What will this cost?

How will the District fund these projects and how will it affect my tax bill?

This is a fair and important question.  District 203’s Facilities Improvement Plan is based on allocating $115 million from various sources. Fully $72 million of the funds have been identified in the following manner:

$36 million of the total cost will be generated largely from a Site and Construction fund set aside by the School Board over the past few years. This also includes land sale dollars. The detailed break-down over time for these funds are as follows:

• $13.2 million on hand now 
• $10.4 million allocated from the current fiscal year
• $4.5 million in 2009
• $5.5 million in 2010
• $260,000 in 2011
• $2 million in interest earning during this time frame

Another $36 million will come from Alternate Revenue Bonds funded by the expiration of the Cantera TIF in 2010 which will generate $3.8 million annually for the District. This is new money coming to the District from the economic development of the Cantera area in northwest Naperville.

The remaining $43 million is what this referendum is about. District 203 worked together with the DuPage County Assessor's Office to calculate the average residential cost in Naperville using the total EAV (equalized assessed value) of all residential properties in the District to calculate the average residential property (for 2006). In District 203, the average residential property has an EAV of $106,813 -- or a full value of $335,439. The projected cost for that property to fund this referendum request is approximately $82.39 per year for the first year, and then declining.  Cost for your individual home will depend on the relationship of your home’s EAV to that average home EAV (i.e. a home with a higher EAV will pay slightly more and one with a lower EAV will pay less) You can calculate your yearly cost by taking your "billing value" from your property tax bill and multiplying it by .0007713.

Will the school district collect more than what it’s asking for here?

No.  The District is only seeking to sell $43 million in bonds. Some critics have claimed that the district will somehow sell a larger amount, or charge the residents more than the District's projections.  The District will be selling only $43 million in bonds, and the debt service for that amount is indicated on page 30 in the Decision for the Future web page link here. If you go there you will find that the residential cost actually goes down slightly over the years.  Whatever happens to home appreciation, either up or down, will only cause the tax rate to change to accommodate that change. The amount of taxes collected is fixed at approximately $3.39 million per year.

To get a better understanding of what the $82.00 number represents, we need to look at the assumptions. When the projections were made, the District added in an additional .50% to interest cost as a margin of safety. For every .25% change in interest rate the cost to the homeowner changes 1%. So if interest rates were to fall by that much and the District were to sell the bonds required to finance the referendum, the $82.39 figure would drop to $80.15.  Conversely if the rates were to rise in excess of this .50% margin of safety, the cost would rise. As the sentiment regarding interest rates is projecting for them to fall slightly going forward, we feel confident the final cost will surprise on the downside.  In either case, the potential fluctuation is minimal.