WEB EXTRA!
The District 97 Oak Park Board of Education has not shut the door completely on seeking a referendum in the future, but the chances of it happening in 2007 seem less likely given the current anti-tax climate in Oak Park, board members said Wednesday.
At the meeting on Wednesday, Board President Carolyn Newberry Schwartz said other board members acknowledge that Oak Park taxpayers are not ready or willing to take another tax hike next year.
The board did not say officially that it will not seek a referendum in the spring of 2007, but it did say that the schools will look to the Village of Oak Park for financial help, and will also explore additional spending cuts.
“I’ve talked with each of you and my sense is that a referendum won’t fly next spring,” she told the board.
Other taxing bodies, including the Park District of Oak Park, District 200 Oak Park and River Forest High School and the public library, have sought and received referendum approvals since 2002. Partially as a result, property tax bills increased markedly this year for many Oak Parkers.
Schwartz said if the district went for a referendum in 2007, it would not only hurt taxpayers but hurt District 97’s chances for a tax hike in the future.
District 97 has had an average annual deficit of $2.5 million in each of the last four years while also making cuts totaling around $4 million, including roughly $700,000 in cuts this spring.
Schwartz said the district felt it had made the case to run a successful referendum next year by making cuts in the last four years.
“We thought we were lined up, but events have transpired or conspired in such a way that we’re on the wrong end of that,” she said. “The community, I think, is well aware that we will eventually have to come to them for help.”
Schwartz said if the district can secure other financial support, that could affect the size of a referendum it seeks from the community.
“We can’t look for $5 or $10 million but we can look for some money that can help shore up the erosion in our finances, and it needs to be ongoing revenue and it can’t go away. I think we need to find ways to lower the referendum that we ask for.”
The board said it will also talk with District 200 and River Forest’s District 90 about partnering in shared services. Don Robinson, District 97’s assistant superintendent for finance and operations, said the district can find some long and short term cost-saving measures, but that a referendum is unavoidable.
“There will always be a need for a referendum. Every school district will have to go for referendum every five to 10 years, unless it’s in a very unusual situation, i.e. with stable enrollment with strongly growing and commercial industrial real estate. That type of situation is not growing to happen. It’s not a reflection of mismanagement, it’s just a reflection of reality.”
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