Dear village board,
Here are the facts:
1) My Oak Park property taxes went up by a whopping 48 percent (Yes, I’m calculating that over the whole year, and not just my second installment).
2) Somehow, I lost my long-term homeowners exemption.
3) I wasn’t told my property taxes would go up 48 percent. The median income in Oak Park for 2000 was $58,183. Adjusted at 3 percent a year, that would equal $68,608.
4) My property taxes divided by the median income for 2005 would equal 9.5 percent of my income spent on property taxes.
5) The national average of housing as a percentage of income is 32 percent.
6) Above are my property tax increases on my Oak Park, single-family, 936-square-foot home since 1988. Only the year 1991 is missing. The numbers speak for themselves:
Here are some questions:
1) How can the village continue to turn away businesses amid this type of horribly burdensome tax load on the homeowner?
2) How could the village allow the Sawyer business college to go vacant for about 20 years just to demolish it and put in a grass area in downtown Oak Park?
3) How is it that property taxes increase at these levels when density has increased and overdevelopment is rampant?
4) How will we all afford this type of increase when average salary increases (per www.Salary.com) are 3.7 percent?
Mary Davis
Oak Park
