Month: November 2010

School Board releases executive session minutes for April-September

Posted by ehusar – November 22, 2010

The Quincy School Board voted at its Oct. 20 meeting to release the minutes from a series of 10 executive sessions held between April 21 and Sept. 22.

Copies of those minutes — obtained by The Quincy Herald-Whig through a Freedom of Information Act request — reveal nothing ground shaking, or even mildly controversial, for that matter.

Collective bargaining was a frequent topic of conversation during the closed-door meetings, starting with the April 21 session when the board heard a report about “an initial bargaining session held with the teachers’ union.”

Collective bargaining matters were subsequently discussed at seven other sessions through the Sept. 22 meeting, when the board was informed that a contract proposal offered by the board’s negotiating team had been voted down by teachers. As we all know by now, the teachers later accepted a subsequent contract offer the following month.

Another frequent topic discussed during closed sessions involved the district’s efforts to sell the former Board of Education headquarters at 1444 Maine and the district’s former security department headquarters at 1421 Jersey.

As we later learned, the district subsequently sold the bungalow at 1421 Jersey for $76,000 — $1,000 more than the minimum bid set for the property. And as the executive session minutes for July 21 indicate, the board also agreed to disclose the $365,000 appraised value for 1444 Maine as a way to help spur a possible sale. But as of this week, that property has still not been sold.

Several discussions held during closed sessions were not revealed with the release of the executive session minutes. Instead, notes about those particular subjects were “redacted.” In other words, the district’s legal staff physically removed the words from the pages so they could not be read once the minutes were released. This is typically done if an issue requiring confidentiality remains unresolved or if it involves attorney-client privilege in some way.

To see the executive session minutes for yourself, click here.

Quincy School District residents will likely pay more in property taxes

Posted by ehusar – November 18, 2010

Even though the Quincy School District’s tax rate is expected to go down slightly as a result of the proposed tax levy now being considered, many Quincy residents will actually pay slightly more in property taxes.

You can thank the township “multiplier” for that.

The multiplier — also known as an “equalization factor” — is often tacked on to local property assessments as a way to equalize assessments from one township to the next.

In Adams County, multipliers are issued by Supervisor of Assessments Georgene Zimmerman. A multiplier of 1 means Zimmerman felt the properties in a particular township were assessed properly, while a multiplier above 1 means Zimmerman felt properties were underassessed and will be boosted to the proper level by the equalization factor.

Bud Martin, the Quincy School District’s business manager, who is relatively new to the community, told the audience at Wednesday’s School Board meeting that the multiplier “has been 1 in Quincy for years. It usually stays at 1.”

That’s actually not the case.

In fact, Quincy has had a multiplier above 1 for at least the past eight years.

For the 2010 tax year, which involves the tax levy now being considered by the School District, Zimmerman assigned Quincy Township a multiplier of 1.0134.

What that means is property owners in Quincy are likely to face potentially higher tax bills next year, even if the actual market value of their property stays the same.

The impact of the multiplier means Quincy residents are probably going to pay roughly 1 percent more for the School District portion of their overall tax bill even though the district’s tax rate is projected to drop down to 4.00167 per $100 assessed valuation from the 2009 rate of 4.0213.

For example, the owner of a home assessed at $100,000 in the 2009 tax year would have paid about $1,099 in Quincy School District taxes this past summer — assuming the taxpayer qualified for the standard $6,000 homeowner’s exemption. Next year, thanks to the multiplier, that same homeowner would pay about $1,112, an increase of $13.

Based on the same assumptions, the owner of a $75,000 home would pay almost $10 more next year.

The nasty thing about multipliers is they are cumulative.

For example, the multipliers tacked onto Quincy township properties over the past eight years have totaled 1.2944. This means the assessment on a given house eight years ago would have risen by 29.4 percent based on multipliers alone, even if the property’s “true” market value hasn’t risen at the same rate.

So even though the Quincy School District’s tax rate hasn’t fluctuated a great deal during that same period (the rate was 3.84874 eight years ago), taxpayers have paid progressively more in taxes thanks largely to the multiplier effect.

Rieckhoff scolds School District for not posting committee agendas

Posted by ehusar – November 12, 2010

Gus Rieckhoff gave the Quincy School Board’s Building Committee an earful Friday for not properly posting its meeting agenda in advance outside the Board of Education headquarters at 1416 Maine.

Rieckhoff, who regularly attends the various committee meetings, took issue with the fact that the final agenda wasn’t posted at least 48 hours head of time. He said the Illinois Open Meetings Act requires all public bodies — including committees and subcommittees — to post their agendas in plain view so the public can learn ahead of time what topics are to be discussed.

“This has not been happening,” he told committee members. “You are not in compliance.”

By speaking up — as he has many times in the past — Rieckhoff was actually taking aim at the entire School Board for not living up to the spirit of the Open Meetings Act. He charged that full agendas are rarely posted for any committee meeting.

Instead, anyone who wants to know what’s coming up for discussion at a given meeting is usually greeted by a “generic” agenda like the one posted for Friday’s Building Committee meeting.

That agenda vaguely proclaimed that “unless otherwise indicated by an amended agenda,” the meeting was going to consist of a “call to order” followed by consideration to let bids, consideration to approve bids, and other matters that relate to buildings in the Quincy School District.

If the public had a chance to see Friday’s actual agenda, which wasn’t posted, they would have discovered the committee was going to talk about millions of dollars in proposed life-safety projects; a proposal to install a controversial artificial turf field at Flinn Stadium; and a proposal by the YMCA to lease athletic fields owned by the district.

Rieckhoff grumbled that the public isn’t being properly informed. He noted there is a possible “remedy” to correct this problem. It involves potential civil action against the Quincy School District.

“We’re already in deep debt, and we don’t need more litigation,” Rieckhoff told committee members. “Why don’t we just go ahead and comply with the law and post the agenda 48 hours before the meeting? Then everybody will be happy.”

Rieckhoff said school officials have told him in the past they feel the district is in compliance with the law by posting the generic agendas instead of the actual agendas. He disagrees, saying one purpose of the posting law is to prevent last-minute agenda changes without forewarning the public.

“That’s against the law,” he said. “That’s why you post the agenda 48 hours ahead so you can’t come in at the last minute and have changes in the agenda.”

Rieckhoff said he hoped to see to see a full agenda for the upcoming Finance Committee meeting posted outside the board headquarters before he arrives for that session at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday.

You can bet he’s not the only one who will be watching.