Ms. Margaret Whitwell, DeKalb County Supervisor of Assessments, explained what the Public Act 93-715 means to the committee, (see handout attached to these minutes). This law was passed into law on July 12, 2004. It increases the general homestead exemption (owner occupied) from $3500 to $5000 a year. That's $5000 off the assessed value that a owner occupied homeowner doesn’t pay. It increases the senior citizens exemption from $2000 to $3000. It increases the income limitation for the senior citizens assessment freeze homestead exemption from $40,000 to $45,000. It also increases the homestead improvement exemption from $15,000 for four years to $25,000. These provisions are in effect for the 2004 assessment year, taxes payable in 2005.

Ms. Whitwell continued by explaining that the second part of her handout deals with Alternative General Homestead Exemption. This new exemption is designed to limit assessment increases to 7% each year, which delays the full impact of increases greater than 7% (property owners are not required to pay taxes on assessment increases greater than 7% immediately). It applies only to owner occupied properties with no assessment freeze. If a county adopts to implement this program, an ordinance must be approved on or before January 12, 2005. If adopted, this exemption replaces the owner occupied exemption for three years, 2004, 2005 and 2006. This exemption will end in 2006. In 2007, an extra $5,000 exemption is available for only those properties that have increased in value by at least 20% and have a total household income of $30,000 or less. For all others, the alternative exemption goes back to the general homestead exemption of $5,000. The exemption maximum is $20,000 off the assessed value for the alternative exemption.

Chairman Leifheit asked what happens after the 3 years is up? Ms. Whitwell, said that it does go back to whatever your assessment was and the $5,000 owner occupied exemption. The only exception would be if in 2007 if your owner occupied property had increased in assessment by 20% or more then you would get an extra $5,000 exemption if you come into the her office to file the income tax forms and can prove that your total household income is $30,000 or less. This is for one year and then everyone is back to the other way. The maximum amount for the Alternatives Exemption is $20,000. So if your assessment increases more you are only going to get $20,000 at the maximum. This does not apply to new construction.

Is this an all or none deal where all property owners have to abide by it? asked Mr. Sands. Ms. Whitwell said it is county-wide. The law has happened, that is what’s mentioned in the top half of her handout. She continued by saying that a person gets the $5,000 no matter what, it is the minimum amount. The bottom half of that handout needs to be adopted by the county board.

Ms. Whitwell further explained that when some people have excessive amounts on the assessments it usually happens because they have fallen through the cracks and are under assessed. The Assessor finds the mistake and assesses their property correctly. Their assessment will be going up because of this. The thing to remember is that the assessments will be equitable but the person that got their assessment raised so much is now going to have this big exemption that the amount of dollars that they are paying is probably not equitable with the person that is paying the right amount all along.

Mr. Bockman said that the reason that the law was proposed in the first place is because Cook County changed their method of assessments and there was a huge number of people who had dramatic increases whereby their assessments increased from 16% to 40% of single-family homes. The rest of us where assessed at 33% and when they changed the law it was very painful. Downstate it appears to be a solution in search of a problem, Mr. Bockman further stated.

Chairman Leifheit said, then if you have a $100,000 home and it's assessed at a 10% increase, it only gets a 7% increase, leaving 3% on the table. The next year it goes up another 10%, and the third year it goes up of another 10% for the sake of an example. The fourth year it takes the full hit of all of those assessment increases (30%)? Mr. Hanson said it would have been 21% and so it will jump 9% in that 4th year. Mr. Bockman said that you

would escape those 3% increments for those 3 years. At the fourth year you will be up 21% and you'll get another 9% that you didn't get during the previous 3 years. Ms. Whitwell said that an owner occupied piece of property would still get the $5,000.00 exemption. Does it make any sense to do this at all, is the question that you need to ask yourselves, said Mr. Bockman.

Mr. Hanson said that if you don't go up 7% then you as an owner occupied property owner get a higher rate. Chairman Leifheit asked how many homeowners are getting greater than a 7% assessment increase each year? Mr. Bockman said about 300 out of 18,500 properties. The main difference is going to be the $10,000 that you are going to have to appropriate to get a piece of computer software written to implement the program and the staff time that will be used up, said Mr. Bockman.

Mr. Hanson said another question to ask is, who are the people that you are going to be helping with the assessment freeze. Are these the group of people that you want to help?

This is a very complicated bill to administer. It's going to take her staff to go back and recalculate the entire tax program, said Mr. Bockman. Mr. Wiegand said that it is his understanding that this will greatly complicate work in the Assessor's office. He said that he would be voting no on this issue.

After further discussion Mr. Bockman said that if the committee feels that this is a good thing then you would have to send this to the county board by November to be adopted. This will be a one-time shot to vote on, said Mr. Bockman.

The committee agreed to bring this item back to their committee as an agenda item for their October meeting.

Mr. Hanson highlighted various items for the committee regarding the FY2005 budget workbook. He then explained the administrative recommendations to the committee that he and Mr. Bockman are suggesting.

The budget is $53.2 million dollars, which is up 4.5%. The EAV is estimated to go up 7.6%, which would increase a home by 4.2% and the taxes would go up about $9.00. The tax cap is estimated at 5.3% based on 1.9% COLA, new construction of 3.4% for a total of 5.3% limitation. Item #5 is the G.I.S. Fee Increase and the Law Library Fee Increase is at the maximum allowed, which is consistent with our financial policy. The Sheriff is proposing to charge communities for the communication services that we dispatch for (911). Blue Cross/Blue Shield Insurance - they are estimating a 12% increase for next year, if that changes it would have a huge impact on the budget.

Mr. Hanson said that there were several new position requests from departments. They agreed to 2 new positions in the Sheriffs Department, reorganization in the Planning and Zoning Department, a new attorney for the Public Defender's Office and one for the State's Attorney's Office, 1 compliance officer's position in the Circuit Clerk's Office.

The IMRF pension fund rate is going to increase. A few years ago the county set up a rate stabilization fund because they had excess monies in the fund, but they knew that investments may not do well. Mr. Hanson explained that while we see these large increases now, we are using the funds from the stabilization fund to help soften the blow. They will charge departments 6 1/2 % even though the cost is around 8 1/2%. The 2% will come from the stabilization fund.

The SLEP fund (Sheriff's pension fund) they foresee large increases, also for similar reasons.

Under the Capital funds, they will expand the parking lot space because of the overcrowding in our parking lots at the Sycamore Campus. They also are recommending the remodeling of the jail over the next 4 years.

The Intergovernmental Agreement with Kane County to house our juveniles will probably expire in 2006. They encourage the Public Services Committee to start thinking of opportunities to do anything again with Kane County.

The Forest Preserve Loan is still outstanding and they are still looking for ways to repay the loan. The loan due date is in two years.

The County set up the loan where the County paid the City for the Tollway. The county borrowed the money internally from the nursing home and the payments start this year at $285,000.00 a year to pay back at 4% interest.

Mr. Wiegand asked if the mental health alternatives were being considered in the budget to implement for next year? Mr. Hanson said no. Unless someone put in for the request they did not consider it. He further stated that the Sheriff's Department and the Mental Health Department did not request it with their budget requests.

Mr. Hanson then explained to the committee that now the committees would need to discuss the individual budgets assigned to their committees. If you see things that you do not agree with then please appeal the item by September 16th. It will then go through the committee system to discuss the appeal. The public hearing is scheduled for our November 3, 2004 committee meeting, he said.

Ms. Joan Berkes-Hanson, Director of the IMO Department, explained the G.I.S. Fee Increase request to the committee. In the budget book last year, she submitted a form for a request to have a fee study done. This was a very clear directive from Mr. Bockman, Mr. Hanson and Chairman Pritchard at the time to look at other means other than property tax departments to fund their departments. The statutes allow for the G.I.S. Fees, collected at the time of recording, to be increased based on the outcome of the study. In addition to DeKalb County's study, also sent were data from other counties, a statewide map, and what other counties are charging. Based on this information the fee would be increased to $14.00 from its current level of $3.00. There are 102 counties in the State of Illinois, of which 20 counties do not have G.I.S. The remaining 82 are either developing it or have G.I.S., 44 counties have fees between $10 to $13 dollars. Fifteen counties have fees of $14 or greater. When you add those two together, 59 counties (71%) have a G.I.S. fee of $10 or higher. This is a policy issue for the board to consider where the funds will come from to fund G.I.S., Ms. Berkes-Hanson said.

Mr. Wiegand said that he would like to make clear that we are not discussing a user fee. We are discussing a fee that has a designated source that is actually quite different than the provision of G.I.S. Mr. Bockman said that it is a fair assessment. This is a fee that the General Assembly gave us, he further stated.

Chairman Leifheit said so we are going from $18 to $32 for 4 pages of a standard recorded document? Ms. Berkes-Hanson said that we are asking for the current $3 charge to be increased to $11 for a total of $29 for 4-recorded pages of a standard document. The Recorder currently charges $15 for recording fee, $3 for G.I.S. fee, of which they get $1 from, for a total of $18. Therefore, you would be increasing the total amount of $18 plus $11 to equal a total of $29. Looking at what other counties charge for fees is about $25 said Chairman Leifheit. What you are saying is that we should allocate more property tax monies to this activity and less fee dollars to it, said Mr. Bockman. Chairman Leifheit said that someone is going to have 1/2 million dollars versus $275,000, right. Mr. Hanson said that if you take $11 times 25,000 document it equals $250,000. Chairman Leifheit said that it says 37,000 documents were recorded last year. Mr. Hanson said that they used an average of 25,000 documents for the study. They didn't use the 37,000 because a lot of those were done for refinancing and it probably won't continue, so they used the average of 25,000 documents.

Mr. Bockman said that this committee needs to ask yourselves - at what level do you want services to continue? Ms. Tobias said that every department utilizes G.I.S.

After further discussion it was moved by Mr. Faivre, seconded by Ms. Tobias, and it was carried to forward the resolution to the full board for approval. There were two no votes, which were Ms. Leifheit and Mr. Wiegand.

Mr. Hanson said that the state statutes provide for the requested increase of $10 to go up to $13. It can only be used for purposes to fund the law library said Mr. Bockman

Before moving into executive session, Mr. Bockman explained the new system for evaluation of exempt employees to the committee. He said that if the committee members had any questions for the department heads that they could discuss it in open session. He further stated that all three department heads have completed their standard work plan and their professional development plan. What will be discussed is the exceptional performance section of the new exempt employee system under executive session.

Mr. Sands asked if they have successfully completed both plans are they eligible for a COLA increase? Mr. Bockman said yes. They are also eligible for a merit increase of 1.9% if they complete the standard work plan and the professional development plan. The total increase would be 3.89%.