While you’re looking at your exploding tax bill, take a few minutes to think about the additional taxes District 38 wanted you to have to pay on top of what your new tax bill has become. Last year, they put a 7.45-mill increase on the ballot. They claimed they needed the $5.5 million for teacher salaries and that it would have only raised taxes for the average house by $260.
That was never the real amount because the average house here costs closer to $800,000 not the $500,000 they claimed. If you doubt that, just look at your new tax bill with the updated property value assessment. If their “ask” had passed, your high tax bill would probably be at least $500 higher right now. And they would have hustled taxpayers out of $8 million, not $5.5 million as advertised.
That’s because, unlike the flat-rate, $4 million/year MLO passed in 1999, an increase of 7.45 mills increases with home values. D38 deliberately used outdated values to advertise lower dollar amounts in their campaign. Anyone who checked real estate listings would have seen this. Thankfully, enough people had the sense to vote No.
But D38 is at it again this year, hoping fewer No voters will bother to mail back ballots. They’re still repeating another favorite lie—that teachers are leaving to go work in other districts who offer higher pay.
How do we know it’s a lie? D38’s own employee termination reports from 2018 to 2020 list only two or three “Not satisfied with position/pay” exits each year (out of an average of 62 resignations annually). Not one left for pay in 2019. When I complained that their own reports prove that teachers aren’t running to neighboring districts for higher pay, they didn’t apologize. They just stopped producing the report.
Vote, and vote no.
Derek Araje/#JustAskDerek
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