When will Cook County make its property tax distribution?
That’s the burning question on the minds of superintendents and finance directors at Riverside-Brookfield High School District 208, Riverside School District 96 and Brookfield-La Grange Park School District 95.
“We are now in a liquidity crisis,” said District 95 Superintendent Ryan Evans. “Now we have to decide to liquidate our long-term investments, which hurts us and [forces us to] take penalties on those to pay our bills. That’s a huge problem.
“On top of that, we could take tax anticipation warrants, but we take interest on that and can’t recoup.”
Over at District 208, Superintendent Dr. Kevin Skinkis said it has about six months of operating reserve, “but some districts are not as fortunate.
“This is definitely a concern,” he said. “In November, we did an interfund loan, [from] our working cash fund to our operating funds, and that should get us through January. If we don’t have tax distribution at the end of January, we’re going to have to look into a tax anticipation warrant.”
An Illinois Tax Anticipation Warrant, or TAW, bridges the time between tax levy and tax collection, allowing public entities like school districts to pay imminent expenses.
Dr. Mark Kuzniewski, interim finance director for District 96, said that after December, his district “will need to look hard at where we’re at financially in January.
“The hard part is the district would be poised to make it through the month of February without needing any additional loans or tax anticipation warrants,” he said. “However, there is a process for tax anticipation warrants, [to] engage in a process to make sure we had funds on hand if the county didn’t come through.”
According to Jim Thompson, director of property assessment and tax policy for the Cook County Office of the President, tax bills that were supposed to be distributed in July were delayed to November due to a technology issue involving iasWorld software from Tyler Technologies that is replacing a 1970s-era mainframe computer. Thus, “the technology implementation is the reason for the tax bill delay,” he said.
“Phase II of the project is launching in late 2025, for tax administration functions,” Thompson said. “The county clerk’s office used iasWorld for their tax extension process and the treasurer’s office used it to generate and collect second-installment property tax bills.”
Thompson is confident tax distribution will happen shortly, possibly before the end of the year.
“The treasurer and the vendor are currently in the final stages of the project to distribute property taxes,” he said. “The disbursement should be going out in the coming days.”
But if it does not, that will create more headaches for entities like District 96, Kuzniewski said.
“We’re using our reserves, we’re not accruing the other interest that would be coming into the district, we’re not going to be made whole because of the loss of interest,” he said. “Most districts kind of swallow that as the cost of doing business, but when it comes to tax anticipation warrants, there are costs to doing that.”
Evans said that as of last week, District 95 should have about 50% of its tax revenue; currently it has 14.9%.
“Either way, I can’t operate on a sliver,” he said.
The three local districts are part of the Proviso Township School Treasurer’s Office, which provides consolidated financial services to many area districts, in order to maximize interest earnings through pooled funds investing.
Evans said the office “is saying things will be fine through January. But after that, we will have to make choices.”
Skinkis said he’s “optimistic this will get resolved sooner than later.
“Those tax bills that recently went out, anybody who had their property taxes in escrow, those will start getting paid faster,” he said. “We’ll start getting a little bit of that coming.”
Kuzniewski agreed.
“There is a lot of property tax money held in escrow, many are escrowing their taxes,” he said. “If it gets resolved tomorrow or any specific day, it’s not going to take long for districts to see money coming into coffers.”
Still, he said, “you lose the interest.”
Nevertheless, there is a growing coalition of school districts particularly concentrated in the north shore that are banding together to place pressure on the county to release the funds.
Dr. Ben Collins, superintendent of Park Ridge School District 64, addressed the county board in the public comment portion of its meeting Dec. 17. He said it’s not only the absence of property tax funds and loss of interest that is perplexing, but also a county bridge loan program that many districts, including his own, don’t qualify for because their credit rating is higher than the program requirement.
“In the future, how can we work better together as a county?” Collins said. “All of our superintendents are at the whim of a vendor not doing what they are supposed to do. This is a situation that none of the districts created.”
He added the solution is for districts like District 208, 96 and 95 to consider joining the coalition.
“We need to stand shoulder to shoulder to get these dollars to the best of our ability,” he said.