Chicago property taxes to rise by $90 on average

Chicago homeowners on average will pay about $90 more in property taxes this year than last year, Cook County Clerk David Orr announced Thursday, with the increase driven in part by a tax hike for Chicago Public Schools.

Taxes on a Chicago home with a market value of $199,000 will go up from $3,237 in 2014 to $3,327, Orr said in releasing 2015 tax rates. The second installments of property tax bills will be mailed out by the treasurer’s office July 1, and the payments will be due Aug. 3, according to clerk’s office spokesman James Scalzitti.

The threat of much steeper property tax hikes looms in Chicago. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying to find enough money to make police and fire pension payments set to balloon next year, and CPS faces a $1 billion budget hole driven by pension shortfalls of its own.

In northern Cook suburbs, property taxes on a $263,000 home will rise to about $6,544 from $6,389, though individual bills in specific suburbs will vary, according to Orr’s office.

In the southern Cook suburbs, property taxes will go down about $51 on an average bill, according to Orr’s office. The bill on a $163,000 south suburban home will be about $4,850 this year after it was $4,901 in 2014.

Various property tax exemptions available to homeowners can help lower those tax amounts.

After initially floating the idea of a city property tax increase last year, Emanuel instead relied on a $1.40-a-month 911 fee increase on phone lines as well as various fines to help raise revenue. That avoided the politically toxic step of raising property taxes months before he and all 50 City Council seats were on the election ballot. The Chicago Park District likewise turned to fee increases rather than taxes to balance its 2015 budget.

But cash-strapped CPS raised its property taxes to the limit allowed. School officials estimated taxes would go up an average of $34 this year on a $250,000 home as a result. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago also raised its levy in 2014, according to Orr’s office.

The latest tax bills are the first after the expiration of the Near South tax increment financing district, which slightly lessened the impact of the increases by the various taxing bodies by returning around $65 million total to the budgets of CPS and other public agencies.

Still, the amount of property taxes CPS collected went up by about $86 million, helping drive the overall increase on many tax bills, according to Tanya Anthofer, manager of tax extension for Orr’s office.

Any tax hikes approved this year would appear on bills sent to property owners in 2016