Raising taxes WILL NOT fix the underlying issue. They are just putting off the problem until the future. The number one expense is salaries. That must be addressed.

Agreed Jeffrey. What got us into this 9 million dollar deficit is OVER-paying for the service of education. The pendulum has swung way too far in favor of the D15 employees and they must now answer for OVER-DIPPING into the public's pockets.

Why is there no discussion regarding salaries, pensions and benefits for teachers?
I haven't seen any detailed cost reduction plan published by the board. Does anyone out there know if the board has issued a plan? In 2008, when business slowed, we had to cut costs by reducing salaries, issuing furloughs, eliminating perks. Given the salaries of board members and teachers, along with pensions paid to retired teachers no wonder why they have worked up a deficit.
Raising taxes will continue to create a deficit monster.

To eliminate a proposed tax levy in 2012, this should be done in D15:
1) Reduce the pay, benefits and overblown pensions for administrators and teachers.
2) Stop the FREE education, FREE breakfast/lunch, FREE books and special bus priviledges for ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS since they are not paying any taxes whatsoever.
This will put D15 back in the black without the need for any tax levy.

My taxes already went up 21% and checking line items for that bill showed the biggest increases were due to schools. It's about time that D15 begins to consider who they are serving, it's the people of Palatine who won't be able to be here with these increases. Then who will they be teaching??? This is absurd. Watch your budget when it comes to salaries and benefits. Start at the top with the administration and work down through the teachers.

Mike, I'd love to see where you are coming up with your numbers. It's almost like you have no evidence, no logic, no facts, and instead opted to just rant without any basis. Here are some numbers of my own.

D-15 spends $6,960 per student on instructional expenditures. The operating expenditure figure, while another $5,000 are fixed costs for the district unrelated to the students. Reducing the number of students will not reduce the operating expenditure, it will in fact raise them. So if you reduce the number of students, you can only save the costs of the instructional amount.

There is a $9 million dollar deficit. To balance the budget using Mike's method would require the elimination of 1,293 students. The district enrollment is 12,498. That means that for Mike's solution to work, 10.34% of the student population needs to be eliminated.

Now, let's try and figure out if that is a reasonable goal. 23% of the district is Hispanic while Palatine alone has 9,489 non-citizens. 13.1% of Palatine is elementary school aged. So in Palatine that means 1,234 school-aged children are non-citizens. Homeland Security estimates that 25% of the non-citizens are illegal. So that means that 308 of those are illegal. Even including Inverness and Rolling Meadows, which have smaller populations than Palatine, you aren't going to conjure up another 900 students.

If Mike can provide other numbers, I'd be more than happy to listen to them, but until he does, he's very wrong.

1. Even if Disrtict 15 rasies it's Tax Levy it may not get as much as it recieved in the prior year. Real Estate tax revenues can and do go down.

2. Would have been good if the District 15 Bond issue would have passed. I know its debt, but its long term debt. It would have given time to work out the shortfall issues.

Angry Taxpayer, I'm looking at Europe. I see Sweden with 70% of ALL workers unionized. I see an economy that grew at 5.5% last year while still mandating 480 days of paid maternity/paternity leave. I see an economy that has a budget surplus and is paying down their debt even while public expenditures (i.e. government spending) accounts for 35% of the GNP. I see a country that even while subjected to the power of mass unions, has a lower unemployment rate than us even while taxes there are roughly double the rate they are here.

http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Work/Labor-market/Swedish-trade-unions/History-of-Swedish-trade-unions/
https://en.riksgalden.se/aboutsndo/Central-government-debt-and-finances/Debt_facts/Share_of_GDP/
https://en.riksgalden.se/Dokument_eng/press/reports/borrowing/2011/central_government_borrowing_2011_1.pdf
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Tax-Revenues-As-GDP-Percentage-%2875-05%29.JPG
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/GovernmentSpending.html

And I'll pull up stats for Germany, Switzerland, and a whole host of other countries if you want to play the "Europe is all the same game." It's not. Some countries are doing poorly, some are doing great, most have strong unions.

And as the stats show, its not the fault of unions everywhere. Blaming everything on unions is as logical and true as saying that the lead on your pencil breaking is the reason you failed a test.

Buccephalus, I don't know where to start with your limited understanding of the issues. First of all, the article is about the budget deficit at D15. You have not made one relevant comment on this topic.

Nice job cherry picking a handful of European countries with fiscal responsibility and homogenous populations. I was referring to the PIIGS (Portgual, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), that are the root cause of the European debt crisis which you are somehow unfamiliar with. Read any financial publication and get a clue. Bloated gov't/pubic sectors kill economies.

Very interesting comments. Some additional info to consider....

"Does anyone out there know if the board has issued a [cost reduction] plan?" - D15 is working on such a plan and is having a budget information forum on December 5 at 7pm. See Financial Communications Plan at http://www.ccsd15.net/pages/CCSD15/Our_Services/619813691670313506/Financial_Documents

"...salaries of board members..." - School board members are unpaid volunteers.

"My taxes already went up 21%" - This is probably due either to the assessed value of your house going up (compared to the average home that went down 14% this year) and/or the value of your exemptions going down. The average tax bill went up by about 3%. See http://www.scottherr.org/2011-10/fall-2011-property-tax-bills/. I can help determine why your bill went up so much (Contact Me button at http://www.scottherr.org).

"Real Estate tax revenues can and do go down" - Property tax revenues don't generally go down unless tax levies are reduced by government bodies. Individual tax bills, however, can go up or down depending on changes in assessed values and exemptions. This year was a reassessment year so tax bills varied significantly.

You can appeal property assessments in Palatine Township until Dec 7. The Assessor can also help with questions about exemptions. See http://www.palatinetownship.com/assessors-office/

For other questions or comments my contact info is on the D15 board members page or www.scottherr.org.

"The last contract, a three-year old made in 2009, gave teachers a raise of 0.75, 1.19 and 1.39 percent for the three years"

This is more of the same old union tactic of quoting *only* the base pay increase when in reality the totals of base, step, and lane make the average raise over 5%.

From the DH link buccephalus uses:

"...gives teachers salary bumps of 0.75, 1.19 and 1.39 percent on top of step and lane increases."

Let's stick with the step increase for now. They are generally higher than the base pay increase. And only in the education profession do they say it's not a raise even when you get a pay increase for occupying for job for one more year. It's as automatic as you can get. For the first ~20 years of you career you are guaranteed a step increase.

And the lane changes are considered a joke by the rest of the world. Attaining higher degrees does not always equate to being better at your job. If it weren't for lane increases we'd have classrooms full of teachers with bachelors degrees.

And the answer to you last question is No. Your ability should be the only thing figured into you wages.

Then why ever increase wages? If all that matters is your ability, then wages should never increase. If someone is giving 100% of their effort today and earning $50,000, then next year when they are still giving 100% they should still earn $50,000. That sounds great, except that when $50,000 only buys $49,000, you're not staying even, you're losing ground.

That's what happened in the 2000s, median wages for Americans stagnated and consequently the average worker/family is worse off due to rising prices. I don't think it's unreasonable for teachers to ask to take inflation into account. Nobody should be expected to do the same job, with the same quality, and lose ground.

As for the rest of the points, I disagree with them but I understand that viewpoint. I believe that although you are right, and being better educated does not ALWAYS make you better, I believe the MAJORITY of the time it does, and that more educated teachers are, in general, a worthwhile investment for our community.

Bucephalus, so what is your position? You still have not stated one in response to this article centered around property tax increases to bail out the structural budget deficit facing D15 as a result of the union contract that threw expenses out of line with predictable future revenues. This question you posed, betrays your ignorance once again:

"Would District 15 be in the same spot if the housing market had not crashed?"

The answer is yes. If you are speaking to foreclosures and declining property values, the banks pay the property tax on foreclosures, and taxing authorities simply raised the tax rate to compensate for declining home values. As you did not know this, I suspect you are not a property owner, and since you do not pay property taxes, are not really vested in the budget crisis at D15.

Bucephalus, I have stated my position that it's an outrage that D15 feels faced with the choice of cutting services to students or raising taxes to bail out the poor decisions of the prior board on union contracts. Since I have to be very direct and simple with you, my position is don't spend more than you bring in.

What are your suggestions? Raise taxes and codify the last round of union contracts? Cut massive student services? Other than your blind defense of teacher's unions, what is your agenda? Your knowledge of the teacher's pay system suggests you are one of the selfish union reps that colluded with the prior board. I am a fan of teachers btw. Not their unions however.

I think the actuaries used by the Teachers' Retirement System do a pretty good job of estimating what actually occurs regarding salary increases at the schools.

http://trs.illinois.gov/subsections/pubs/cafr/cafr.htm
Here you will find the following assumed increases:

average annual increase (all ages): 7%
increase for a 25 year old: 10.2%
increase for a 30 year old: 8.4%
increase for a 40 year old: 7.2%
increase for a 50 or more year old: 6%

All I have to say is WOW!

The "Base", "Step" and "Lane" concepts are complicated and have long been confusing.

To make this more concrete I've created a salary calculator that can be used to help understand salary changes including the Base, Step and Lane effects. The CTC contracts dating back to the 2001-02 school year are loaded into the spreadsheet.

An example that demonstrates Base, Step and Lane: the salary for a teacher in 2010-11 with a master's degree and 11 years experience is $73,035. After completing 15 hours additional coursework, the following year salary would be $80,910. This is a total increase of 10.8% and includes a "base" increase of 1.45%, plus an additional 3.51% "step" increase for the additional year of experience, plus 5.49% for the "lane change" reflecting the additional coursework.

The "District 15 Teacher Salary Calculator" can be found at https://docs.google.com/templates?q=district+15+salary+calculator. Or contact me at www.scottherr.org if you would like an Excel version.

Lets just ask ourselves, What was the deficit 3-4 years ago? Who was or still is on that school board? Who wrere the ones that voted on having a 2 tier system in the district versus the one that was here for a long time?Consultants were brought in to let them know if this would work and thier answer was NO! Would not work in this district. The board went ahead anyway and here we are! the community should really re-think, who's on the board! Why was the last super let go and another brought in? Are we paying for both or was the last super's contract up? The board put in a new system on the busses, went from vhs to dvr's. Does this make the childern safe from fights or bullies? WHO's paying for this? Right! The tax payers?The school board has over paid and over spent. A 9 million deficit and NO ONE saw this coming? How about we try common sense and just THINK before we act? RE-EVALUATE. Countrys and communitys will survive when the people thrive, but add more taxes, WE DIE.....This is the issue not the teachers with thier pensoins. Ask the board about the pensions for the super. the people that are under him. Did the degree's these people have keep the budget in line? Ask a bus driver or a teacher what they think the problems could be! Most of the drivers live and work in this community! So do these teachers. No more closed sessions with the board. OPEN AND UP FRONT. Hire people who can actually do the job ! Drivers ,DRIVE and teachers, TEACH. How about YOU

While 'the system' and 'so sad' raise some interesting points on where money may have been wasted they also need to keep in mind the salaries and benefits are where the majority of the tax money is being spent. Not that the other stuff isn't important; it's just relatively small is comparison.

Salaries and benefits are the majority of the tax money being spent? You live in this community and on the school board as the V.P. TAKE a closer look at salaries. Palatine councilmen should look at reducing, if not eliminating compensation for serving on the council in the upcoming budget year. Why? in 2010, approximately $93,000 in pay was earned by the 6 councilmen and Mayor Jim Schwantz. That does not include compensation for Village clerk Marge Duer.Village councilmen along with Duer receives$175 per meeting plus $500 per month for thier services. Schwantz receives$175 per meeting and $1,250 per month.There were 36 villlage council meetings in 2010 . Scott Lamerand and Gregg Solberg attened all of them and each earned approximately $12,300. Lamerand who chairs the business finance& budget committeee during council meetings , has discussed whether or not these amounts are too much.Councilmen do not hold back saying they work in the public's best interest.This article was printed Aug. 25-29 2011. Scott keep in mind salaries and the extra benefits. BUDGET CUTS BY ALL. I do know board members are not paid! As of this day I think Palatine is still in the red, and the board can't stop spending tax payers money.

Nov. 16 board meeting about evaluating bus transportaion. board approved for this consultant for an amount not to exceed $5,000 TO ONCE AGAIN TELL THIS BOARD THAT A 2 TIER SYSTEM DOES NOT WORK IN THIS DISTRICT. Last time we had two consultants to tell THIS BOARD THAT 2TIER SYSTEM WOULD NO WORK IN THIS DISTRICT. That cost was $25,000 .. This board is getting closer to becoming normal people. But they still love giving everyones money away.

"Salaries and benefits are the majority of the tax money being spent?"
You seem to disagree with what is obviously fact.

What happens at the village level has nothing to do with this article. And I am not on the school board.