The then president of the Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 Board of Education used to brag about how much money the district left in the pockets of taxpayers by not levying the maximum allowable property tax.
Now those days lauded by Tom Cofsky appear to be over. With the district spending $44.2 million from its reserves for the Project 2 construction project and borrowing another $45.3 million in debt certificates that must be paid back from the school’s operating funds going forward, OPRF is entering a new financial world.
By a vote of 5-2 on Nov. 6, the OPRF school board gave tentative approval to the maximum allowable levy for this year. At the same time, it decided to use a relatively new state law that allows school districts to recapture money that it did not levy for in the prior three years.
The tentative levy of $87,073,000 will be the focus of a public hearing and anticipated vote on Dec. 4. It is a 4.4% increase over last year’s levy. The increase is projected to cost the owner of a home worth $400,000 an additional $132 next year.
This levy will allow OPRF to take an initial step to recapture the $2.1 million it left in taxpayer’s pockets by not levying to the maximum allowed by law in 2023 and 2024. Without the recapture, the levy would have increased by 3.48% costing the owner of a home worth $400,000 an additional $104 next year.
Those in favor of the plan to recapture the passed up taxes described it as the fiscally correct thing to do. Those who opposed it called for cuts in spending.
Recapturing passed up taxes: why and how
In 2023 the school board levied $1.1 million less than it could have and last year the district levied $1 million less than it was allowed to. The tentative levy this year anticipates recapturing $2.1 million over the next three years by taxing an additional $700,000 each year on top of what it is allowed to levy this year.
However, school board member Graham Brisben said the board is not committed to necessarily recovering the entire $2.1 million.
“I can assure you that after this initial $700,000 there’s no guarantee or commitment the board would seek to recover the additional $1.4 million,” said Brisben, one of the two school board members who serves as a liaison to the district’s Community Finance Committee.
Board members who voted in favor of the tentative levy say that recapturing money that wasn’t asked for in the prior two years is the fiscally prudent thing to do. They and the administration point to significant and unexpected increases in special education costs and health care expenses as the justification for going back and collecting the money it didn’t ask for in the last two years.
“Exercising the recapture mechanism is meant to partially offset significant increases in expenses that were unforeseen a year ago and also act as a contingency measure because the county is so late in sending the tax bills and getting money back to the districts,” Brisben said.
Board members Fred Arkin and Josh Gertz cast the two votes against the tentative levy. Both were opposed to recapturing money not asked for in previous years. They wanted the administration to focus on cutting spending.
“[W]e have not taken a deep enough dive on the expense side of our budget,” Arkin said explaining why he was going to vote against the tentative levy.
Gertz had said essentially the same thing at a previous board meeting.
Due to the way a 2005 tax referendum was implemented, OPRF’s reserves had ballooned to approximately $130 million by 2013 which was more than 170 percent of annual expenses. Generally, a reserve fund of 33 percent of annual operating expenses is considered healthy.
Since 2013 the school board has acted to whittle down the reserve fund to more normal levels by often levying less than the maximum allowed by law. If the $87,073,000 tentative levy is approved next month OPRF officials expect to finish the 2025-26 fiscal year with a fund balance of just over $31.5 million which is about 33 percent of annual operating expenses.
“For the first time in 20 years D200 has a normal fund balance,” Brisben said.
OPRF will be paying $3.2 million out of its operating funds annually for the next 19 years to pay off the debt certificates it took out to help pay for Project 2.
The number of students OPRF is placing in expensive private therapeutic schools has increased to 52 students this year compared to 42 last year contributing to a 15.29% increase in purchased services this year.
“Placements outside of District 200 is the main driver here,” said Supt. Greg Johnson.
The cost to transport special education students is projected to increase by $503,000 this year. This year’s special education students require more services from outside contractors such as nurses, health aides, speech therapists, social workers and home bound tutors costing the district $309,000 more than last year.
“Special education costs have skyrocketed,” said Tony Arbogast, assistant superintendent for business services.
Johnson said the increase in special education costs were more than had been anticipated because of an unexpected increase in special education students transferring into feeder schools of OPRF after OFRF number crunchers did their projections.
At the October meeting of OPRF’s Community Finance Committee, an advisory committee that board members Brisben and Kathleen Odell sit on as board liaisons, Odell said that she only supported the recapture because of the unexpected increase in special ed costs.
School board members and members of the finance committee say that in the new financial environment OPRF will now be operating in the administration needs to look for places where it can cut expenses.
“We do need to take a look at our expenses,” said school board president Audrey Williams-Lee.
Citizen Finance Committee member Cal Davis was blunter.
“We need to start cutting stuff,” Davis said during the October committee meeting. “This is what everybody needs to be focused on, cutting expenses, period.”
Davis said a culture shift at OPRF is necessary.
“There’s never been any cuts,” Davis said. “We don’t cut anything here. We spend. You come into the school with an invoice, we pay it, that’s it and it doesn’t work like that.”