Standing up for residents to lower taxes

If you ever hear someone suggest that Lake Forest City elected officials don’t go to bat for residents, please let them know that I have, and will again, as Mayor.  It was my pleasure to help residents of Lake Forest in multiple developments, including those in Regents Row condominiums off Western Avenue, eliminate an unfair tax, saving them approximately $800,000.

Years ago, the City Council began assessing a tax against new housing developments in the City by designating them “Special Service Areas” or “SSAs.”  The idea of an SSA was to allow for a tax levy on property in new housing developments to fund expanded services and programs necessitated by the housing developments.  For years, the City used the SSA concept to assess a tax on new housing developments to alleviate the additional burden placed on the Lake Forest District 67 school system by the children in the new homes.

This tax for the benefit of District 67 was imposed in 2004.  Residents in multiple developments, including Regents Row, believed that the assessment was inequitable and began to raise the issue with the City in 2013.  The nature of the issue was that, at least in the Regents Row case, the majority of the housing was owned by “empty nesters” and not by families with grade-school children, and, in fact, there had never been any grade-school children living in the housing and none were likely to live there.  Moreover, in the years preceding the complaint, the number of children attending District 67 schools actually declined substantially and was expected to continue declining.  In other words, there was no “burden” on the school system.

The City initially resisted the residents’ complaint.  However, the Mayor asked me, then a newly elected Alderman, to take a look at the situation.  I met with impacted residents, carefully reviewed the relevant facts and laws and concluded that the SSA tax on those residents was inequitable.  There was some resistance by City officials to eliminating this SSA tax.  One other Alderman even suggested that the residents shouldn’t complain because they knew about the tax when they bought their homes. 

However, I believed the right action was to support Lake Forest residents and eliminate an unfair tax.  I worked to convince my fellow members of the City Council that the residents were being taxed unfairly.  It wasn’t easy or quick or popular with the City or District 67 administration, but I eventually succeeded in the task.  In 2014, the tax on those residents’ homes was repealed by the City Council, saving residents approximately $800,000, and the similar SSA tax on several other housing developments was also eliminated.