The west portion of Cook County includes the following nine Townships: Cicero, Leyden, Lyons, Norwood Park, Oak Park, Proviso, River Forest, Riverside and Stickney. Six of these townships have unincorporated areas. The exceptions are Cicero, Oak Park and River Forest Townships, which are coterminous with a municipal government. The report does not include the research information on the Townships of Cicero, Oak Park and River Forest because…
As part of the Civic Federation's report, Unincorporated Cook County: A Profile of Unincorporated Areas in Cook County and Recommendations to Facilitate Incorporation, profiles of the unincorporated areas in Cook County's North, West and South regions were compiled. Understanding more about the unique characteristics of these areas will help County and municipal officials, as well as unincorporated residents, develop plans to incorporate. Click on the links below for a…
This report provides a comprehensive examination of all unincorporated areas in Cook County. It builds extensively on a 2014 report by the Civic Federation and includes final recommendations on how the County can improve general management of unincorporated areas, work with local governments to improve future planning efforts and reduce the subsidy provided to unincorporated residents by all County taxpayers. Approximately 2.4%, or 126,034, of Cook County’s 5.2 million residents live…
This report provides estimates of the total market value of real property in Cook County from 2005-2014 and shows how property value is spread among the City of Chicago, the northern and the southern suburbs. The full market value of real estate in Cook County was approximately $499.1 billion in tax assessment year 2014, an increase of $39.3 billion, or 8.5%, from the 2013 estimated full value. The 2014 estimates represent the second time since 2006 that real estate values in Cook County…
On June 29, 2016 the Cook County Board of Commissioners voted to approve a resolution to present a public question via a binding countywide referendum asking if the Office of the Cook County Recorder of Deeds should be eliminated and all duties and responsibilities be transferred to the Office of the Cook County Clerk. Cook County Commissioner John A. Fritchey introduced the resolution to the Board of Commissioners at the October 28, 2015 Board meeting where it was then referred to the…
On June 30, 2016, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle issued a preliminary budget for fiscal year 2017, which begins December 1, 2016 and ends November 30, 2017. The report also provided end of year estimates for fiscal year 2016. A public hearing on the preliminary FY2017 budget is scheduled for July 19, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. in the Cook County Board Room. Board President Preckwinkle plans to present her final budget proposal for FY2017 in October 2016. Preliminary FY2017 Budget…
In April 2016, the Illinois Department of Revenue announced that it discovered a misallocation totaling an estimated $168 million in extra Personal Property Replacement Taxes (PPRT) distributed to 6,527 local government taxing entities throughout Illinois. This misallocation equals 6% of the total $2.8 billion PPRT payments made to local governments in tax years 2014 and 2015. Each local government that received wrongful PPRT funding will need to refund the State beginning in 2017. Overview of…
The Illinois Department of Revenue announced earlier this spring that the final equalization factor for the Cook County 2015 property assessment year (taxes payable in 2016) is 2.6685. The 2015 final equalization factor of 2.6685 is less than the final 2014 equalization factor of 2.7253. This does not mean that property taxes will go up or down. It means that, overall, the weighted average level of assessment[1] in Cook County for all types of property averaged over the past three years has…
Ed. note: Updated information on this topic can be found here. ----- Three years ago, this blog examined the impact of the housing market collapse on a specific property tax exemption, the Senior Citizens Freeze Homestead Exemption, or “Senior Freeze.” We found that in Cook County the value of the Senior Freeze exemption fell sharply between tax years 2009 and 2011 as home values fell. Since then, the trend has continued, with the amount of taxable property value exempted by the Senior…
On January 25, 2016, the office of the Cook County Treasurer mailed the first installment of the property tax bill to all homeowners in Cook County which is due on March 1, 2016. The bill lists all taxing districts to which property taxes are paid. The Treasurer also provides taxpayers with debt and financial information for each taxing agency on the bill. In this blog, we provide an overview of the property tax levy and billing process and an explanation of the components of the first…
