District 159 Town Hall Meeting Addresses Home Value Question

For weeks, Mokena District 159 Supt. Karen Perry has been searching for new ways to inform residents about the upcoming referendum. At Tuesday night's town hall meeting at Mokena Junior High School, she might have gotten her answer. 

"I think (the home values issue) is what's going to sell it," said Shauni Zerante, whose daughter is a third-grader at Mokena Elementary School. "They have to show how people who don't have children in the district will be affected by it."

Earlier in the evening, Perry made a presentation similar to the one she had made at previous informational meetings, detailing the dire financial circumstances of the school district to about 20 people. She was accompanied by Lawrence C. Heidemann, a financial consultant for several area school districts.

"The overwhelming consensus is that communities with better schools, libraries (and) parks are more desirable than others, and home values go up," Heidemann said. 

Heidemann's point was that unless the referendum — a 29-cent increase per $100 assessed valuation — is passed, the school district would need to make drastic cuts that will directly affect the quality of the schools and thus indirectly affect home values.

"Values would plummet if you had 40 or 50 kids in a class," Heidemann said.

Homeowner Robert Elsinga expressed concern that he and other residents would not be able to pay the increase on their property taxes and that the district would be "going to a dried-out well for their bucket of water." 

School board secretary Scott Peters, who attended the meeting as a resident, said though he would rather pay the higher property taxes, he understood Elsinga's concern.

"There's people here who haven't had raises in years," Peters said. "The unfortunate timing of everything with the economy — it's killing us."

Heidemann acknowledged the decision whether to vote for the referendum is "a difficult decision for everyone."

"But in the long run, the extra taxes will do their fair share to help values," he said.

Heidemann and Peters said they could not provide numbers on how far values would drop because those numbers would be difficult to project and could potentially lead to misinformation.

Perry said the school board would start to "think globally" about the information it will present to residents and include more information on home values in an effort to appeal to Mokena residents without children in the district. 

Elsinga remained skeptical. If the referendum passes?

"I'll put a sign out front and pay the increase until I find a buyer," he said.