About a decade ago, Steve Bytnar led an effort to form the Property Tax Action Group (PTAG) as a watchdog and educational group in the Sun City area. It was devoted to monitoring property tax assessments on Sun City homes and educating residents about how the state’s property tax system works.
Bytnar created a computer file on the property tax assessments on every home in Sun City, and has helped many residents file appeals to their assessments in Rutland and Grafton Townships.
On January 1, 2016, Bytnar became a member of the seven-member governing board of the Sun City Community Association.
On March 29 of this year, he sent an email to a large number of Sun City residents endorsing a number of candidates in the Rutland Township April 4 election. According to a number of township candidates and residents, his email played a significant role in the election of a new assessor for the township, and started an immediate controversy in the Sun City community.
In the assessor race on the very crowded township ballot, Gary Fritz, who recently became a Sun City resident, challenged longtime (20 years) incumbent Janet Siers.
In his email, Bytnar endorsed Fritz and five candidates for other offices in Rutland, and strongly criticized Siers.
“Gary Fritz is running for Rutland Township Assessor, he is a Sun City resident and I am endorsing him for election,” Bytnar said. “Janet Siers has done a terrible job in providing fair assessments for Sun City and needs to be replaced, as shown in my assessment model reports available on the Sun City PTAG website.”
Fritz won the assessor election, 1,217 votes to 819 for Siers.
Bytnar also endorsed Margaret Sanders of Sun City for re-election as supervisor, Howard Jay Schultz for re-election as township highway commissioner, and Nicholas Hoffman, Thomas Ray Eaton, and Victor Keegan as trustees. All of them won in contested races. Bytnar later told the Sun Day that the endorsements were his alone, and did not represent the views of the PTAG group nor anyone else. Asked how many Sun City residents received his email, Bytnar said, “many.”
This email was not supposed to happen, however.
After seeing the email, Dennis O’Leary, president of the Sun City Community Association board, sent out a letter to Huntley residents disavowing support for Bytnar’s endorsements and indicating that he shouldn’t have sent it.
This is the text of O’Leary’s letter:
“After having seen emails from one of the association board members relative to the upcoming election, and the confusion that it has caused for some of our residents, I feel compelled to clarify this situation.
“Neither the Sun City Community Association of Huntley, nor the board of directors of SCCAH, nor any of its committees, clubs, or other organizations, officially support the information that was recently emailed to residents by Mr. Steve Bytnar.
“The association has not chosen to support any candidates in this election. Thus, resident voters should elect to accept or to ignore any or all of the information that was presented, as a well-informed voter would do with any piece of political information. The association is sorry if this has caused confusion relative to this election.”
At the April 12 association board workshop meeting, Bytnar apologized for the letter.
Siers did not respond directly to Bytnar’s criticism, but she did claim that his letter was responsible for her defeat.
“I won every precinct except the ones in Sun City,” she said. “The township is split between Sun City and everyone else. It is unfortunate that one person could create an even bigger division between Sun City residents and the rest of the township in one fell swoop. A division that has existed for many years and one I have tried very hard to mend.”
