An Introduction to Property Taxes in Oak Park

There are six different taxing bodies on Oak Park. The Village itself, which covers fire, police, health, roads, sewer, water, you know, municipal stuff. The Township, which handles senior services and mental health, D97 which covers elementary education, D200 which provides high school education for both Oak Park and River Forest, the Park District, which handles parks, and an ever growing number of facilities that provide fee based recreation and classes, and the Library.

Most of these taxing bodies are governed by PTELL, the Property Tax Extension Law Limit. This is an Illinois law that attempts to limit year over year property tax increases to roughly the rate of inflation. Each year the state of IL publishes a PTELL limit, and taxing bodies subject to PTELL cannot raise their taxes by more than this percentage amount - with a few caveats...

They can ask the voters to approve a referendum seeking a larger increase. D97 has done this in the past. Another exception is that PTELL entities can capture the taxes on new property in the district. This is meant to capture the additional costs incurred by those new properties. This makes sense, if for example a village grew by 50% in ten years and elementary budgets only went up by the rate of inflation each year, the school system would be extremely underfunded.

The Village and the Library are not subject to PTELL, the rest of the taxing districts, D97, D200, the Township, and the Park District are. The Village and the Library have what's called 'Home Rule' authority. This is a status meant for larger municipalities, that gives them a large degree of latitude to set their own tax rates. They can also levy taxes other than property taxes, like liquor and sales taxes.

For a home rule taxing entity there are no limits. They can raise property and other taxes to any level they want, though the elected board of Trustees must approve. From 2012-2022 (the range for which I have data), the total Oak Park levy, including all taxing bodies, increased by an average of 4.36% per year. Wages over that period, as reported by the SSI AWI wage index, increased by 4.4%.

So, at least in the last 10 years, property taxes haven't increased faster than wages, though they are increasing faster than inflation.

It might be surprising that property taxes and wages are so closely matched over the last ten years, until you realize that most of our property taxes pay salaries. The people we collectively employ to provide services generally expect their wages to go up at a rate similar to our own.