Anyone who owns a home loves to complain about property taxes. The protests ebb and flow year after year, almost on a schedule. They erupt whenever an owner or group receives a tax bill or their property’s tax assessment.
The Sun City area is no exception. Assessment complaints escalated recently in Grafton Township, in McHenry County. Exactly 1,089 homes in the community are located in the Township. That’s about 20% of the 5,480 Sun City dwelling units. Most of the other Sun City homes are located in Rutland Township in Kane County.
A few weeks ago, a Sun City resident in Grafton Township contacted the Sun Day. He questioned the reasons for a 17.3% jump in his home’s 2015 assessment, and alleged that there were errors being made in the property tax system by township and county tax officials. The Sun Day staff decided to take some of these issues to someone who has a lot of answers.
He is Steve Bytnar, a resident of Neighborhood 33. He is the newest member of the community association’s board of directors. But he is best known as a self-made expert on Sun City’s property tax records, and is one of the prominent members of a community group called Property Tax Action Group, or PTAG.
“I don’t consider myself as an expert,” Bytnar says. “But I am knowledgeable about our community’s records.”
He has collected and stored all of the assessment records in the Sun City area for the last 6-7 years on his laptop computer. He has helped more than 100 Sun City-area residents file appeals of their assessments with McHenry or Kane County Boards of Assessment Review. A majority of them have been approved.
“The review boards are abundantly generous on appeals,” he said.
He doesn’t charge for his advice, and he only provides information about how the property tax system works.
Using a spreadsheet format, Bytnar has amassed about six years of tax data on virtually every Sun City property on his computer.
“Regarding Grafton Township, there was an above-average number of assessment increases in 2015,” he said.
Alan Zielinski, the township’s assessor, took over his job in 2014. He is required by state laws and regulations to make sure properties are assessed fairly and equitably, to make sure all properties’ assessed value is uniform with other comparable properties in the area, and to ensure that no calculation errors are made.
Bytnar said there are many factors that influence assessments on homes for tax purposes. In no particular priority order, these include recent sales of homes in a given area, estimates of a home’s fair market value, state estimates of real estate market trends, homeowner appeals that have led to reductions or adjustments in assessment levels, quadrennial (every four years) re-assessments, as required by law, and improvements in, or expansion of, homes made by owners. In Sun City, homeowners and assessors can track the sale prices and assessments of the community’s pre-designed model homes fairly easily.
“I have worked with Alan extensively since he came on board,” Bytnar said. “He is an honest, competent, and dedicated assessor. He reviewed all township assessments, and he did find that adjustments had to be made based on previous reductions that were granted (some based on appeals), that now had to be increased to equalize them with other comparable homes. Most of the increases were under 10%, a few were above. In the process of equalizing and fairly assessing property, if you get a reduction in one year, you are likely to get an offsetting increase a few years later,” Bytnar said.
“In 2015, 257 homes in Grafton Township had double-digit increases in assessments, and 82 properties got double-digit decreases. It was a major evaluation of Grafton assessments made by a new assessor. Changes came to about a third of the homes in the township. All other homes received plus or minus increases or decreases under 10%,” he said.
Another factor comes from township or countywide assessments of property by area taxing districts, such as villages, school districts, and park districts. According to Tom Hall of Huntley Realty, governing boards in these districts tend to push up the multiplier (the factor used by a taxing district to determine what portion of a tax bill they will claim) during an economic downturn (like in 2008-09) to offset the drop in home values. But they don’t reduce the multiplier when home prices go back up.
“If you had the same house in 2008 with zero improvements, you are paying more now for real estate taxes than you did in 2008,” said Hall.
“In Rutland Township a few years ago, a lot of residents protested after a calculation error was made by the state,” Bytnar said. “That error was discovered, corrected, and adjustments were made in response to homeowners who were suddenly saddled with unusual increases in their tax bills. Errors do occur, but in my experience they have been honest ones that are corrected promptly. In evaluating the system, you have to look at the numbers, which I have in my laptop. Almost all big increases or decreases are because assessors are doing their jobs and keeping all assessments at a comparable level. This is probably also why appeals are usually granted by county boards of review and assessments are reduced. But it is also why those reductions are usually increased later to balance things out. At least 90% of decreases or increases in assessments can be explained and are proper,” Bytnar said. “I have found that there is almost always a good reason why assessments go up or down. The system is complicated, but it generally works well. We all pay too much in property taxes, however.”
Bytnar concluded that he will not give up his cause, however.
“I plan to continue my quest to help get 100% of assessments in proper order. In my mind, there are 10% of our area assessments that don’t appear to be correct.”
