An email came commenting on the stories about people moving from Illinois:
l’ve found a bit of irony in the posts on your blog recently about people leaving Illinois.
My wife and I are leaving soon, never to return.
Salmon swimming upstream. Photo credit: Wikipedia.
We think Illinois is an amazing state, but the politics have dropped so low that only government/civil employees and the rich can afford to stay.
My kids are out of the house, and that was the sign for us to get out as well.
While here, I did my best to be politically active and to try and change things, but some salmon swimming up stream eventually get tired – this one did.
You can use any of my comments here if you would like, but please don’t share my name – thanks.
Thank you for all of your support and help over the years.
That was the main reason for writing.
You are one hundred percent one of the “good guys.”
Keep up the good fight.
By the way, we’re headed to [state name withheld on request].
The property tax on my .5 acre home here in Crystal Lake is 7k a year – in [our new state], on my new 1 acre home it will be 2k.
There is only so much money in one’s savings,
and only so much time in one’s life, you never know
for sure when that precious commodity will run out.
Illinois will never recover in our lifetime.
Why stay and “feed the beast” that intends to bleed
you of everything you have and have worked for ?
Vote with your feet and leave this tax hellhole that Illinois has become.
Move to Hawaii where property taxes are way less, but every thing else costs 3 times as much.
My boss lives in NC, where he has a $450k home on 1 acre piece of land on the water, paying $2.5k in taxes.
My $350k home on a quarter acre has $14.5k in taxes.
JT why don’t you move or does your boss do business in Illinois because the flat tax is good for his pocketbook?
In 2008 the banks caused a lot of our problems with foreclosures and pension funds and private funds being invested wrongly.
http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/were_not_broke
karma is correct.
The banks were doing what they were forced to do by Democrats in Congress – give mortgages to people who should not be getting them.
Karma,
My boss is at my company’s North American headquarters, while I work at a Chicago office.
I would be unable to sell anyway as our idiot township assessor reassessed one year early, and sent my tax bill through the roof.
Potential buyers need only go down the street, to homes that weren’t reassessed because they are in a different township, and find a much lower tax bill.
No one in my neighborhood is selling a home right now, despite dropping the asking prices to crazy lows, because no one will buy into that tax burden…
One more Maker leaving.
Now the rest of us have to step up more to take care of the Takers.
I don’t blame you for leaving, we’re planning on the same.
However, we love it here and love to stay.
Great people, don’t mind the weather and it’s convenient to anywhere in the country.
I did the quick math and applied the tax rate increase we’ve seen since we moved here in 2001.
Granted this is linear and not really what I’d expect to see, but if it maintains the same rate of increase our real estate tax alone on 20 years would be $34.4K.
Can anyone actually budget a retirement plan that dumps this much $$s every year into just real estate tax?
Takers and Taxers – you’re brutally extorting from people who are the Makers!
You have to cut services and cut expenses.
Your Makers cannot afford to keep giving more and more.
Well any future projected tax hikes based on past actual tax hikes may we be lowballed, due to the unsustainable unfunded liabilities of the pension and retiree healthcare funds.
A prudent approach would have been to fully fund pensions, then hike salaries and current benefits and retirement benefits including pensions and retiree healthcare.
But that’s not what was done.
The salary and benefit hikes coupled with intentional underfunding of employer pension contributions (or state pension contributions on behalf of the employer in the case of TRS), were a flat out deception against the taxpayer as the scheme was not adequately divulged by the state or taxing districts.
No matter how its sliced and diced going forward the only thing certain is a bunch of angry people.
Chicago is going through this right now.
Chicago has to hike property taxes to help fund pensions.
The reason pensions are underfunded is due to legislative pension benefit hikes and salary hikes, both of which hike the pension.
But they city will not admit that and that’s not how it’s being portrayed by the city.
The tax hike is only for Chicago fire and police pensions.
However Chicago taxpayers also are responsible for two other pension funds in Chicago:
– Laborers’ and Retirement Board Employees’ Annuity Benefit Fund of Chicago (LABF)
– Municipal Employees’Annuity & Benefit Fund (MEABF)
Plus Chicago taxpayers are responsible for under Chicago Teachers Pension Fund (Chicago Public Schools aka City of Chicago School District 299 taxing district.
Plus Chicago taxpayers are responsible for Park Employees’ Annuity & Benefit Fund (PEABF) which is the Chicago Park District taxing district.
Plus Chicago taxpayers are responsible for Cook County Employees Pension Fund which is the Cook County taxing district.
Plus Chicago taxpayers are responsible for Cook County Forest Preserve Pension Fund, which is the Cook County Forest Preserve taxing district.
Plus Chicago taxpayers are responsible for Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Retirement Fund, which is the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District taxing district.
Plus Chicago taxpayers are responsible for the CTA Pension Fund, which is the Chicago Transit Authority.
That for the most part is property taxes with the exception of CTA.
Plus through income taxes Chicago taxpayers fund the TRS, SURS, SERS, GARS, and JRS “state pension funds.”
All these pension funds are also underfunded.
But Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is not explaining that to Chicago property taxpayers right now, keeping that on the down low.
So the Chicago property tax hike for funding Chicago police and fire pensions is far from the last property tax hike for pensions, and income tax hike for pensions, that is necessary.
The solution is to repeal the pension sentence added to the Illinois state constitution on December 15, 1970, and claw back legislative pension benefit hikes, and hold the line on salary hikes, claw back current benefit hikes, and claw back retiree benefit hikes.
The current system is a runaway freight train.