At its Monthly meeting
January 17, the McHenry County Board voted 17 to 7 to adopt an agenda
modification effectively eliminating an advisory property tax freeze referendum
from the April 4 ballot. By deleting the item from the meeting agenda, the vote
precluded a direct ballot by board members on the question whether the
referendum should be on the ballot.
Representative Allen
Skillicorn circulated petitions to get the referendum on the April ballot, but was
unable to get nearly enough signatures to put the question to voters. The
county board proposal to put the measure on the ballot needed to pass January
17 to meet the ballot proposition deadline.
The county board has
refused to raise county property tax levies for the last five years, and board
members voting to remove the issue from the agenda pointed this fact out,
together with the fact that the proposed referendum was advisory only, and
would not have effectively precluded levy increases in any event, even if
adopted by the voters in April.
