Commenter Swampbuggy offers this sage advice for how to cut property taxes:
Right now the Teacher’s Union has discovered that you can run teachers for the school boards and then call all the parents and union members to come out and vote in a low turn out election where they can control the outcome.
The candidates endorsed by the Crystal Lake High School teacher union. The third candidate, an incumbent who voted for the South High School bleachers, is an add-on since the first endorsement was announced. All were elected. They joined Adam Guss, now President of the Board, who is married to a District 155 Cary-Grove High School teacher, and Amy Blaizier, both of whom were endorsed by the teachers union. The only one who serves without endorsement of the teachers union is Rosemary Kurtz.
Then they will go ahead and vote on teacher contracts even though the money is coming right back to them.Conflicts of interest much?
The only way to do something realistic about property taxes is for tax conscious taxpayers to organize a Get Out The Vote effort aimed at the Consolidated Election cycle to get people to come out and vote.
It’s easy to identify your voters. They are going to be R’s and over 55. Piece of cake.
But EFFORT is required.
Also you need candidates.
THAT election will be in April of 2019.
Petitions can be circulated right after the Fall General Election.
Stop using your fingers here and use your feet on the street.
If you keep harping on county board elections you will not get anywhere on this issue.
Six of the seven members of the Crystal Lake High School District 155 Board were endorsed by its teachers’ union.
We really need to get rid of these odd numbered year elections entirely.
The insiders on the school boards and townships love them because hardly anyone shows up to vote, and a well organized minority can easily win.
The odd year elections also provide a sneaky way to slip through a bond issue that isn’t popular.
Let’s recommit ourselves to support all public education teachers. See a teacher? Thank a teacher! And hug a teacher too. stay tuned…tic, tock, tic, tock, tic, tock…
I will think of you and smile on the day that the TRS goes bust and the retirees find out that the courts don’t have the power to save it.
The central problem is the overreliance on the property tax for funding of schools.
That coupled with the state aid formula which short changes suburban school districts.
Then you have the fact that the TRS was not based on actuarial principles and has been continuously raided by state politicians and you have a recipe for the current disaster.
People can’t eat their homes, which have also not recovered from 2008.
Other states don’t have these problems as they have a better tax mix.
I think we are looking at a graduated income tax after the election. This one won’t be temporary either.
Now that we lost the opportunity to elect her to our county board, I would like to seek Klaatu Barada Nikto’s perspective on all this. Stay tuned…tic, tock, tic, tock…