council members.

I decided to see the damage that Mayor Aaron Shepley and his compliant city council caused local taxpayers with their 75% Crystal Lake city sales tax increase that went into effect July 1st.

The city fathers and mothers forced local shoppers to pull $408,353 more out of their wallets than they they would have had the tax hikers not gotten their way.

But, interesting to me is the fact that collections for the one percentage point upon which Crystal Lake officials piled on their extra 0.75 percentage point for their Home Rule sales tax went down.

Look at Crystal Lake collections for the two years:

7-2007 – $936,674
7-2008 – $896,405

So, regular city sales tax collections took a hit of $40,269 of 4.3%.

The question that came to my mind was, “Is that better or worse that the neighboring town of McHenry?”

Here are City of McHenry figures:

7-2007 – $551,520
7-2008 – $499,352

McHenry was also down. The $52,168 was a larger percentage loss than was seen by Crystal Lake—9.4%.

For a broader gauge, I looked at McHenry County. The figures you see below represent one-quarter of one percent of all McHenry County retail sales:

7-2007 – $642,399
7-2008 – $601,941

McHenry County saw collections decrease by $40,458 or 6.2% since last year.

So, what should we make of that?

If Crystal Lake can see less of a drop in sales tax receipts after it raises its sales tax rate by 75% than a city which kept sales tax rates constant, the law of supply and demand seems to have been repealed.

Higher costs should lead to lower sales.

And, discriminating shoppers like me and a local school janitor were shopping at the Super Walmart in Woodstock, rather than in Crystal Lake.

But I’ll bet a lot of folks heading up Route 31 to McHenry and places north stopped at the new Super Walmart in Crystal Lake.

Besides the new Super Walmart, shoppers may have continued to shop in Crystal Lake because there was so little knowledge of the 75% hike in city sales tax as of July 1st.

The Northwest Herald ran no story. The Daily Herald rarely covers things dealing with Crystal Lake.

The city did not even bother to notify the local tax collectors, that is, local stores. Barnes and Noble had to eat the first few days of sales tax, as did at least one store in Downtown Crystal Lake.

Or, it may be that those shopping in Crystal Lake had less of an income drop than those in McHenry.

Or, maybe the

campaign worked.

Of a combination of the factors I have mentioned, plus others I missed.

Since Algonquin has the same .075% Home Rule sales tax as Crystal Lake, I took a look there, too.

The figures for Algonquin’s Home Rule portion went down $2,514 or under 9/10 of one percent.

7-2007 – $291,831
7-2008 – $289,317

For its regular 1% tax on retail sales, the figures were up $21,980 or up 3.5%:

7-2007 – $536,740
7-2008 – $558,720

Why would the regular sales tax increase, while the Home Rule tax take decreased?

Probably because the Home Rule tax does not apply to food or drugs, while the regular city sales tax does. People stop buying food long after they stop buying non-necessities.

And, new stores are still opening in Algonquin, as you can see at the southwest corner of Randall and County Line Roads.

It also seems to me that as Crystal Lake’s shopping opportunity’s have deteriorated that shoppers may have driven south.

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Notice was apparently not given to all merchants about the tearing up of the Downtown Crystal Lake sidewalks on November 13 that you see at the top of the article. I have also found merchants who were not notified by city officials of the 75% city sales tax hike was effective July 1st.