State legislators vote to increase your District 150 property tax rate without a referendum

The state legislature caved and gave Peoria School District 150 what it wanted — the right to ask Peoria’s public building commission issue bonds and make taxpayers pay for them, without benefit of a referendum. The Illinois House of Representatives voted 82-29 on Wednesday to override Gov. Rob Blagojevich’s uncharacteristically pro-taxpayer veto of Senate Bill 2477, which will let the Peoria Public Building Commission to issue bonds for school construction, just like they do in Chicago.

The Journal Star article quoted legislators describing the absolutely horrible conditions in Peoria schools and how this legislation is necessary for them to get the new school buildings they desperately need.

Which is bull. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is preventing Peoria School District 150 from taking their case for new schools to the voters and asking them to approve a referendum. But they don’t want to do that because they know they probably won’t get one. Voters are sick of the untruths, arrogance and mismanagement out of District 150. They might agree with the need to replace some schools, but they also know the district has problems much more severe than crumbling plaster. They know the district has a discipline problem and the perception that the inmates are running the asylum.

The article points out how the district wants the PBC to approve these new bonds as old ones expire — thus allowing the board to try to spread the fiction that a taxpayers can be saddled with new debt without incurring new taxes. The sidebar article, however, says this:

The district will levy taxes to make these payments, but the tax rate will not go up.

Actually it will. The tax rate is scheduled to decline. By going into debt through a third party, District 150’s tax rate is actually going to be higher than it would otherwise. Period. End of story. Any politician or newspaper that says differently is either lying or two stupid to be allowed to comment on anything more complicated than making change for a quarter.

It’s a tax increase. Aaron Schock and David Leitch just voted to let District 150 raise taxes without a referendum. And they made it that much easier for District 150 to shove it’s moronic, hugely unpopular and completely discredited Glen Oak School project down the throat of residents of the East Bluff.

There’s always hope that the PBC will tell District 150 what it can do with it’s request for new bonds. I’m not going to hold my breath.

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