The average Chicago property tax bill is going up about 10% this year following City Hall and Chicago Public Schools tax hikes to pay for police, fire and teacher pensions, according to calculations released Tuesday by the Cook County clerk's office.
As a result, the owner of a city home determined to be worth $224,500 will pay nearly $4,000 in property taxes this year — an increase of about $363.
The news is slightly better in suburban Cook, where the average homeowner can expect to pay anywhere from 3.9% to 6.5% more, depending on where they live, County Clerk David Orr determined.
And it's a mixed bag for business property owners in the county. In Chicago, commercial parcels will see increases of about 9.3%, or $1,150 more for a property valued at $270,000. In suburban Cook, those bills are going down by about 4.2% in the north suburbs and up by about 3% in the south suburbs.
While city property owners have complained long and loudly about their tax bills, they still by and large pay less in property taxes than their suburban Cook and collar county counterparts for homes with the same market value. The tax rate in Chicago remains lower than in the vast majority of suburbs, according to Tribune data.
The increases will be reflected on the second installment of Cook County property tax bills, which Treasurer Maria Pappas said would be mailed out at the end of this month with an Aug. 1 due date. The first-installment bills were due March 1.
In Chicago, the story continues to be the impact of property tax hikes that Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed through the City Council and his hand-picked Chicago Board of Education.
About three-fifths of this year's city property tax increase is the result of a $272 million tax hike for CPS. The extra money is being used to help cover increased CPS contributions to the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund, which is on shaky financial ground following more than a decade of skipped or reduced payments.
Another one-fifth of the city property tax increase is part of the continuing phase-in of a $543 million tax increase aldermen approved at Emanuel's behest in late 2015, with the money going to shore up shaky police and fire pension systems. The rest of the increase comes from smaller hikes at other taxing districts within the city.
The big whammy from those tax hikes came last year, when City Hall property taxes rose by $318 million and overall city property taxes went up by nearly 13 percent, or about $413 for the average homeowner. CPS also collected $45 million more in property taxes last year after aldermen approved that boost for school construction projects.
By comparison, this year's City Hall property tax increase is $109 million, with additional, smaller hikes scheduled for the next two years.
Some caveats: Tax bills will be lower for homes deemed to be worth less, and higher for homes with bigger price tags — as determined by the county assessor's office. And taxes vary somewhat depending on what part of the city a homeowner lives in, as some neighborhoods have added property taxes for local improvements, security, mosquito abatement, home equity assurance or mental health treatment.
Homes in Cook County are reassessed every three years based on geography. This time around, tax bills reflect a reassessment of the north suburbs.
How that affects individual bills will depend on how one's home value fared compared to those of other property within their taxing district, but Orr said in the north suburbs, the average increase on a home valued at $299,100 will be about 6.5, or $433, for a total bill of $7,118.
In the south suburbs, the increase on a home worth $163,000 will be about 3.9%, or $192, for a total bill of $5,179.
Suburban Cook tax rates are higher than Chicago's, with only a handful of exceptions. But increases will vary greatly depending on the value of the home and the particular suburb and school district it lies in.
"There's much more variance in the suburbs than in the city of Chicago, as far as the tax rates are concerned, because of the number of taxing districts in the suburbs," said Tanya Anthofer, a top-level manager in Orr's tax department.
Orr's report comes out about this time every year, but the latest edition was released the same day the Chicago Tribune published the third story in its investigation dubbed "The Tax Divide."
The series concluded that home value determinations made by the assessor's office have been riddled with errors that punished poor homeowners while giving wealthy ones a break. It also concluded a dramatic increase in appeals under Assessor Joseph Berrios made the system even more unfair.
On Tuesday, Orr said he was "very troubled" by the series' conclusions, especially its revelation that a new system designed to make assessments more fair was never fully implemented.
"I thought there was Herculean effort to try to make improvements, and now I'm told that that stuff wasn't implemented and it wasn't good," Orr said. "That's my concern."
Orr also said he was concerned by the number of appeals, noting that higher-income people are more likely to have the wherewithal to be able to challenge their assessments and it costs money for government to conduct appeal hearings. "Our goal should be getting it right the first time," he said.
Orr said he planned to discuss the issue with other officials, including Berrios, Pappas and County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
