This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Politics & Government

District 63 Asks for 3.7 Percent Increase in Tax Levy

Tax cap could limit increase to less than half that amount.

East Maine Elementary District 63 approved a tentative 2011 tax levy of $35.4 million, which includes about $3.7 million to pay off bonds and $31.8 million to pay operating costs.

The tax levy is the amount the district will ask taxpayers to provide next year. The money the district is asking for in operating costs is about 3.7 percent higher than what the district collected in 2011, according to a presentation from David Bein, the executive director of business services.

“This is our opportunity to officially declare, 'here is how much money we would like to fund our entity,'” Bein said at the Nov. 2 school board meeting held at

Find out what's happening in Niles-Morton Grovewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Earlier:

However, the district probably will not be able to collect everything it is asking for, Bein explained, because the Illinois Property Tax Extension Limitation Law – known as the tax cap -- allows local governments such as school districts to raise the amount of property taxes they collect for operating costs only by the previous year’s increase in the consumer price index or 5 percent, whichever is lower, plus whatever taxes are generated by new growth in the tax base. For the 2012 levy, the limit is a 1.5 percent increase, plus new growth, which Bein estimated at just over $5 million worth of property. That amount is small enough that it won’t have too much of an effect on the school district.

Find out what's happening in Niles-Morton Grovewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“We’re pretty well built out in District 63 in all of our communities,” Bein said.

Nearly all taxing bodies ask for more in their tax levies than they expect to receive because the amount they can collect each year is based on what they collected the year before. That encourages them to try to get the maximum they can each year, so as not to cut the amount they can get in every year after that. Most districts levy for more money than they think they can realistically get.

“We could make our levy 50 percent more or 200 percent more than the prior year,” Bein said. “It doesn’t matter. We’re still limited to the 1.5 percent.”

That presents a problem because most expenses are growing at more than 1.5 percent each year, he said.

The school board will vote on the final levy at its Dec. 7 meeting.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?