001Hey everyone, it is 6:45 p.m. on November the 24th, 2025. I'd like to call to order the meeting of the finance committee for Lyall Community School District 202. Item two on our agenda is public comment. I see we have one. Uh Mr. Hmel, if you'd like to come forward and take the podium. Um, just as a reminder, if you could keep your comments on to about three minutes, we'd appreciate it. >> I'm back on my favorite topic. Tom Hmel, 82459th Street. I'm here tonight to speak against the proposed 12-year extension on the downtown tiff. Out of all the tiffs in Lyall, both new and old, this is the tiff that has always bothered me the most since it is basically for residential development and not economic development. There is no good reason for the school
002district to agree to the extension. The school district as well as other taxing bodies should want to get this property fully on the tax roles as soon as possible. We are dealing with the same developer whose hands are not totally clean and the de delay in devel redeveloping this property. They should not be rewarded with an extension. Unfortunately, we cannot reverse the prior decision of creating the TIFF, but the school board has a say in opposing the extension. Just one no vote of the joint review board participants would stop an extension. The developer, Flity and Collins, will still have until 2038 to collect any tiff proceeds under any redevelopment agreement they make with the village. I know there are carveouts in TIFF law for new students generated by developments in TIF districts, but this is
003insulting to longtime homeowners and residents to allow an out ofstate develop developer to retain their tax dollars so they can achieve their return on investment for themselves and their investors. The corporate welfare the corporate welfare has got to stop. These residential developments need to pay their fair share, which will either provide some tax relief to existing residents or generate new revenue for the taxing bodies. As you will recall, the new PTE development down on Route 53 did not require a tiff. And that property had a few buildings that were tore down that were much bigger than anything in downtown. Again, this tiff is not in a vacuum and is no longer just the only TIFF within school district 202 boundaries. You now have two other tiffs within 202 that take up a lot of the
004commercial corridor within the school district. This is going this is going to have an impact to taxpayers in the future. With all due respect, I feel this board did drop the ball on the route 53 tiff by agreeing that the Hyatt should go into that that tiff. What you probably don't know is that hotel owner has amassed a nice portfolio of hotels at a discount in the last several years. Most recently, just a few weeks ago, he purchased one of Chicago's largest hotels, the Weston Michigan Avenue, Chicago, for $72 million. Needless to say, he is not hurting for money. The corporate welfare needs to end at all levels of government. Oppose the downtown TIFF extension. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. H. We appreciate you coming to speak to us. Uh, do we have
005any other online comments or anything else? >> We do not. >> All right. So, the third item on the agenda are the minutes from the October 27th, 2025 finance committee meeting. Does anyone have any comments, questions, or changes? No. All right. So, we are in agreement the minutes accurately reflect the October finance committee meeting. Okay. Okay. All right. On to item four, the audit fiscal year 2025 financial statements. The information can be found under the um finance committee packet item four and the regular board meeting packet under item 5 A6. Mr. Wilkinson, if you would take it away, please. >> Yeah. So, uh tonight we're going to start with uh presenting the audited financial statements for fiscal year 2025. Uh this is our formal annual audit of the district's financial records as well as our
006year-end uh reporting. A brief summary of the audit is included in your uh packet is the information sheet. There's also all of the um detailed audit reports, both our financial statements and then our annual financial report that we provide to the Illinois State Board of Education. That's all in there for your uh for you to read and reference as you desire. Um, I just did want to highlight that the district did receive an unmodified or clean audit opinion. And um, at this time I I'll be Oh, he's already up on the podium. He's he's ready to ready to give you guys the results. But Don Shaw, he's a principal with Lauderbach and Ammon who conducts our annual audit uh for the last few years. He's going to provide a highlevel overview of the audit. He'll
007also talk a little bit about that clean opinion and then provide a brief explanation of our financial statements and then also um the information included in this year's management letter. And so with that, I will pass things over to Don. >> All right, >> Don, welcome. >> Thank you. Thank you for having me. Uh I first would like to thank Dave and Mary Beth and the entire team for making this yet another successful audit year. Without your help, this is not possible. So, thank you. Uh, as Dave mentioned, I'm going to go through the annual financial report with you. And if you turn to I'm going to say page number, so it's going to be the actual page at the bottom. So if you turn to page one, you'll find our waterbaka name and letter
008head. This is our independent audit report in which we provide a clean unmodified opinion. That's the highest opinion you can receive. basically states that we found no issues with internal controls or the numbers as they're presented. If you flip about three or four more pages or scroll few or four more pages, you'll run into the management discussion and analysis. This really provides a summary of how the year performed in narrative form. So, if you have questions on fluctuations from year to year or what the numbers truly mean, this is where you want to go to find those answers. I'm next going to have you skip ahead to what would be your income statement, which is on page 21. About 3/4 of the way down the page, you'll notice that the general fund, which is your
009main operating fund, is made up of your education, operations, and maintenance, and working cash funds. Had an operating increase of about $1.4 million. This primarily due to your expenses being below budget, as well as a increase in your interest earnings, as well as your federal grants. Included in the federal grants is the IDA preschool uh flowth through which is essentially a state allocation based on enrollment and poverty that's used to help support the the education of young children with disabilities. This was offset by a transfer out to your capital projects fund. So your general fund was left with a net decrease of about $1.4 4 million in the current year. The notes of financial statements will begin on page 23. And the notes really provide further detail into how we came up with the figures
010that we did with supporting schedules. Within there, you're going to find your long-term debt and your capital asset schedules. not going to go through the notes with you tonight, so I'll have you skip ahead all the way to page 73. Page 73 is the start of your budgetary information. So, if you want to see how a specific fund performed based on what was budgeted, this is where you want to go to see those comparisons. Does anyone have any questions on the financial statements? Okay. If not, we also provided a second document called the manual letter in which it was a super clean audit year. As I mentioned, we only had one recommendation which is more of a awareness I would call it. We didn't find any issues with while school districts specifically but we have
011seen an increase in cyber attacks in the last few years. So uh we just really want to bring this awareness to everyone and make sure that uh people are taking the it seriously because we have seen a lot more attacks recently and of the the one prior year recommendation was implemented in the current year. So that will go away in next year's audit. Any questions? >> Just a quick question. Did you audit any of the cyber security controls or just general recommendations seen here? >> So we we perform uh walkthroughs of uh questions that we we ask the team about uh the disaster recovery and that those sort of things. So yes, we do perform some procedures on it. Any other questions? All right. If not, thank you for your time. Enjoy the rest of
012your evening. >> Thank you. >> Just to add a few things to what Don said. Um in as far as that management letter comment, we did discuss that with it and you can see um in the management letter what our response to that comment was. Um we we appreciate the the pointing that out to us. Um it's something we're well aware of and and it is doing a great job of um already doing some of those recommendations that they have and making sure that we have the necessary uh protections and processes in place regarding cyber security. And then uh just the other thing I don't have the specific numbers in front of me but um obviously went went through the unodudited financial results uh back in I think it was August now and uh the
013audited financial results that you have today mirror that very closely. There was very minimal changes just some um acrewing of grants and things like that but overall uh nothing that was significant or material to the financial results for the year. So thank you again Don. We we appreciate it. I know you're not planning on sticking around for the levy, but thank you for uh >> Yeah, I got something to do, I guess. [laughter] >> All right. Thank you. >> Have a good one. >> And so I think that wraps up the audited financial statements unless there are any additional questions. >> Thank you very much. That was a great presentation. Um let's see here. We are at item five, the fiscal year 2026 school maintenance project grant which can be found at item 57 of
014the regular board meeting packet. Once again, Mr. Wilkinson. So the school maintenance project grant has uh realistically become an annual matching grant that the state is providing. Um, again, the kind of the background information is included in the packet and uh the maximum award is $50,000, but it's a dollar for-doll matching grant. So, uh, in order to get the full 50,000, uh, we would have to spend another 50,000. And so, for this year's application, um, our plan is to focus first on the Lyall High School auditorium lighting system. Um this these lights are probably some of our most energyintensive lights that we have in the district. Um in particular, we're talking about the house lighting that's kind of over the main seating area. And um they use a significant amount of wattage and we're seeing
015that space, which is a good thing, being used more and more often, not only by us, but also for some of the uh park district activities during the summer that they have there. And so, um, the other kind of component is when those house lights go off, the only way for us to get to them is to rent a lift, which there's a cost, um, incurred for doing that. And then obviously maintenance has to rent the lift. They have to get up there, they have to swap out the light bulb. So, it's also kind of a a relatively frequent and challenging maintenance uh, lift as well, no pun intended. And so, [snorts] um, you know, updating those light would significantly reduce our energy usage and then also, um, improve hopefully reliability so they don't have
016to be replaced as often. Not completely sure what that's going to cost. Um, I think I estimated around $100,000. So, it potentially could use up that entire uh, grant award. But if it doesn't, we did include within the project application a similar project over at the junior high, which would be to replace primarily the lighting and then the associated ceiling tile, which would be part of that project. Um, first we'd focus on the other half of the commons. We did one half of that this past summer as part of our HVAC project. We had to take down the the ceiling and the lights, so we went ahead and replaced those and made those new. And so we would focus on the other half if there's any funds remaining. And then in the unlikely uh situation
017where there's still funds after that, we would then start going down the corridors uh to use some of that grant funding to to start replacing lighting and ceiling tiles in the corridors. I did get that question about, you know, uh will there be enough money to cover all of the remaining ceiling tile and lights over at the junior high? Uh there certainly won't. I think the the bids for that, which we're hoping that if we kind of do it over time, we can do it less expensively, the bids came in at almost $260,000 just for all the the corridor lighting and ceiling tile to junior high. So, even if that full $50,000 is awarded, I'm guessing most of that will be used up at the high school auditorium. And then whatever's left, we would use
018to finish out um the ceiling and the and the lights in the commons of the junior high. So, that's what uh we're recommending for the application. Um, assuming the board uh approves it at the board meeting this evening, I will then uh submit the pro submit the application to the ROE and it will ultimately go to the state and hopefully I'll have good news in a month or two when I can report back to you that we were awarded that funding. >> Dave, is the cost of the light the lighting in the auditorium significantly higher? I mean the um I guess the electricity that's used or whatever the wattage or is that significantly higher than what's being used across the junior high? Um, as far as across the entire junior high, I don't know if
019I can answer that, but the the lights themselves, I I'd have to have Jeff here um to give you the specifics, but they are many hundreds if not thousands of wattage light bulbs that are used in those in those uh the house lighting. So, um on a per ball basis, definitely much more. >> Okay. >> Um energy is used with those auditorium lights than you would see in the hallways at the junior high. Absolutely. >> So, it's a cost factor as well for savings factor. Okay. Thank you. >> And again, I also mentioned the having to get to them to replace them. Obviously, in the hallways, you can just get up on a ladder. We have to rent a $1,000 lift to get to any of them at the high school. So, if we can
020put in LED and they'll last a lot longer and they won't burn out every year, that's a big win. >> For the junior high, it's just the spotlights that would be replaced. Correct. If that's >> No, I'm not talking about anything in the auditorium of the junior high. Be the ceiling itself in the commons and then also in the corridors. >> Yeah, the the auditorium at the junior high isn't used frequently enough where um that would be necessary at this time. >> We be targeting that work for like summer of 2026 then. >> Well, so I don't have a specific target at this point. Um, we're going to try and do the bid in-house and um, purchase the supplies through the bid and potentially get a vendor. Uh, we're hoping not to have to use
021the architects or the engineers, which will obviously increase the cost of that project. So, we're going to have to work through it in-house. I'll I'll work with Jim Stelmacher. He has a lot of great insights. He's the auditori manager over at the high school and then also with Jeff and we're going to try and put that together. So, I don't know if we'll tackle that um in the spring here, in the summer, or maybe into the next fall, but we have up to two years to spend it. So, it's really just a matter of finding the time to um do the leg work to get that all put together and out on the street. So, again, we're trying to do an in-house to save some money. We're also going to explore if there's any comed
022energy incentive rebates. So, there's some pieces that have to come together before we can move forward with it. If you said, "Hey, yeah, pay the architects 20,000 to do it." We could have it done a lot quicker. But uh to try and do it in-house will take a little bit more time. [snorts] Any further questions? All right. Thank you very much uh for that uh uh summary. Uh let's see here. Uh last up is item six, the tenative 2025 real estate tax levy, which can be found under item six of the finance committee packet and in the regular board meeting packet under item 5A5. Mr. Wilkinson. >> Yeah. So, the final item tonight is the tenative 2025 real estate tax levy. Um hopefully we can get through it here in the next 25 minutes or
023so. I do have a fair amount of talking points, but uh this presentation is available by there's a kind of a hyperlink there at the bottom of your information sheet in the finance packet. If you want to follow along with the presentation, it's obviously up here as well. And then there also is a detailed report that hopefully you had a chance to look at over the course of the weekend um that kind of gets into the nitty-gritty some of the calculations for the 2025 tax levy. Before we get into uh the details of the levy, I did want to start with kind of a quick overview of some of the main points uh for tonight. you [snorts] know, each levy or each year the levy uh sets the amount of property taxes uh property tax
024revenue the district is legally allowed to receive um for the upcoming year. And obviously we're we're a tax cap district under uh the property tax uh limitation laws. And so our tax base really grows in two ways. that grows by uh whatever CPI is on our existing property and then also through any new construction that is added to the tax roles. And so as we're kind of talking tonight, those two factors will really kind of drive the the the focus of the presentation. And so with that in mind, um some of the big takeaways here uh to remember uh if you don't listen to anything else along the way, uh is that uh again the tax levy continue be continues to be uh the district's primary source of revenue. It really is the backbone of
025our operating budget and so making um you know this process is really essential to uh the district being able to maintain financial stability and fund it fund its um operations. Secondly uh in talking with the Lyall Township Assessor the home values in Lyall are projected to increase about 8.5% this year. Um you know it is important to note that while the assessments can certainly rise 8 and a half% uh because of PTEL we are limited in terms of how much the district can actually uh increase the levy. The third thing up there is that um you know as far as existing homeowners because of those CPI limits they would expect to see a roughly 2.9% increase on their tax bill from the school district portion. uh assuming that we move forward with the levy that's
026uh being suggested this evening. And then finally um or I guess the the second to last item there is that uh with new construction and what's projected, we would expect to see about an additional $97,000 in tax revenue from those new properties coming onto the tax roles. At this point, the Lyall Township is estimator estimating about 2.2 million in new property. Uh and so that would generate this just under $100,000 of additional tax revenues. And then finally, kind of when you piece all that together, the the CPI on our existing property, uh our new construction, and then also uh the debt service levy, which we'll we'll touch on a little bit later, uh the total extension for the district would increase from last year by about $1 million. So, that's the additional dollars that we
027would have to fund any increases in our in our um collective bargaining agreements, any increases in our insurance, any increases in our uh contracted service contract. So, that's kind of the the pool of money that we're looking at um that would be additionally in our operating budget, and in this case, it would be for fiscal year 27. So, those are kind of the highlights um of what's behind the levy. From this point, we'll kind of get into more of the nitty-gritty, some of the details. Um, I always like to remind the committee kind of what we're doing tonight. Tonight, we're just being asked to approve the tenative tax levy, which is kind of the first step in the annual levy process. Um, state law requires that the district establish this estimated tax request at least
02820 days before the final levy is adopted, and tonight's action will satisfy that requirement. Um, I also just wanted to note our the levy that we're that is being proposed does not exceed 105% of the previous year's levy. So, um, this will not trigger any of the truth and taxation requirements, uh, which would require a public notice in the newspaper and then also a public hearing. So, those, uh, do not apply to this year's tax levy. Again, uh just kind of looking at what the overall levy calendar looks like. Um approving the tenative levy tonight, uh allows us to keep on track with the statutory calendar that's shown here. Um final levy will be presented for adoption at our next meeting on December 16th and [snorts] then that will subsequently be filed with the county
029uh before the year-end deadline on the last Tuesday in December. Taking a little bit of a step back um I've mentioned this already. I think many of you are very familiar with this slide. You've seen it a number of years. But always want to remind um everyone on how Lyall 202 is funded. Obviously, you can see from the chart there that about 80% of our revenue comes from property taxes. So, that really is the primary driver uh of what allows us to maintain our day-to-day operations. Um, as you can see from the chart, state funding and federal funding um, kind of combined is only about 10%. And those percentages really don't change that much from one year to from year to year. So even as costs rise, things get more expensive, um, realistically those amounts
030stay the same. And so [snorts] ultimately what that means is local property taxes is what is necessary to um kind of support our ongoing programs, staffing services, uh things like that. So when we discuss the levy each year, we're really talking about, you know, it's the primary mechanism that that funds our school district. As far as who pays those property taxes, um you can see that roughly twothirds of our tax base is made up of residential taxpayers and then the other third is our commercial and industrial taxpayers. Um you know obviously that's that's an important balance to note because any commercial and industrial property that we have we get tax revenue from those properties but we don't get the corresponding students into our system. So, um, over time that milks help that mix helps to
031offset some of the rising costs of education and provides a little bit more of a broader base for um, supporting and funding our school district. Obviously, those >> [clears throat] >> uh, proportions can shift from year to year. We are starting to see a little bit more of a shift from commercial and industrial to residential. I know uh, Mr. elderly often tracks that with some spreadsheets that he has at his house. But um you know again any commercial and industrial base that we have does help the district in terms of its long-term uh financial picture and prospects. Each year when we discuss the levy, we always um touch on the three what we've termed our key indicators of financial strength for the school district. Uh the first one is maintaining a balanced budget and um
032we're on track to do that again for the year we're currently in for fiscal year 2026. I think if we seen on the projection for fiscal year 2027, it gets a little bit tighter, but I I think that once we finish this year and really focus on um uh what that budget's going to look like for fiscal year 27, I think we'll be able to get another balanced budget for fiscal year 27. What we're really kind of keeping our eye on is fiscal year 28 and beyond. That's where um it gets a little bit more challenging. And so, um, obviously in the coming months, we're going to have to dig into those costs and, uh, see where we can potentially make some adjustments to make sure that, uh, we maintain that balanced budget even into
033fiscal year 2028, uh, and beyond. The second indicator is maintaining sufficient fund balances. We have our fund balance policy there, which talks about 3 to six months of uh, expenditures in reserve. Um, as we've looked at the five-year projection, we are still able to continue to meet that requirement. We still um have at least three months in reserves over the course of the projection. And so those reserves always help us kind of navigate any unexpected changes, anything that might be happening to the economy, enrollment fluctuations, challenges with state funding. And so that's the second important piece of um kind of the key financial indicators for us. The last one is committing resources for our long-term facility needs. Uh in previous years, we've been fortunate to be able to save about $750,000 out of our I
034would call it our operating budget each year to set aside for um not only current but also future uh finan uh capital projects. And so we did make a relatively uh large transfer of about $3 million kind of in advance um to help pay for some of our renovations at the junior high school. But in terms of kind of this budget and the next few budgets that we're looking at, we've kind of paused that that $750,000 in savings. And so at least in the short term, we're looking at using those funds for our operational needs to make sure we have that balanced budget. But we do need to make sure that at some point we get back to some kind of savings for our um capital projects so we don't run into a situation where
035we have projects that we need to do and we don't have any money for those. Um on the the the good news side is we do know that in 2030 we will be debtree. that's when our bonds are um are set to expire. And so that will give us an opportunity to um issue some new bonds to raise some capital for not only additional projects at the junior high, but depending kind of on what needs might arise or when those might arise, we may use some of those funds uh for needs at some of the other buildings as well. So, um, we could do all of that without obviously increasing our taxes cuz we we'll have the existing debt that's rolling off. I think I saw a hand raised over there. Yes. >> How much
036is the bond how much of the bonds are being retired in 2030? Is it the whole like 18 million? I can't remember. Is it the issuance for the elementary or is it beyond that? >> Yeah. So, this is just the bonds that were issued for building the elementary school. Um, I think right now you could look in your audit report if you wanted to. I think the balance right now is at about $7 million. So that wasn't what they were originally issued at. I can't remember exactly if it was 13 14 million, somewhere in that range. But they've been getting paid down since we issued those and they will continue that 7 million will continue to be paid off until 2030. And then we will have no debt outstanding at all. And that's when we
037could reissue 12, 13, 14. It depends on what interest rates are at. Um, and still maintain that $1.5 million debt service that we have every year. Does that Okay. Uh so again all together you know all three of those um indicators help us uh ensure that whatever levy we put forward in a given year we can make sure that that supports not only our short-term needs but also uh the long-term needs of the district. There's kind of quite a few items on here. I I I kind of joked with Jason who's not here. I just seems like a negative slide. I'll be honest, but like these are some of the factors that realistically are facing school districts right now. I think we've had some um opportunities to uh have some very good years with COVID
038and the shutdown and some of the funding from the government, but there are some kind of factors on the horizon. I know we look at these every year, but um there's quite a few that are realistically outside of the school district's control. And so I did want to touch on those because I think these are important to keep in mind as we talk about what this levy should look like um not only for this year but also some of the future years. Um again property taxes we've talked about it that's our most stable revenue source but even then it's obviously limited to CPI. So inflation can be above CPI. Uh cost can be going above CPI but we're still limited to how much additional revenue we can actually uh bring into the school district. We've
039talked a lot about interest rates at previous meetings. Um they've been very helpful for the past couple of years. They've generated a lot of additional revenue, but we're now starting to see those interest rates go down. And so with that, um it'll reduce some of that cushion that we have uh moving forward. CPPRT, corporate personal property replacement tax revenues, the biggest mystery in school district revenues. You never know what you're going to get every year. uh we saw some really good spikes in fiscal year 22 and then that was followed by some pretty sharp declines. So it's always an unpredictable revenue starts. It's hard to be confident and and and really believe in what's coming. Um so that's always something that that's out there. Uh state funding obviously through the evidence-based funding formula. Uh a
040school district like Lyall has really seen no new money from the evidence-based funding formula. that's gone to all of the uh maybe less property wealthy districts that are not as adequately funded by local sources. And then also we've talked a little bit about some of the mandated categoricals. They're staying pretty flat, but our costs are going up. So we end up as our costs go up, those get more pr-rated and we actually get less from them or not less, but they don't offset as much of our costs even as our costs are going up. On the federal side, our ESR funds have expired. We got the last batch of those in fiscal year 25. And I'm sure you've heard on the news there's a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen with federal revenues.
041We don't have any answers. We don't know. But there's always talk about if those federal programs will continue or not. And then of course we've got uh inflation, labor costs, uh ongoing competition to get qualified staff, um benefits, salaries, contracted services, all those things kind of factor into the the overall mix. And so um again, maintaining adequate reserves and living appropriately are all important things to help u provide some stability when um things like this are on the economic horizon. Now, what you all came for, the nitty-gritty components of the levy. I'm running out of time, but um this is just a high level. It shows the three components. I've already touched on that. We have CPI growth, new property growth, and the debt service extension. We'll talk a little bit more about that as
042we go through these next few slides. Apparently, there's some animations on this one. Oh, where did my slide go? Hm. Not sure why that's not showing up, but hopefully you can see it on the uh presentation in front of you. Um this is showing our trends in CPI. Uh the 2025 levy is uh associated with the CPI of 2.9% which is in that little circled box there that's blank on the screen. I have no idea why this is blank. Um, and then you can also see kind of some history of CPI on this uh uh slide over the past 10 years. You can see that the long-term average right now is right around 3%. Uh, so where we're at today is very much in line with those historical trends. You will notice on the bars
043that again are not up there. I have no idea why. Um from 2015 through 2020 uh we saw some very low inflationary years and then that was followed by some very high inflationary years in 21 and 22. Both of which while they go above 5% on the chart we were actually capped in terms of how much revenue we could bring uh to that 5% ptail cap. So we've started to settle back a little bit more towards typical levels. And so the 2.9% is what's going to drive our levy for our existing property owners. And so that's what's on this slide, which fortunately has everything on it. Yippee. Um, and so you can see with that 2.9 CPI increase, our levy goes from last year at about 36.2 million up to 37.2. So, that's that $1
044million increase um which is really uh which is exclusively from our existing um homeowners. [snorts] Uh let's see here terms of our new construction. Uh this shows you our uh new property over the last 10 years as well as the estimate that comes directly from the Lyall Township Treasur of 2.2 million for this current year. um he provides us with a projected value of new homes and commercial projects that are coming on the tax roll. He is phenomenal. He's a brilliant guy. He does an excellent job and so we're really appreciative of his estimates uh that he gives us every year. I did have a board member ask whether any of the existing tiff districts in the village affect this uh number and the answer to that is no. any um new con construction estimate
045is the actual taxable value that would appear on our assessment roles for 2025. And so any current tiffs, they don't reduce this, they don't increase this, they're not associated at all with the new construction number that we get from the township treasurer. Um you can also see from the chart that, you know, 2.2 million is right around our 10-year average of 2.8 million. Obviously, if you look further to the left in some of the older years, you have some really good years, things like uh the Mark on Main development there in 2019 and 2020. And so, if you look um kind of over the past 10 years, we've had some really healthy new construction within Lyall, which has helped uh provide additional revenue sources for the school district. Terms of what that again, I don't
046know why these aren't showing [laughter] up. Um, in terms of how that new property impacts our construction, uh, I'm sorry, impacts our tax levy, uh, that $2.2 million, as I mentioned previously, would generate just under $100,000, uh, of additional tax revenue to the district. And so when you combine all of that, it ends up being um a 3.2% increase uh, for our tax levy from the prior year. we do go out to the county and request a slightly higher amount. It'll actually be end up being about 3.4%. That will be the levy request, not the actual extension. The extension will actually fall more towards 3.2%. But we do that because uh right now we don't while we have an estimate of what new construction is at 2.2 million, we don't know the final number. That
047doesn't get finalized until I think it is March or something like that at the county level. And so we always build in a little bit of a cushion um to make sure that if that number changes, we have enough additional in our levy request to make sure that none of that um doesn't get captured. Uh touched a little bit on this in terms of kind of the bond obligations that we have. This is often referred to as our debt service levy. This doesn't fluctuate based on CPI or new construction. This is something that is scheduled when we actually issue the bonds. And so it's automatically collected by the DuPage County Treasurer as part of our levy unless the board takes any action to uh possibly abate that. We have in the past uh certain years
048abated that. I think kind of from a three-year period, 2018 to 2020, um the board uh decided to provide some tax relief to the residents. And so we ended up abating, I think it was close to $2 million during that time period. Um but absence in the abatement, the uh county clerk goes ahead and leveies that 1.5 million so we can pay the bonds that are outstanding. And then this is just an overall summary. It just compares last year's levy to this year's levy. And uh the important piece of information from this chart which I've from this slide which I've touched on previously is that our total increase for our 2025 levy which would be collected in our fisc year 27 budget would be an increase of just under $1.1 million. As far as you
049know what that means for an individual homeowner here in Lyall, uh we use a home value of $400,000 for our example. That's uh pretty close to the average home value in Lyall. And for 2024, that home uh taxes were around $6,000. Looking ahead to 2025, uh as I mentioned previously, that home value would increase expected increase about 8 and a half%. And so, um, that increase kind of offset by the decrease in rate. Uh, the rate will go down on the final levy. Uh, the estimated taxes would be just under $6,300, which would be an increase of $190 on the average home of 400,000. And then lastly, um, we always just want to kind of get a get some context for what the tax rate for LIO 202 is relative to our neighbors. This is
050actually the property tax rates for our 2024 levy. So, the levy that um we've already that we're collecting that we collected this past year. Uh, it's not for 2025, which is what is being approved tonight, but you can see that the the green bars represent the unit districts. And then for the combined elementary and high school districts, you have um the elementary districts in blue and then I think the high school districts are in reddish brown. You tell me. Um and so you can see that LY's 202's current rate of $4.86 uh per $100 of value is uh below the average rate of $494. And so kind of viewed alongside our peers, um you know, it's it's tax rate is reasonable within the broader landscape uh of our peers. And so I I did get
051um you know, before I open it up for questions if there's any more. I know we're kind of short on time here. I did get one question regarding our transportation levy. Um a board member asked why the levy is increasing only slightly. the levy request that's in the report is going from about 2.4 million um to I believe it is 2.7 million. Um, and so, you know, we have talked about our rising transportation costs and, uh, while they're still rising based on our contracts, we're not seeing the increases that we saw, you know, kind of going back to 21, 22, 23 where those really were some really sharp increases coming out of COVID where those those costs really spiked. And so, we have increased our levy since then to accommodate those increases. And we're hoping
052that it's, you know, barring any major influxes in special ed or homeless or anything like that, we're hoping that it's a little bit more of a stable, steady increase. And so kind of looking at what our budget where things landed for fiscal year 25, what our budget is for fiscal year 26 and kind of a 4% increase based on our specialed transportation contract and then our regular transportation contract which both were either bid out or extended. Um, I looked at what those numbers would be and only had to increase the levy to 2.7 million to kind of accommodate that estimated budget for fiscal year 27. If costs happen to go up more than that, we do have I think the the Miller ratio report is in there. You can see that we're at just over
053a year's worth of expenses and fund balances in the in the transportation fund. So, we have enough room if there happens to be a spike and we didn't levy enough. for a while there we were actually that fund the transportation fund was getting really high so then we lowered the levy and then all of a sudden the cost went through the because we you know we didn't have a lot of cost during COVID and so all of a sudden the the the fund balances spiked and then all of a sudden the cost went through the roof so the fund balances went way down and so hopefully we're kind of getting to more of a steady around one years of expenses in reserves and and the levy actually in addition to the state revenues that we
054get kind of match what our actual expenditures are. And so with that, I'm happy to very quickly in one minute answer any additional questions. Um or uh if no further questions are needed, uh the recommendation is to approve the tenative levy at the regular board meeting. >> Dave, maybe we can I'm sorry. >> Go ahead, Pam. >> Go ahead. >> Maybe we can do this if there's not enough time at a future meeting, but I understand the tiffs, the potential tiffs won't impact the new construction. the 2.2, but at what point will they impact? >> Well, uh, that's a difficult question to answer. I know we'll be talking more about the tiffs at a future meeting once we have more information from the board. I think, um, realistically, if there is new development inside of
055those tiffs, um, I think the the the the challenge for the district is we don't see any of those additional revenues from that development until after the tiff expires. So, we're not going to lose any revenue at this point. I mean, obviously, the value of the tiff is [clears throat] locked in. It's just if there's any new development within those tiff, we don't see those dollars until the tiff actually expires. So, if you have areas that aren't blighted, but they do get development, those are the kinds of things that hurt the school district because had they not been in the tiff, we would have seen those revenues earlier as opposed to later. >> Okay. It is. I just I kind of was left with the answer during the presentation that it didn't impact. So, I
056just wanted to elaborate that it will in the future, just not the 2.2 million in new construction, correct? In the report. Okay. Thank you. >> And just to clarify on this um slide 17 on your levy presentation, I know you said we're below average, which we are, but there are some outliers on that average and we're ahead of median. And in that middle pack, we've we've increased, right? We have not always been the highest of the Neapville schools and Weaten 200 and now now we're the highest of of that middle pack and I had I could go back and reference a couple years ago. I I didn't do that over the weekend, but I do feel like we weren't at the top previously. >> No, that's accurate. As far as the unit districts, uh usually
057we're right around where Neapville is. I don't know the specifics of why uh Neapville's rate uh is different than LA's at this point, but previously Indian Prairie was always on the lefth hand side and then usually Lyall or Neapville was kind of on either side of one another kind of in that middle. It >> it's a tricky number because you've got the denominator is the all our value of all our homes, you know, so we're much smaller than everybody else. So they get a bigger denominator, [clears throat] you know, and obviously their numerator is much larger too, but proportionally. So it's kind of I always looked at tax rate as kind of a an odd thing. It's kind of like cost per pupil. We only have 1,600 as a denominator, whereas Neapville 16,000 204 26,000.
058So it's something that's it's interesting comparison, but the the numbers that go into it, it's pretty different. you know, apples and oranges with other, you know, Neighborville is so much larger than us total property EAV. >> The numbers are pretty tight. Also, if you were to compare Lyle 202 with 486 versus Indian Prairie 42 >> on an annual basis, that's about $50 different on a $400,000 home. So, if you have a $400,000 home, your property taxes will be $50 more in Lyall than Indian Prairie. >> Yeah. But if you look at Neapville home prices, the same home is we'll say $100,000 more than the exact same home in Lyall. So who's paying more taxes for the exact same home, you know? So it's a I think it's a more complex discussion than comparing these numbers.
059>> Yeah. And it it again it it's all a matter of relative in terms of your size home, the price of your home. But [snorts] all things being equal, a $400,000 home pays about $50 more per year here. And so that could be important to some, but I just want to make it clear that it's a difference of $50 per year. >> But Dan, on that logic, we've now pulled really far ahead of 2011. >> Mhm. >> Um, and we are 2011 is the closest thing to us, right? same size district, similar socioeconomic background, and we we've just we're just keeping pulling farther ahead of 2011 than where we were in the past. >> Not sure. I would say it's the same size district. I think it's actually a very different educational experience to go
060to Neighborville versus Lyall. I think >> No, West 2011 Westmont. >> Oh, Westmont. I'm sorry. Okay. I thought you said Neapville. >> No, no, I think [laughter] >> No, I agree. Neighborville is much larger. >> Yes. I think if you look at the commercial property Westmont that's always been I think a factor if I recall right in that in their EAV assessment. >> Correct. I I think there is a large commercial component. I've never dug into it specifically. We'd have to kind of look at that to be sure, but I know that they have a strong commercial base over there. Yes. >> They're still making Beanie Babies or not. >> So, is there any further questions or comments on this? No. All right. Excellent. Thank you for that summary. I appreciate all your work you've
061uh done on this, Mr. Wilkinson. All right. So, moving on. Agenda topics for future finance committee meetings. Does anyone want to uh enter a new topic, enter a topic for future meeting? >> Next month, we'll talk a little bit more about the tiff that uh Mr. Hmel had mentioned earlier. There was a meeting last week where the village of Lyle talked about possibly extending the downtown tiff, but there was a lot of information that was requested to get from the consultants. And so I don't even know if they had a engagement letter with the consultants yet. So as we get more information from the village through the consultants to know whether even extending it would generate enough money to actually do the project and what it might impact might be on the school district. So
062we'll hopefully be able to include that in our December meeting. >> All right. Anyone else have comment or an agenda topic? Excellent. Great. So with no other agenda items, I will uh entertain a motion to adjurnn. So moved. >> Second, Mr. All right. So, uh, the finance committee meeting is adjourned at 7:35. Thank you very much, everyone, for this, uh, slightly overong meeting. Good day.