District 158 Board of Education candidates give their take on the tax levy passed in December
Tax levies are a touchy subject for residents especially considering the current pandemic. Seeing as the District 158 (D158) Board of Education (BOE) passed a tax levy this past December, My Huntley News asked the 10 candidates currently running for a spot on the BOE what their thoughts on the levy were. Their answers were as follows:
The newcomers
Dana Dalton-Wiley:
“I was shocked that the levy passed. They have passed the levy almost every year for the last 10 years. 10 years ago, our district was growing and we had an influx of people. We had huge buildings and we had huge communities being built. We had a lot of infrastructure of homes being built, but again, enrollment is down…The last year has been very hard for families. We have families really struggling and then we pass a tax levy.
“I think this is forcing people to leave and look someplace else. I would look and say I want to pause the tax levy. I don’t want us to continue to levy people. Whether it’s through referendum or through a vote. I think we need to pause it. We need to look inward. We need to stay lean and mean on how we regulate our expenses.
“I don’t understand what do they really expect that levy is going to fund because it wasn’t clear. It was a $1.5 million levy, but it wasn’t clear what was really being funded with that. From that perspective, I just want to understand what are the priorities that the current board had when they passed that current levy and then let’s see how we make that work going forward.”
Jennifer Sargent:
“I watched our board meetings online and the challenges are clear. The board is making difficult decisions. Before I take a hard stance on what to keep and what to cut, I need to be in a position to get feedback from our community.
“My budget priorities would be to continue the current fiscally conservative approach: be frugal and work to fund all areas that our schools need. The goal is to continue offering the best education possible including extracurricular activities that make our children love school and bring them great joy and many life skills.”
Susan Hochmuth:
“I feel the current budget needs to be looked at and more importantly, discussed. Numbers in black and white with a quick explanation doesn’t do the job. The current population boom has gone down. The district has been following these statistics…Now it is time to look at what we have in front of us. If that means things need to be cut back, then that needs to happen.”
Tara Masino:
“Given the uncertainty in the economy given the pandemic, I am supportive of the current [levy]. I would be cautious of making budget cuts at this time that might impact the district’s ability to meet the needs of continued remote learning requirements or of special services required to address the needs of our students throughout this process. I do believe it is fiscally responsible to continue to look for opportunities to reduce the burden on taxpayers.”
Laura Murray:
“I am eager to learn more about the workings of the district [levy/budget]. Should I be elected to the BOE, I will answer this more in detail.”
Katherine “Kate” Policheri:
“While the timing wasn’t good with the pandemic, approving the levy was necessary to continue to fund our district. Property taxes are 60% of our district’s revenue. Our state is in the worst financial position it has ever been in. There has been talk about the state cutting education funding, which would be devastating to all school districts. Our district is already inadequately funded. We are operating with only 68% of the funds we should have.”
The incumbents
Anthony “Tony” Quagliano:
“Everybody on the board is extremely sensitive to the local tax payer. If our district circumstances were different, if we were a district in the North Shore or a tax rich suburb, it would be very easy to freeze the levy or do something of that nature. Our operating costs and our amount of money we get per student is in the bottom third in the state, and it’s in the bottom of McHenry County and it’s definitely in the bottom of Kane County. So, it’s pretty hard.
“We would love to freeze the levy and make things a little more comfortable. The reality is you can’t just forgo money because it affects future years…While our tax burdens are high, I pay a significant amount of taxes myself at our district, I understand that I value what we get for that. The other part of it is even if you did [freeze the levy], the amount of what you’re saving these people individually is not a lot of money in the scheme of things. You might be saving the area’s taxpayer $25 a year, $30 a year.
“It would be nice, but it’s not a big pile of money and to the district, the cumulative sum of that represents many, many teachers and being able to employ many, many teachers where you wouldn’t have to put yourself in a bind laying teachers off…70% of the district’s budget is salaries. Are we going to cut people? We already run a very low administrator to student ratio. All of our ratios are low.
“We have the least amount of utility costs of any school district in the state per square footage. We focus on optimization on savings so that we don’t have to do budget cuts.”
Lesli Melendy:
“We are currently working on a budget, but there are always cuts that can be made to things that do not directly affect student achievement such as deferring projects. With the pandemic, our budget will be at a deficit unless we receive our funding from the state and federal funds.”
Sean Cratty:
“Mr. Altmayer and team spend about eight months preparing [our] budget and looking at all creative ways in saving money. For example, this year one idea would be robotic vacuum cleaners. I supported this [levy/budget] and continue to support the individuals we have placed in these positions to make sound decisions and provide my input where I see fit.
“These are never easy conversations and tend to be very controversial, but we always look to make it the smallest increase possible…My goal is to continue to ask questions and to continue to ask for ways to lower spending to help out our local taxpayers.”
Paul Troy:
“For districts like Huntley that are funded at 68% of adequacy, reductions in state aid will be damaging to the next budget. A district’s revenues basically come from a few primary sources, and two of them are local in nature: local property taxes, general state aid, and school fees. For the collar counties of Chicago, the levy (ask) is limited by Property Tax Extension Limitation Law (PTELL), which states that districts can only levy for increases for the lesser of 5% of CPI.
“In my 12 years on the board, I have never seen a 5% levy—always CPI, which was 1.4% for 2020. After a levy year passes, districts cannot try to recoup lost revenue from under levying in a prior year. In aggregate, the lost revenue has a detrimental compounding effect of revenues in every future year. When confronted with similar funding reductions in the past, the board’s philosophy was to avoid making cuts in the classrooms unless absolutely necessary. That was effectively accomplished by delaying capital projects to a future year.
“One strategy the district enacted to address future costs of building management, was a lifecycle analysis of the buildings, grounds and critical systems. The district set aside money to pay for asphalt, roofs, and building infrastructure repairs. Our district has leveraged innovation to find ways to do more with less. Our district has recognized that a wall of large debt payments is coming in the next several years, so past and current boards have chipped away at that debt by restructuring the debt to take care of historically low interest rates.
“Because of the nature of those bonds, the restructuring must occur at specific times, and boards have adhered to that plan over several years. This has been done in an effort to favorably manage debt. Several years ago, we abated a portion of our bonds—I think it was about $400,000 for two consecutive years. The district paid a portion of our levy amount on the taxpayers’ behalf in a good faith effort to keep the property tax increases low for property owners. Unfortunately, when that amount gets disbursed among all the property owners in the district, the impact on tax bills is barely noticeable.”
