New Cook County Board member Commissioner Bridget Gainer was introduced and congratulated. She replaces Commissioner Mike Quigley who was recently elected to the U.S. Congress.
Once again, Comm. Peraica pointed out that another $400,000.00 was spent by the board for compliance administration regarding the Shakman Decree. He called it a corruption tax which taxpayers need to pay due to continuing patronage abuses.
A lot of active discussion centered on a proposed amendment to the Real Property Assessment Classification Ordinance sponsored by Comm. Murphy and Sims. This ordinance is designed to give a tax break to businesses that have had a reduction in income of at least 40% in a year. Commissioner Claypool argued that it is unfair and counterproductive to give tax breaks to unsuccessful businesses and not to their competition, which may exist in the same community. Taxes would need to be raised for others to make-up the loss. Other commissioners pointed out that if these businesses fail, then no taxes will be collected. The Assessor's Office noted it is difficult to determine the criteria for a business failing--who would qualify for this tax abatement. Comm. Silvestri called this part of "piecemeal efforts to re-do taxation." The ordinance passed 9 to 5 for a duration of 5 years.
President Stroger and Comm. Peraica both submitted separate ordinance proposals to roll back the county sales tax. Stroger proposed a .25% decrease per $100 to go into effect next January 2010. Peraica proposed a 1% decrease (the entire amount of last year's sales tax increase). Pres. Stroger declared Peraica's ordinance "out of order" and didn't want it to go further. There was quite a bit of back and forth rancor over this but finally both ordinances were sent to the finance committee (which is the entire board) for consideration.
Commissioner Suffredin submitted a proposed resolution requesting an opinion of the State's Attorney on the procedures required to recognize the will of the voters in Barrington, Hanover and Palatine townships to disconnect from Cook County. This was sent to the legislation committee.
For 3 days in May (the 6th, 7th, and possibly 8th), the finance committee will review the budgets for years 2007, 2008, 2009 in the area of Capital Equipment. The intent is to re-prioritize the expenditures and reduce costs. This was already done for the Capital Improvement budget a few weeks ago. Because of this, many commissioners did not want to approve new Capital Improvement expenses at this meeting. Comm. Beavers insisted the new expenditure proposals be passed or sent to his committee on technology. In the end, all further expenses in the Capital Equipment Fund were delayed until the re-prioritizing could be completed.
