McHenry County Board Dumps Property Tax Freeze Referendum

At its Monthly meeting January 17, the McHenry County Board voted 17 to 7 to adopt an agenda modification effectively eliminating an advisory property tax freeze referendum from the April 4 ballot. By deleting the item from the meeting agenda, the vote precluded a direct ballot by board members on the question whether the referendum should be on the ballot.

Representative Allen Skillicorn circulated petitions to get the referendum on the April ballot, but was unable to get nearly enough signatures to put the question to voters. The county board proposal to put the measure on the ballot needed to pass January 17 to meet the ballot proposition deadline.

The county board has refused to raise county property tax levies for the last five years, and board members voting to remove the issue from the agenda pointed this fact out, together with the fact that the proposed referendum was advisory only, and would not have effectively precluded levy increases in any event, even if adopted by the voters in April.