Cook Elgin vs. Kane Elgin

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

ELGIN — One Elgin couple was nearing retirement age. So they sold their duplex home in the Cook County section of Elgin for about $120,000 and bought a brand new single-family house in an active-seniors complex in the Kane County part of Elgin.

The new home cost about twice as much as the old one sold for. And when they got their first Kane County tax bill, they realized their tax load had zoomed from $777 a year to $5,466.

Another resident we’ll call Wilbur owns a 52-year-old brick ranch home in the Cook County portion of the city’s northeast side. It’s worth an estimated $204,000.

Last year, he paid $3,332 in real estate taxes to support his family’s share of District U46 schools, city fire and police and garbage services, Elgin Community College classes, and a half dozen or so other local governmental bodies. But if his home somehow got picked up by a giant hand and carried 150 feet — past the invisible line across his backyard that marks the beginning of Kane County — his tax bill would have been $1,176 higher.

And for the privilege of paying that extra $1,176, Wilbur would have been denied the right to use the 15,000-square-foot Hanover Township Senior Center and three Cook County-owned free hospitals.

Elgin is one of a number of Illinois cities that span more than one county. An invisible border line can be detected on the city’s far south side, where it runs just east of a street helpfully named Cookane Avenue. Farther north, the line skirts the west edge of Lords Park, passes through Hiawatha subdivision and sneaks behind Wilbur’s home.

West of this line lie Kane County; the townships of Elgin, Plato and Dundee; and 79.4 percent of the city of Elgin, as measured by geographic size. East of this line lie the western edge of Cook County, Hanover Township and the other 20.6 percent of Elgin.

East Elgin represents only part of Hanover Township. Containing also Streamwood and parts of Bartlett, Hanover Park and Hoffman Estates, the township has 90,000 people, almost equal to the population of the entire city of Elgin.

Similarly, Elgin Township contains more than western Elgin, extending south and west to include most of South Elgin and various unincorporated areas.

Tax of confusion

With assessments, multiplier upon multiplier, assessment levels, levies and tax caps, Illinois’ system of taxing real estate seems so complicated that it must have been designed purposely to confuse. And that’s just when we’re talking about Kane and the 100 other smaller counties.

Cook County’s system of taxing real estate is even more complicated — and in many ways different from that of the other 101 counties, even when it comes to the deadline for paying the tax bills (in Kane County, June and September; in Cook, March and sometime in the late summer or fall that varies from year to year).

State law specifies that in every county, Cook included, the “aggregate” assessed value of all property should be equal to 33.3 percent of the real market value of all these properties. If that wasn’t required, a county that shared school districts or city governments with another county, such as Kane and Cook in the Elgin area, could avoid bearing its fair share of that governmental body’s expenses by assessing its people’s properties at a lower level.

Kane County hits that 33.3 percent target simply trying to assess almost every piece of nonfarm property — from two-room hovel to tall office building — at that 33.3 percent level. County assessors’ success can be seen by the fact that for the 2009 tax assessment year, the taxes for which were collected last summer, state officials imposed a corrective multiplier of 1.000 on the county’s valuations. In other words, state evaluators judged that the county’s assessors had gotten their value estimates exactly right.

In Cook County, though, political leaders decided long ago that homeowners should bear less of the property tax burden than business owners do. So Cook assessors try to assess homes such as Wilbur’s at just 10 percent of their market value, while they assess stores and factories at 25 percent. Then, state officials, aiming to bring the overall assessed value of all Cook County homes and businesses up to that 33.3 percent level, impose a whopping state multiplier — 3.3701 for 2009.

Confused? What happened in 2009 actually was simpler than the way tax assessment used to be handled in Cook County. Until the county board passed a property tax reform ordinance in 2009, single-family homes were assessed at 16 percent of market value, factories at 36 percent, stores at 38 percent, and three other types of property at three other percentages of market value.

“Basically, if you own a home, you will pay lower taxes in Cook County than in Kane,” sums up Elgin’s chief financial officer, Colleen Lavery. “But if you own a commercial or industrial property, you’ll pay more in Cook.”

Fabulous facilities

Journey to Hanover Township’s headquarters complex along Route 59 in Bartlett — oddly, it’s located almost at the southern border of the township — and you’ll find a senior center that would do the clubhouse at any active-adult development proud.

“I’ve been to many senior centers, and this beats any I’ve seen,” said 88-year-old retired bookkeeper Opal Waldman of Streamwood, who spends almost every day there as either a volunteer or a user of its free services (Wednesdays find her playing pinochle with friends).

“This is kind of unique for a township,” said Barbara Kurth Schuldt, who manages the 21 employees and 200 volunteers who make this 15,000-square-foot facility run. Its construction approved by voters in a 2002 referendum, the building opened in 2005. Schuldt now oversees a budget of more than $1 million a year to operate it.

One recent morning, 81-year-old Bev Larsen of Elgin was there to play bridge. “I play about six times a month,” she said. “I’ve gone on trips organized through the township to Branson and to plays in Chicago, and I’m going with a group to the Biltmore estate in North Carolina this year.”

At a table nearby, Grace and Elmer Heinrich of Elgin, ages 87 and 89 respectively, had come to have their income tax return done by a volunteer helper. As they waited, they drank coffee from the Cafe 59 counter, which offers a hot lunch every day at 11:45 a.m. for $3.

When Grace tripped over a chair leg, the nurse who is on duty at all times rushed to make sure she was all right.

It takes a 16-page brochure to list everything going on in March and April at the center, ranging from a large-print library to ceramics and painting classes, Spanish classes, tango dancing, musical performances, Wii bowling, computer classes, grief and caregiver support groups and, of course, twice-a-month bingo.

The township also offers Meals on Wheels, health screenings, and rides for seniors to the Elgin hospitals or anywhere else within five miles of the township’s borders.

For younger residents, Hanover Township operates the Astor Avenue Community Center in Hanover Park with a food pantry, family therapy sessions, tutoring, parenting classes, etc., plus advice about various welfare programs. A nightly open gym program rotates among District U46 schools.

Elgin Township, by contrast, operates from a utilitarian headquarters building on North McLean Boulevard that’s a fraction the size of Hanover’s. The Elgin building has a meeting room that can be rented by the public and hosts Senior Services Associates’ informational programs, lunches and bingo a few times a month. And, like all townships, it offers welfare advice and financial assistance to those in need.

But most of the programs needed in Elgin Township are left to private organizations, such as Senior Services Associates and Ecker Center for Mental Health, to provide.

Cook County also offers its needy residents free medical care at Stroger, Oak Forest and Provident hospitals and 16 health clinics. Kane County has a large health department devoted to education and community clinical care but operates no hospitals,

One public facility that used to be available for free only to residents from the Kane side of the line was Gail Borden Public Library. For years, it was an Elgin Township library, supported by township taxes; Elginites living on the Hanover/Cook side had to pay to get a library card. But in 1974, Gail Borden became an independent library district that serves — and levies its own real estate taxes — throughout the city of Elgin plus most of South Elgin and some unincorporated areas.

Nickel and diming

So how do Cook County and Hanover Township afford all these facilities and services while taxing homeowners less than Elgin Township and Kane County? First, through that 10 percent residential/25 percent commercial difference in the assessment levels, it collects more in property taxes from businesses.

While homeowners in the east pay less in taxes to the school district, city and community college, they pay much more to their township’s own government. Hanover levies a total of 21.8 cents per $100 equalized assessed valuation, compared to 12.3 cents per $100 for Elgin Township. Wilbur paid $97.33 last year to Hanover Township. Someone with a similarly expensive house on the other side of the line would pay Elgin Township about $70.

Also, Cook County’s tax rate is about one-third higher than Kane County’s.

But beyond that, Cook County gets its money by nickel-and-diming its residents — and visitors — every time they go to a store.

Cook collects a county sales tax on general merchandise of 1.25 percent. Buy $100 worth of clothes or video games or lumber, and you pay the county $1.25. And even that is a drop from the 1.75 percent the county was collecting between 2008 and 2010 following a controversial one percentage point tax hike that many think led to the election defeat of County Board Chairman Todd Stroger last year.

Kane has no county sales tax.

Also, the Regional Transportation Authority collects a slightly higher sales tax in Cook County than in the collar counties such as Kane. So someone shopping for general goods in a Cook County store pays $1.50 more for every $100 he or she spends, compared to what would be spent in Kane County.

Sin taxes

If what that Cook County shopper buys is subject to Cook County’s “sin taxes,” the difference is even bigger. Built into the price of cigarettes and liquor are Cook County taxes of $2 on each pack of cigarettes, $2 for every gallon of hard liquor and 6 cents for every gallon of beer. Kane levies no such taxes.

Thanks to the Cook sin taxes, a pack of Marlboro cigarettes (before sales tax) is priced at $5.59 at the Citgo station at Dundee Avenue and Franklin Street in Elgin, in Kane County. But it will set a smoker back $7.75 at the 7-Eleven at Chicago Street and Willard Avenue in Elgin, just inside the Cook County line.

In the age of global warming, some may consider driving a sin, too, and Kane County now collects a motor fuel tax of 4 cents per gallon that Cook does not collect. But with gas at, say, $3.50 per gallon, the extra Cook and RTA sales tax on a 20-gallon fill-up comes to $1.05, compared to 80 cents worth of fuel tax at a Kane County service station.