Some Burr Ridge Residents To See 'Major' Increase in Property Taxes

The “main culprit” for an increased property tax bill some residents are facing this year is a change in equalized assessed value, village officials said Monday.

“The property tax values in the DuPage portion of the village decreased from 2010 to 2011 by 6.24 percent,” Village Administrator Steven Stricker said.

“And when the EAV goes down, the tax rate goes up to collect the same amount of dollars. Unfortunately, that’s the reality of the situation,” he said.

The amount a resident pays in property tax depends on how much his or her individual home’s EAV changed, he said.

During Monday’s Village Board meeting, Stricker explained how the village’s portion of property tax bills—less than 2.5 percent of the total bill—is calculated. Mayor Gary Grasso had asked staff for a presentation on the topic after the village received several inquiries from residents living in the DuPage portion of Burr Ridge, asking why they are paying a substantial amount more this year then in previous years.

“Some of us were shocked—I was one of them,” Grasso said.

According to Stricker, a Burr Ridge home with a market value of $600,000 paid $239.78 in taxes to the village for 2010. But if the home’s EAV stayed the same for 2011, the homeowner would pay $27.60 more to the village for the current tax bill. If the home’s EAV decreased by 3 percent, the homeowner would pay $19.58 more in village taxes on the 2011 tax bill. If the home’s EAV dropped by 10 percent, the village portion of the tax bill would be less than one dollar—86 cents.

“The village of Burr Ridge has absolutely no control on the EAV of an individual property owner’s home and we have no control over the rate that’s set by the county assessor,’ Stricker said.

Some residents could have a major increase in their taxes, whereas somebody else is going to have a reduction in taxes because of the new EAV and new tax rate every year,  Stricker said. It’s a reallocation of existing dollars, he said.

“It’s not new dollars. I think that’s the thing we have to stress to the residents,” Stricker said. “We’re not getting any kind of windfall because of this. We’re still going to get the same dollars that we got the year before plus 1.5 percent. That’s all we’re going to get.”

In December the village approved a 1.5 percent tax increase—the amount of the state-imposed tax cap.

“We couldn’t raise it above that, even if we wanted to,” Grasso said.

In addition, the amount required to pay the debt service levy increased 1.42 percent—something that was set by referendum many years ago, Stricker said.

The total dollar increase for the village’s tax levy—which includes general corporate, police protection and police pension levies—is projected at $14,793 than 2010. The increase for the debt service tax levy is projected at $7,135.

“The operating budget for the village of Burr Ridge is essentially flat,” Grasso said. “And we haven’t had any increase in operating expenditures in real dollars since 2007, yet property tax—for some of you—they seem to go up on a regular basis.”

Officials stressed that major projects in the village, including the County Line Road/I-55 bridge enhancement and the North Frontage Road/Madison Street stop light, are paid primarily through grants and other funding sources rather than property tax dollars.

“We continue to utilize alternative revenue sources rather than resident property taxes to fund these one-time needed projects,” Stricker said.