Dupage Policy Journal

Already more than twice the national average, DuPage County property taxes are rising.

Now Glen Ellyn school leaders want theirs to be even higher.

District 41 School Board President Robert Bruno is asking village voters to approve a $103 million expansion plan that would mean village property taxes would spike by 11 percent next year. 

If approved by voters, on a median-priced Glen Ellyn home of $408,000, the property tax bill would rise from $9,315 to $10,340 per year, or an increase of $1,025 or $85 per month.

In DuPage County, approving the tax hike would move Glen Ellyn to ninth-highest of 38 communities, with an effective median property tax rate of 2.53 percent. 

Glen Ellyn currently ranks 20th in DuPage, with a rate of 2.28 percent. The national average is 1.1 percent, or effectively $4,080 on a median-priced Glen Ellyn home, or $340 versus $776 per month.

Carol Stream has the highest property taxes in DuPage County (2.95 percent), followed by Glendale Heights (2.88 percent) and Aurora (2.81 percent).

The tax hike referendum language, on the Nov. 8 ballot, asks voters to approve borrowing to "build and equip a school building on the Spalding property" and "an early learning center addition at the Churchill Elementary School Building" along with repairs and improvements of existing school buildings that would facilitate full-day kindergarten in the district.

It asks voters to approve $49 million in borrowing and $36 million in interest-- along with spending $18 million of currently unbudgeted taxpayer funds. 

Critics of the referendum contend the district should refund the $18 million to property taxpayers, and that it doesn't need to do construction to accommodate full day kindergarten.

"The referendum proposes a grossly overbuilt and expensive solution to address a discrete space need in a district that is not growing," says Citizens for a Responsible D41, a parents and taxpayer group opposing the plan. "While nice to have, how will vacant classrooms and slightly less crowded commons spaces improve the quality of education in D41? Couldn't this money be better spent?"

The group is also criticizing Bruno's plan to "upend long-drawn (elementary school) boundaries."

"Surely D41 leadership can develop options that are more cost effective and do not significantly disrupt long-drawn boundaries forcing families to bus when their school is down the street," it said.

Second tax hike vote in five years

Bruno, 68, a professor of labor and employment relations at University of Illinois at Chicago, has drawn ire in largely white collar Glen Ellyn for his screeds against "the profits of capitalists," in defense of Marxism and encouraging socialism.

He's been a vociferous advocate for higher property taxes and bigger District 41 budgets.

In 2017, Bruno backed a $40 million tax hike referendum (principal and interest), also running for the first time for school board.

That referendum narrowly passed, by just ten votes, 2,666 to 2,656 (50.09% to 49.91%).

Voter registration surged ten percent in 2017, as compared to previous years, according to the DuPage County Election Commission. Turnout rose by one-third.

Bruno himself won handily, earning 3,264 votes that year, tops among five candidates vying for four board seats. His was nearly double the 1,707 total that the top vote-getter, Stephanie Clark, received in a District 41 race just two years earlier.

According to the Illinois State Board of Education, 54.4 percent of District 41 students failed the 2021 Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR) English exam; 44.7 percent failed in 2019.

In Math, 54.8 percent of District 41 students failed the IAR exam last year; 40.2 percent failed in 2019.