If you’ve ever wondered whether your individual vote matters, Riverside has proven it does.
Riverside voters passed the village’s tax levy extension referendum for street repairs on election night — by just five votes.
By 8:18 p.m. yesterday, the Cook County Clerk’s office’s election results page showed the referendum passed with 2,307 “yes” votes to 2,302 “no” votes with all eight of Riverside’s voting precincts reporting results.
Village President Douglas Pollock said his immediate reaction to hearing the news was to wonder when the results will be certified.
“I don’t know what the status of mail-in ballots and things like that might be, so I want to be cautious to make sure that that is indeed the final count,” he said in an interview the morning of Nov. 6.
Village Clerk Ethan Sowl, Riverside’s local election official, told the Landmark he expected the results to be certified around the end of the day on Nov. 12, as Cook County is still counting mail-in ballots that could have been postmarked through yesterday.
“Beyond that, I think my reaction is that the village board put their faith in the voters of Riverside to understand the issue, and that faith was rewarded, I think, with the vote,” Pollock said. “Regardless of the outcome, the fact that this community showed a high level of trust and faith in their local government, I think, speaks a lot to our staff and our elected officials who took a chance with this referendum.”
At one point during election, it seemed as if the referendum would fail. When seven of Riverside’s eight precincts had reported results, the “no” votes were exceeding the “yes” votes 1,905 to 1,869, a difference of only 36.
Pollock said he didn’t check the results on election night until the final count was in to avoid the whirlwind of emotions that could have come with it.
“I chose to just wait … until I thought the results and everything would be counted before I checked. I’m glad I took that strategy,” he said. “Even before I could check it myself, I got a text from someone saying it had been approved. Afterwards, of course, I talked to a couple people, and they said, yeah, it was going to fail. It was behind, and then the last precinct reported, and it changed. I’m glad I didn’t have to put myself through that.”
Pollock attributed the tight margin of votes to the referendum’s complicated phrasing.
“A lot of people who vote in the national elections in November don’t pay much attention to what, maybe, is going on locally, and, as we said leading up to yesterday, if you just walked into the voting booth and you know nothing about this referendum, you’re likely going to vote ‘no’ because of the way the state mandates the wording,” he said. “It’s confusing and it sounds a little bit scary. It sounds like we’re asking for a 9.4% property tax hike, and that’s not the case.”
He applauded Riverside’s educational campaign, which included social media posts and events like a town hall, for informing residents about the referendum’s purpose and importance.
“I went to half a dozen different community groups to provide information about the referendum,” he said. “I’d say 99% of the people I talked to, once they understood it, they said, ‘Yeah, Doug, this is a no-brainer. We need to do this.’”
What now?
If the results now are certified, the referendum will allow Riverside officials to extend the village’s corporate levy by up to 9.3% this year, which exceeds the state’s limit of 5% annual increases under the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law. Under PTELL, a municipality can only increase its tax levy in any given year by more than 5% if voters approve the measure.
Riverside has since requested a 9.23% hike in its corporate levy for 2024 compared to the extension for 2023, from about $7.2 million to roughly $7.8 million.
With the referendum’s passage, Riverside will earmark the additional revenue, about $256,000 each year, to repair streets as it had been budgeting. If the “no” votes had won out, Riverside would have taken 50% longer to repair streets, Village Manager Jessica Frances told the Landmark; for example, those scheduled now to be repaired in 2034 would have had to be delayed until 2039.
Since 2004, Riverside had funded street improvements by taking out 10-year bonds with voters’ approval. In 2004 and 2014, these bond referenda passed with about 80% of the vote. While this method gave voters oversight on the costs of road repairs, about 20% of the money Riverside collected for road repairs went to extraneous fees across each decade.
The referendum will go into effect at the same time that Riverside’s bond’s debt from 2014 expires, meaning the funding method shift comes at no experienced cost to residents. While your taxes will technically rise, the amount you pay to property taxes will not go up this year compared to last year, at least not due to the village’s share of what you pay.
“To all the people who voted for it, I would say, thank you for your trust in local government, first and foremost,” Pollock said. “That’s what this issue boils down to: Do you have faith and trust in Riverside village government to allow us to use your tax dollars prudently, which is exactly what this referendum allows us to do?”
