Board of Review Presents Data to Cook County Finance Committee in Budget Hearings

Cook County Board Finance Committee - Departmental Budget Review
October 24, 2018

Board of Review

Commissioners absent: Butler, Fritchey, Goslin, Gainer and Garcia.

Board of Review Commissioners Rogers, Patlak and Cabonargi, presented the following:.

• There were 228,000 assessment appeals filed this year which is a 10% increase over last year.
• They asked to hire 11 new employees. 
• They presented charts showing 3 years of the digital appeals process which clearly demonstrated geographic areas that have never filed appeals. The goal is to reach out to those communities. Homes with no WiFi are less likely to appeal. 
• A problem is when homeowners appeal and get relief, the neighboring homeowners pick up the extra tax to meet the overall tax levy. 

Com Suffredin stated that a fairer system is needed.  When asked if the department was all right with the CC Board President’s budget, the response was yes.

When asked what areas they would like to grow/improve, the review board stated that they would like to have a separate PTELL unit (I believe it is currently 6 people). The PTELL unit defends challenges. If the Board of Review could have a larger PTELL unit, it could more effectively defend challenges, and that would recover more money for the county which would fund local schools and municipalities.  The Board of review asked for $90,000 for its appraisal budget.  It also suggested that an additional $750,000 to fund the PTELL defense budget would generate about $1 million for the county. In other words, it would pay for itself.   One of the commissioners said that as the county is doing well with revenue (sounded like it was due to increased revenue from sales tax), that it made sense to fund extra money for the Board of Review which would ultimately pay for itself. 

Observer - Laura Davis