Riverside has opted out of a statewide program that would have allowed residents to freeze the property tax valuation of their homes, affecting the village’s levy for more than a decade.
The Property Tax Assessment Freeze Program is operated by the Illinois State Historic Preservation Office. It allows state residents who own the historic homes they live in to freeze the assessment of their property taxes for eight years while they make improvements to the home over the span of two years.
After the eighth year of the freeze, the property’s value is reassessed, and the valuation increases from the pre-freeze amount to the post-freeze amount over the course of four more years.
The program requires the planned improvements to be worth at least 25% of the home’s overall value, said Community Development Director Anne Cyran.
For example, she said, in order to qualify, a home worth $400,000 must have at least $100,000 worth of improvements made. The property owners would pay their taxes off the home’s original value for eight years before incrementally increasing to the property taxes for a home worth $500,000 over the span of the next four years.
By opting out, as it has done so each year since 1999, the village will continue to reassess property taxes each year for all homes in the village, even those that are granted a freeze by the state. The freeze applies only to taxing bodies that do not opt out.
“If we do nothing, we will participate. If we adopt this ordinance, we will not participate,” said Village President Doug Pollock.
The village earns only about 15% of the money paid toward property taxes, meaning that portion of the property tax bill will continue to increase annually even for residents who successfully apply for a freeze.
In August, after giving a more in-depth presentation on the program, Cyran said the freeze is generally only granted to homes that are more than 50-years-old and that have not been substantially altered from their original designs.
The issue was brought to the board’s attention over the summer due to changes to the program allowing the cost of new additions and garages to count toward the 25%-total-value improvement cost requirement.
According to village documents, only 13 residences in Riverside have ever received a property tax freeze; most of them entered the program in the mid-1990s, but a freeze was granted most recently in 2020.
