The Illinois State Revenue Department has release its comparison of 2016 assessments to 2017 property sales prices.
These are called “sales ratio” studies and have being going on since at least the 1930’s.
Here are the results:
The 2017 study showing margins of error for McHenry County Township Assessors.
The Revenue calls these percentaages “Coefficients of Dispersion.”
Put in English, they are equivalent to margins of error in survey research.
Before rapacious state and local politicians raise the sales tax above 5%, I would give the following analogy to what a 20% margin of error meant.
If three people bought items worth $100 in a store, a margin of error of 20% would mean each was as likely to pay
- $4 in sales tax, as
- $5 in sales tax, as
- $6 in sales tax
Hebron with a margin of error of 34%, Chemung with one of almost 21% and Maretesngo with 19.4%.are as inequitable as in the sales tax comparison.
Mary Mahady
Then comes McHenry Township, with its Assessor Mary Mahady running for State Senate using the argument that she knows how to fix the property tax.
On her web site, Mahady states,
“Property tax laws need to be reviewed and action taken to make sure the system is more equitable across the board.”
A cynic might suggest something like the saying, “Physician, heal thyself,” might apply.
The most accurate Township Assessor in McHenry County continues to be Grafton Township Assessor Al Zielinski.
One of the best, Bob Kunz last year at Alg.
Bob Kunz has had excellent uniformity for decades.
Mr. Skinner, what do you think would be an acceptable COD in your opinion? I’m in Nunda and a 15.65% margin of error seems unacceptably high to me, let alone 20 or more. Also, I noted the asterisk in the figures; do you know why they remove those particular parcels from the total COD? Thank you in advance for your response.
$1M+ parcel sales are removed because they are so uncommon they skew the results.
As to “acceptable CODs, one suggestion could be it’s all relative, i.e., how does your township compare to others? For this year, only four townships were lower then Nunda.
Another consideration is the diversity of the township, e.g., how much commercial, industrial and varied residential parcels does it have. Townships with a lot of farmland should do pretty well since farm parcels values are set by the state based on soil productivity not market value.
You know I’m always fascinated when someone talks about sales ratio studies being released, and then DOESN’T POST THE ACTUAL SALES RATIOS.
You’re not cherrypicking certain stats to give props/digs to your favorite/least favorite peeps are you Cal? 😉
Her record as McHenry township assessor is dismill at best.
and now wants to be double dipping senater.
any where in corporate world you have 18% margin of error you would be dismisse.
The percentages are the sales ratios.
Her Commercials are filled with lies about her opponent which makes her another lying Politician.
She puts signs where she was not granted permission which makes her another entitled Democrat.
She’s against the Veteran’s real estate tax benefit that I makes her another hater of our Vets who risked all!
Vote Craig Wilcox for State Senate!
Cal you ignorant slut.
Not sure if you mistyped, but the percentages listed above aren’t Sales Ratios. Sales Ratios, or sales assessment ratios, are defined as “Analysis of the percentage relationship of assessed value (AV) to market value; ratio equals prior year assessed value (AV) divided by the current year sales price” (IDOR) That’s a measurement of accuracy. 33.3% requirement.
Again you listed above the “Coefficient of Dispersion.” (COD) and that IS BY NO MEANS A SALES RATIO OR INDICATOR OF ACCURACY. It’s defined as: “variation of individual assessment ratios around the median level of assessments: Average error expressed as a percent (%); Indicator of assessment uniformity found by dividing the average deviation by the median.” (Per the IDOR)
COD is one of many measures of UNIFORMITY. Not accuracy. (your statement on the Grafton Assessor is incorrect.) And you could be uniformly wrong. Which is why you have all sorts of stats to view a township performance.
CODs can also vary depending on the type of housing in the area, and also the number of sales. Hebron has a bad percentage up there, but had a grand total of 69 sales in 2017. Grafton meanwhile had 1477 sales. That’s a lot more data to bring down the variance.
And I’m pretty sure you know this.
So you’ve either got a bad memory or intentionally typed something wrong. All while taking shots at one candidate and giving props to a lying, (formerly) double dipping assessor that doesn’t deserve the praise. Did you believe him when he said he had a great ….equalizer? (p.s. the COD for Grafton was one of the lowest in McHenry County before Zielinski took office. And you probably knew that too.)
Maybe next time be up front about cherrypicking your numbers.
I’ve been publishing these numbers for over a decade on McHenry County Blog.
The ones in this article came from the Revenue Department on July 3, 2018.
I stand by the analogy used in the article.
The title above the numbers is “Computation of General Level of Assessments of Non-Farm Real Estate From the:
2017 Sales Ratio Study Using the 2016 Assessed Valuation and 2017 Sales Price.”
Well again, you started the piece talking about sales ratio studies, which are on that report, but DIDN’T PUBLISH THE SALES RATIOS. And then you get the terms wrong in a comment.
And Ok, if you’re so experienced in publishing these numbers, then post the whole report. (The mchenry county portion anyway.) I’m sure poems about Jack Franks can take a back seat. When the States Attorney declined to prosecute the former Road Commissioner, you posted the whole document.
Let your educated readers determine the state of their township assessments on their own. The report doesn’t appear to be on the revamped IDOR website. It’s kinda funny that you held onto this so long, and then show a fraction of it out of the blue. Never mind the data might slant a bit from your narrative.
And get the terms right. You weren’t posting sales ratios above. The COD numbers do not point to accuracy.
P.S. Anything about Grafton should carry an asterisk, since the county has corrected literally thousands of the township assessor’s numbers.
What is in the article are the numbers that were in the report.
I have provided the heading in my other comment.
Nothing was left out.