2016 McHenry County Schools Statistics – Property Tax Comparisons

Right after this year’s real estate tax bills arrived in mailboxes, McHenry County Blog showed how school districts’ tax levies compared with the previous two years’ levies. A Friend of McHenry County Blog did the heavy lifting in manipulating this … Continue reading

Grade School Tax Rates

Cary Grade School 26 Board President Scott Coffey, inspired by the paraprofessionals’ demonstration in McHenry Tuesday, racked up the tax rates for all McHenry County elementary schools. I think his research is worth sharing more broadly: D-15 has the 2nd … Continue reading

County Board Could Kill the Valley Hi Tax Tuesday Night

On September 8th, McHenry County Blog published the article below. Since then the County has reduced the proposed Valley Hi levy to $10,000, but shifting most of the originally proposed $2.75 million for Valley Hi to other line items. The … Continue reading

Effective Tax Rates in McHenry County

The only way to compare property tax burdens is to divide one’s property tax bill by the value of one’s home. That’s what the Chicago Tribune did in November of 2015. The effective tax rates found for McHenry County towns … Continue reading

Rural Woodstock Tax Analysis

A friend of McHenry County Blog offers this analysis of Woodstock’s rural tax rates: These are the past 4 years of tax rates; that is, the percentage taken of 1/3 of the assessed fair market value of taxpayers’ homes. Tax … Continue reading

Most Tax Rates for McHenry County’s Upcoming Tax Bills – Up 15% in Algonquin Township Part of Lakewood

Here’s what it looks like for my Algonquin Township part of Lakewood: MCHENRY COUNTY – $1.00 per $100 of assessed valuation (up from 79 cents per $100 – this must include the 708 Board Mental Health tax) MCHENRY CO CONSV … Continue reading

Fox River Grove & Harrison Grade Schools at Maximum Tax Rate in Education Fund, Harvard Hits It Next Year

Looking at maximum tax rates for school districts in McHenry County, I discovered that Fox River Grove Elementary School District 3 is blocked from raising its taxes not by the Property Tax Cap, but by having reached it $3.50 per … Continue reading

Townships and Tax Caps

Let’s go through the townships in alphabetical order to see how the Real Estate Tax cap affects how much money they can collect. This information, as with previous articles about the Tax Cap, comes from the McHenry County Clerk’s web … Continue reading

No Financial Diet for McHenry County Next Year + The Tax Levy Game

There is widespread misunderstanding about the tax process. Today, we won’t look at the assessment part. Instead we will examine what tax districts do to pry more money out of our pockets. News stories talk about levies this time of … Continue reading

Tax Bills and Assessments

With State Rep. Jack Franks about to get lots of publicity about keeping real estate tax bills down, it’s worth looking at the underlying problem. This is the third or fourth article I have written on the subject.  It’s a … Continue reading