Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 could freeze its tax levy this year or return to the tax rate from 2012, members of the school board said Thursday.

Members weighed the two options at their regular monthly meeting, where they discussed the upcoming December tax levy adoption. 

The district last year, in an unprecedented move, approved a $10 million cut in its tax levy. The district may decide to freeze the levy at that level in 2014, according to members.

Last year’s tax cut was recommended by the ad hoc Finance Advisory Committee, which was established 2013 to examine how to bring down the district’s large fund balance. The school board last year talked about possibly doing another tax cut or returning to the higher 2012 rate in 2014. 

The two options were vetted by the board’s standing Finance Committee at its meeting on Oct. 14.  

“We talked, as a group, about bringing forth, to the board, two viable options for a levy,” said Tom Cofsky, chair of the school board committee. 

The board could levy roughly $65 million, as it did in 2012, or, follow the FAC’s recommendation of a roughly $55 million levy, which is the amount levied last year.

“Those were the two options we focused on as being viable,” Cofsky said. “There are many, many other options, but those two kind of hit two different ways of approaching where were are.”

The board, as required by law, will approve its preliminary levy on Nov. 10 and a final levy roughly a month later on Dec. 19. A special board meeting is scheduled for Nov. 10 to approve the levy, following the board’s monthly Finance Committee meeting that evening. 

The board has the option of approving a preliminary levy at the 2012 amount or going with the frozen levy in December, board members noted. 

Tod Altenburg, the district’s chief financial officer, noted that the board can not, by law, approve a final levy amount that’s higher than the preliminary levy amount.

 

Funding capital projects, new pool facility

In an earlier and related discussion that evening, the board got an update from President John Phelan and Vice President Jeff Weissglass about the new pool site evaluation committee that’s been established. 

The 15-member, ad hoc committee is slated to advise the board concerning where to build a new pool facility and how to pay for it. The committee includes private citizens, school board members and administrators, as well as members of other Oak Park and River Forest taxing bodies. Phelan and Weissglass, however, stressed that those individuals are not there representing the interests of their respective local government units.

The pool came up briefly during the levy discussion and talks of funding capital projects next year and beyond. Funding for other district needs, such as more counselors, classroom space needs, higher enrollment, also came up.

 “The question that we’re dealing with, this conversation right now is about our levy decision for this year,” Weissglass said. “The question is are we, essentially, going to continue the $10 million temporary tax reduction for a second year or not. 

That’s fundamentally the question on the table. And to make that decision, we have to evaluate, as best we can, whether continuing that temporary tax reduction is wise, and whether the fund balance at that point would remain strong enough to allow us to do the capital funding we know we have to do, and to continue on the path to a referendum still another six or seven years out.

“And so, all these questions about what is and is not built in [the fund balance projections] is really a risk question,” Weissglass said. “We can’t answer those questions in the next 30 days, but we can certainly ask the questions which will give us a sense of what the scope of the challenge is.”

The FAC last year also recommended capping money used from the fund balance for capital projects at $20 million. 

Board member Sharon Patchak-Layman urged the board to make that a firm commitment in the school’s projections moving forward. 

Weissglass and other members, however, warned that the school should be flexible and use that amount as a guideline, noting that annual capital costs are not a fixed amount. 

CONTACT: tdean@wjinc.com

Pool committee’s recommendation by mid-December

The selection of a pool site for Oak Park and River Forest High School has been reset with the establishment of an ad hoc committee featuring District 200 school board members, administrators and private citizens.

The committee is slated to make its recommendation to the school board by its December regular meeting. That recommendation is also tied to next April’s municipal elections and the possibility of having a referendum question placed on the ballot concerning the pool site, Board President John Phelan and Vice President Jeff Weissglass said, in an interview Oct. 22. 

It could be either a bond sale or an advisory referendum, the latter seeking the community’s non-binding input, depending on where the committee lands, they said.  

Weissglass will chair the committee, joining fellow members Tom Cofsky, Ralph Lee and Steven Gevinson. The goal is to give the board “clear direction” in making a decision about a site and how to pay for it, Weissglass said. 

The current site possibilities are: the Lake Street parking garage, the tennis courts, the baseball field and Scoville Avenue next to the South Field; a reconfiguration of the Field House and the baseball field are options put forth by Lee and Gevinson respectively, which the committee will likely also evaluate, Weissglass said.   

Will the committee reach consensus after a month of deliberations? That scenario, according to Phelan, seems unlikely.

“If we’re going to pick one of the sites that was recommended a year ago by the architects, or the fourth site across Lake Street, we need to know that before the end of the year so that we can get a referendum question done. But I think it’s entirely possible that this committee could come back and say, ‘We don’t want to go any of those routes.’ It’s going to be open for them to consider all options, at which point it might not be that they refer back with a specific recommendation but it might be to refer back and say ‘We want you to go in a different direction, and you won’t need a referendum in the spring,'” Phelan said.  

The formation of a pool site committee was Phelan’s idea after the D200 board was unable to select a site last month. Several board members, including those on this new committee, didn’t feel they had enough information at that time to make a decision, Phelan said.

The goal was to decide at that time in order to break ground on a pool site sometime early next summer. With this new committee now in place, breaking ground sometime next year would be difficult, but it is not out of the question, Weissglass said.

—Terry Dean

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