SUN CITY – Below are questions submitted to McHenry County Chief County Assessment Office Robert H. Ross, ASA by Sun City residents following the Saturday, June 18 meeting held in Drendel Ballroom that addressed the recent increase in property taxes. The questions presented here were unable to be answered at the time of the meeting, but were submitted to Ross on sheets, which he responded to. Below you will also find those answers. SC stands for Sun City, RR stands for Robert Ross.
SC – Prior to 2010 assessments, have Mr. Ottley or other McHenry assessors gone and lowered assessments of all of the like models for those who had not appealed, based on successful appeals by normal petitioners? If so, was this practice communicated to other counties in the state?
RR – This was not the typical practice in McHenry County prior to 2010.
SC – What specific course of immediate action can you or we take to avoid this happening in the future. Please comment and send followup letter to all taxpayers as to a solution.
RR – The Grafton Township Assessor has indicated he will work together with the Rutland Township Assessor in the upcoming 2011 assessment year.
SC – I live in Grafton. How can you state that the taxes went up slightly or down a lot? My taxes increased $2000.
RR – I realize a shift of burden took place within Grafton Township as well as in the shared tax districts in neighboring townships that caused significant property tax bill increases and decreases. I don’t think I stated that the taxes went up slightly or down a lot. I may have said assessment increases and decreases could have been significant in Grafton Township. I apologize if I misspoke or misrepresented anything.
SC – Please explain the chronology and reasons why the 2010 McHenry property tax bills for Grafton township, before application of the state multiplier, are about 3.36% lower than the assessments shown on Grafton township assessor’s Property search data, as shown by Mr. Ottley’s website. Mr. Armstrong’s sequence of reductions in Grafton made no such mention of an additional 3.36% reduction. (Pure coincidence that it’s about the same as the state multiplier?)
RR – [No answer provided]
SC – Why were the reductions in Grafton Sun City so widely variable by model?
RR – The Grafton Township Assessor assesses by model type.
SC – Doing comparisons by model in Sun City, why are the Grafton taxes always so much less than Rutland. And I am not talking just this year, but for all of the 8 years I have lived here.
RR – The Grafton Township Assessor has indicated he will work together with Rutland Township Assessor for the 2011 assessment year for uniformity purposes.
SC – Mr. Bill Ottley told members of P-TAG on June 10 that he will tell Grafton residents to appeal their 2011 assessments. The McHenry BOR will then lower them substantially using one-year sales data, and he will then ask the BOR to lower all the like parcels that did not even appeal. In other words, a repeat of what happened this year. Will you allow this to happen again?
RR – Mr. Ottley does not determine what happens at the McHenry County Board of Review. He does have authority for initial assessments each assessment year. However, the practice in McHenry County will be to equalize assessments at the statutory assessment level of 33.33%, as determined by the Department of Revenue’s three-year sales ratio unless any legislation would change that practice.
SC – The assessed valuation of my neighborhood went down 8%. However, at a model level, the decrease varied from 3% for a Fox to 15% for a Cantigny. Why wasn’t the reduction in assessed valuation uniform across models?
RR – The Grafton Township Assessor assesses by model type.
SC – Fair market value. Why did homes in some models drop by $50,000 and in another model drop only $12,000.
RR – The Grafton Township Assessor assesses by model type.
SC – Some people in Grafton said they received letters telling them their assessments were further reduced in the whole subdivision. Did not Mr. Armstrong say the assessor cannot seek reductions for a whole class of properties?
RR – The Board of Review has broad authority in making assessment changes according to the Illinois Property Tax Code.
SC – What guarantee do we have that this will not occur again next year?
RR – The Grafton Township Assessor has indicated he will work closely with the Rutland Township Assessor when estimating assessments throughout Sun City.
SC – How could the McHenry Board allow the lowering of an additional 9000 parcels on the basis of equality within a taxing district while ignoring that these tax districts extend into Kane County?
RR – As Mark Armstrong indicated, there are mechanisms in place that will negate the effect of this shift of burden between shared tax districts. In addition, while all Board of Review actions shift the property tax burden, the unintended consequences of a large shift of property tax burden should also be considered. I will make this fact aware to the McHenry County Board of Review moving forward.
