Story posted Friday, December 4, 2009
Property Taxes To Rise
By RICHARD MAYER Assistant Managing Editor
Mt. Prospect residents whose home is worth $350,000 will pay $750 next year in property taxes to the Village of Mt. Prospect and $435 to the Mt. Prospect Public Library.
This represents an increase in the village tax levy of $36 and a hike in the library levy of $16 from 2008.
A tax levy is a sum of money an individual taxing body requests from taxpayers to fund daily operations for the year.
According to Finance Director David Erb, those amounts vary based on eligible tax reductions for homeowners or seniors on certain assessment freezes.
The village's portion of the tax levy totals $15,196,047, a 4.99% or $723,776 increase over last year's $14,472,271.
The library's portion of the tax levy totals $9,060,075, a 3.82% or $333,767 increase over the 2008 levy of $8,726,308.
Combined between the library and village, the entire levy totals $24,256,122, a 4.56% or $1,057,543 increase over last year's $23,198,579.
The village's levy consists of general operations, refuse, debt service, and police and fire pensions. General operations are increasing by $272,036, trash collection will see no increase, debt service is decreasing by $289,222 and the police and fire pensions are increasing by $504,469 and $236,493 respectively from last year.
The library's levy consists of daily operations and debt service. Daily operations are increasing $331,478 and debt service is also increasing by $2,289 from last year.
The village was initially going to implement a 9.89% increase in the tax levy but board members decided to scale it back to 5% and replace that lost money by dipping into the village's reserves to take out approximately $416,000.
If the 9.89% had been approved, residents with a home market value worth approximately $350,000 would have paid an additional $70 to the village.
The 2009 property tax levy will be adopted by village trustees at the next regular board meting on Tuesday, Dec. 15.
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