Service, workforce cuts possible after voters spurn Kane’s $51M sales tax request

Kane County Board members are reacting to voters overwhelmingly rejecting a proposed county sales tax increase, with some saying that spending cuts may be necessary.

The sales tax hike — which would have added 75 cents to a $100 purchase of nonfood and other items — was to bring in more than $51 million in revenue to support public safety programs, officials said.

Instead, voters flatly rejected the ballot measure, with 53,552 against it and 17,991 for it, a difference of 35,561 votes, according to unofficial results as of Monday.

Board Member Bill Lenert, R-Sugar Grove, said he was among the majority who voted no.

“They wanted to put it on the ballot because they thought it would pass,” Lenert said of his fellow board members. “I said early on it will never pass. And they didn’t believe that.”

Now comes the hard part of deciding what to cut.

“If we can’t find more revenue – which I don’t think we can – we are going to have to cut expenses,” Lenert said.

The problem, Lenert said, was the county used the COVID relief funds for operational expenses.

“All of a sudden, there’s additional expenses and the money is used up,” Lenert said.

Vice Chair Bill Roth, R-St. Charles, said he voted against putting the question on the ballot.

“I was surprised about how badly it lost,” Roth said. “I would have thought it was 50-50.”

What didn’t help was the Vote No signs outnumbered the Vote Yes signs by at least five to one, Roth said.

“And the font was not big enough unless you stopped to read it,” Roth said. “And if it failed, they didn’t have any Plan B.”

Roth will be presenting his plan to get more efficiencies and tighter processes at a future County Board meeting, not at the April 8 meeting.

“I’m working on that right now,” Roth said. “I’m going to tell it like it is.”

Board Member Mavis Bates, D-Aurora, compared the county’s request to the successful Forest Preserve District’s tax increase referendum last fall.

“They had a champion in the Conservation Foundation that did some polling ... so they would know ahead of time whether their referendum would be well received,” Bates said. “We didn’t have any money to do that. We had to go ahead and hope that this would be well-received because we felt it was needed.”

Bates said the COVID money helped hide the county’s financial troubles for a few years, “but we knew the cliff was coming.”

“We had no way to raise that money except by property tax or sales tax,” Bates said.

As for what comes next?

“Everything is on the table,” Bates said

The referendum would have included support for the county’s specialty courts, the Child Advocacy Center, the State’s Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Special Victims Team, and for infrastructure improvements on the 17-year-old jail.

Board Chair Corinne Pierog said it was clear the voters decided there wasn’t a need to increase funding for public safety.

“Kane County must continue its efforts to preserve and protect public safety for the residents,” Pierog said. “We will make every effort to do so in a fiscally responsible manner.”

One piece of that to be under discussion is to offer workforce reduction, she said.

“If it gets passed through the board in one piece,” Pierog said. “This is not going to be done through efficiency. I can’t tell the sheriff to have his deputies drive more efficiently.”

Kane County Clerk Jack Cunningham said about 16,000 mail-in ballots for Kane County had still not been returned, so referendum and vote totals will be updated until April 15. Mail in ballots must be marked before or as of April 1 in order to be counted.