Westchester officials | Village of Westchester/Facebook
Westchester officials | Village of Westchester/Facebook
The Westchester board recently discussed raising the 2022 levy.
During a Nov. 22 village board meeting, the board discussed the proposed 2022 tax levy for the village. The village accountant shared that he recommended increasing the levy up 5% from last year, which is the highest possible amount they could, given that CPI is above 5% and the tax cap laws stop them at 5%. They plan to put the extra funds from this levy into their pension funds which are behind the funding schedule.
Pensions are underfunded and have continued to gain more and more of the annual levies. In 2018 pensions took up 33% of the levy, and in 2021 they took 52% of the levy for their funding and are still at about 54% funded rate. The board discussed some of the history and best practices moving forward for how to fund the pensions.
The total estimated levy will be just over $8 million. With a corporate levy of 361,000, and police and fire pensions at 1,950,000 and 1,750,000 respectively. Fire protection and police protection are 1.25 million and 1.6 million. This estimate will be approved with a final number decided in December before it is sent to the county assessor.
"And then what will happen, we'll submit these to the county clerk. The county clerk will add a loss factor of 3%. So it actually will be a little more. And the spreadsheet I have, the calculation gets you to the point where it won't increase over the 5%, basically. So it should be a little more than this $8.2 million when it's all said and done. And we actually the final estimated levy amount will be $8,470,110, but I'm taking into account the county clerk adding the loss factor," Westchester Financial Director Stefan Hanus said.
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