Dist. 63’s Proposed Tax Levy Increase: 3.7 Percent

East Maine School District 63 approved a tentative 2011 tax levy of $35.4 million, which includes about $3.7 million to pay off bonds and $31.8 million to pay operating costs.

The tax levy is the amount the district will ask taxpayers to provide next year. At a school board meeting Wednesday David Bein, executive director of business services, told board members the money the district is asking for in operating costs is about 3.7 percent higher than what the district collected in 2011.

“This is our opportunity to officially declare, here is how much money we would like to fund our entity,” Bein said.

Earlier:

However, Bein said it was unlikely the district would collect everything it is asking for due to the Illinois Property Tax Extension Limitation Law, known as the tax cap.

Under the tax cap law, local governments such as school districts can raise the amount of property taxes they collect for operating costs only by the previous year’s increase in the consumer price index or 5 percent, whichever is lower, plus whatever taxes are generated by new growth in the tax base.

For the 2012 levy, the limit is a 1.5 percent increase, plus new growth, which Bein estimated at just over $5 million worth of property. That amount is small enough that it won’t have too much of an effect on the school district, he said.

“We’re pretty well built out in District 63 in all of our communities,” Bein said.

Most districts levy for more money than they think they can realistically get because the amount they can collect each year is based on what they collected the year before, Bein said.

“We could make our levy 50 percent more or 200 percent more than the prior year,” Bein said. “It doesn’t matter; we’re still limited to the 1.5 percent.”

That presents a problem because most expenses are growing at more than 1.5 percent each year, he said.

The school board will vote on the final levy at its meeting Dec. 7.

District 63 includes and Stevenson School in Des Plaines, , and in Niles, in Morton Grove and in Glenview.

Connect on Facebook.