Brookfield officials have approved the wording for a village referendum in November that, if approved by voters, would allow it to implement a permanent program for street improvements made over time.
At its July 13 meeting, the board considered two possible variations of the wording but settled on the following:
“Shall the limiting rate under the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law for the Village of Brookfield, Cook County, Illinois, be increased by an additional amount equal to .3711% above the limiting rate for municipal purposes for the levy year 2024 and be equal to 2.2764% of the equalized assessed value of the taxable property therein for levy year 2026?”
Finance Director Doug Cooper said this increase to the limiting rate would generate about $2 million in additional revenue, which would continue to be collected by Brookfield over time due to the cumulative nature of property tax raises.
For a home with a market value of $100,000 at the time of the referendum, the additional tax that would be extended against that property if the referendum is approved would be about $112.45. The increase would go into effect for the 2026 tax bills that will be paid in 2027 at the same time that existing bond debt falls off, nullifying the experienced tax increase to property owners.
While the phrasing of the referendum question might sound like legalese mumbo jumbo — indeed, the wording is state-mandated — it draws upon the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law, also known as PTELL, an Illinois law that limits property tax growth year over year based on the annual inflation rate. The law is designed to protect property owners from runaway tax bill increases when the value of their property rises.
The so-called limiting rate is set for each taxing body by the county it falls within — in this case, Cook County. The rate determines how much of the overall tax levy proceeds that taxing body can receive each year. According to the meeting’s agenda documents, Brookfield’s most recent limiting rate is 1.905% of the equalized assessed value (EAV) of all its taxable properties.
A “yes” vote on the question would enable Brookfield to raise that limiting rate by 0.371 percentage points to a total value of 2.276% of the EAV.
Implementing an alley program
Uncertainties remain about how the village might implement an alley paving program in tandem with the street program due to the widespread low quality of gravel alleys in Brookfield.
At staff’s most conservative estimates without sharing the costs with residents, an alley paving program would follow a 99-year schedule with about $1,150,000 in guaranteed funding annually. Some $800,000 would come from the road improvement fund that would be established with the passage of the referendum question while $100,000 would come from the village’s tax increment finance, or TIF, districts. $250,000 would come in the form of grant funding from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago due to the new alleys including permeable pavers which will store stormwater.
A 50/50 cost share option with residents on the block of any given alley being replaced would reduce the schedule of the program to 58 years. It would not cut the schedule fully in half due to increased costs associated with the special assessment process that would have to be undertaken in a cost-sharing scenario.
Officials weighed each option, unsure of which one might be fairer to residents.
“Trustee [Julie] Narimatsu brought up a good point at the last discussion, where she said the roadways benefit everyone, and that’s all being paid for as part of this referendum, but the alleys don’t benefit everyone,” said Dan O’Malley, a project manager at Hancock Engineering, Brookfield’s contracted engineering firm.
“What percentage of the residents don’t have alleys? That plays into this too, right? If you don’t have an alley, and we’re making the pitch for this alley program, do they care? Maybe they do care because it’s costing them, too,” Trustee Kit Ketchmark said.
Whitehead raised concerns about selling residents on an alley improvement program from which they may never see the benefits.
“[Residents] need to be able to dig into the education materials and understand what will be a lengthy process unless we were quickly successful in securing a massive amount of additional funding,” he said. “A resident votes in favor of this because of the alley sweetener, and they’re like, ‘That’s great. I have a new alley coming soon.’ Then we do the analysis, and their alley is coming in 47 years, in 67 years, in 80 years. They’re not going to see themselves benefiting from that investment.”
Trustees debated how to order the alley upgrades in a cost-sharing scenario or how to proceed if a narrow majority of a block approves paying half the costs while the large minority disagrees. They also weighed whether it would be fair to residents on blocks that had previously come together to pay for most of the costs to redo their own alley to then implement a program that doesn’t directly cost residents on the block.
After nearly 90 minutes of discussion, the board agreed to move on and return to the topic at their next committee of the whole meeting on July 27 to see if staff could answer any of the questions they raised and to hear input from Trustee Katie Kaluzny, who was absent from the meeting.
What could have been
Trustees opted for their chosen phrasing over another option that would have sought to generate the additional $2 million per year by increasing the extension limitation directly, exceeding the state-imposed cap each year of the lower value between the annual Consumer Price Index increase or a flat rate of 5%.
Due to the way tax law works in Illinois, this phrasing of the question would have seen the limitation raised by a direct percentage rather than a number of percentage points. Because 0.371 is about 19.5% of 1.905, the question would have asked voters to allow the village to raise the extension limitation by 19.46% for the year, generating the same amount of revenue to put toward fixing up roads and alleys.
“The public education campaign is going to be critical for residents to be able to understand what they’re voting on,” Trustee Kyle Whitehead said. “That 19.4% percent number does jump out in that description. That option is concerning to me in terms of giving people the wrong impression about how this is going to impact their household.”
The second method would have mimicked the phrasing that neighboring Riverside used in its successful 2024 referendum to establish a similar permanent fund for street repairs. Riverside sought only to increase its extension limitation by 9.3% for the year, which may not have spooked voters as much as Brookfield trustees worried the 19.46% figure would.
