Assessor: Error Underestimates District 97 Referendum's Tax Impact

With the April 5 election just weeks away, support and opposition camps are lining up and taking sides in District 97's multi-million dollar referendum question that would raise property taxes but save dozens of teacher jobs and school programs. 

But a technical snafu with the ballot question's wording — one that a top tax official says dramatically underestimates the impact on taxpayer wallets — is raising new concerns about the referendum's validity. 

Ali ElSaffar, Oak Park's Township assessor, said language in the ballot question does not factor in the state's equalizer, a number the Illinois Department of Revenue determines each year to ensure that Cook County assessments are in line with assessments from across the state. 

That means the impact on a homeowner's property tax increase isn't accurately represented on the ballot. 

"My main point is if you’re going to vote, if you're [only] looking at the ballot number, you're going to get a bad number," ElSaffar said. 

In Oak Park, a portion of the ballot question reads  "For the 2010 levy year the approximate amount of the additional tax extendable against property containing a single family residence and having a fair market value at the time of the referendum of $100,000 is estimated to be $37.40." 

Put another way, that's a 3.8 percent tax increase, or about $38 per $1,000 on every tax bill. And that's the number the district and supporters of the referendum have used in their information campaigns.

But factor in the state's equalizer, and ElSaffar said that $37.40 per $100,000 of a home's value figure swells to $126.04 per $100,000 of a home's value. 

Members of the District 97 school board maintain they're in the right. Board president Peter Traczyk said attorneys with Chapman and Cutler, a powerful law firm hired by the district to act as bond counsel, were following the letter of the laws when they drafted the ballot question. 

"The board doesn't make any type of guesses. We rely on counsel. We’re volunteers, we're not tax experts. We're not legislative experts," he said. "I don’t disagree with Ali...that there's legislation that needs to be fixed. But we're going to stand by the advice of our legal counsel.

"Frankly, we don’t have a choice." 

A spokesperson with Chapman and Cutler refused comment for this story. 

District 97 spokesman Chris Jasculca said "all parties involved" agreed on the $38 per $1,000 figure, and that it was verified by ElSaffar himself on Jan. 19, one day after the district approved the referendum question. 

ElSaffar said that's "technically true," but also somewhat inaccurate. He said he spoke with school board members about the figures they'd use, but not about the actual language that would appear on the ballot.

At Tuesday's school board meeting, Robert Kohn, an attorney for the school district, said the referendum question passed legal muster, Wednesday Journal reported. 

For opponents of the referendum, the ballot hiccup is another reason to vote against it. 

"At the end of the day, I think it demonstrates a pattern of behavior by District 97 and the school board," said Alan Reed, a vocal critic of the referendum. "The referendum rhetoric is about them and their needs rather than the holistic needs of Oak Park and Oak Park taxpayers." 

Still, with the ballots printed and , there's not much election officials — or the voting public — can do.

Courtney Greve, spokeswoman for Cook County Clerk David Orr's office, said "the referendum language as it appears is exactly as it was certified to us by the school district.” 

ElSaffar, who doubles as president of the Cook County Township Assessor's Association, said the Oak Park ballot issue isn't isolated. He said then other suburban Cook County's taxing bodies seeking a referendum are using the "identical, but flawed formula."