School District U-46 is among the taxing bodies finally receiving the Cook County property tax revenue it should have been paid in the fall.
U-46 Executive Director of Finance Robyn Cornelissen said the district received a $19.6 million payment Monday and another for $19.6 million Tuesday but is still waiting on nearly $40 million more paid by property owners who live in the Cook County portion of U-46.
“We receive Cook County payments in the fall and spring of each year based on the tax payment schedule. The first installment (spring) was received on time,” Cornelissen said.
U-46 receives property tax money from the three counties in which its schools are located — Cook, DuPage and Kane. Historically, U-46 receives the majority of the DuPage and Kane County second installment tax payments in September, while Cook County payments typically arrive in August, Cornelissen said,
“Because Kane and DuPage counties represent approximately 63% of the district’s equalized assessed value and their second installment payments have been received as scheduled, these revenues helped mitigate the operational impact of the delayed Cook County payments,” she said.
The district also has been relying on fund balances to cover expenditures while waiting for the Cook County clerk’s office to disburse the tax money. Cornelissen said the district’s strong fund balances, substantial liquidity and extended cash-on-hand position allowed it to maintain operational stability without adverse impact to students, staff or programs.
Last year, U-46 received $73.8 million from Cook County in August 2024, Cornelissen said. That represented 19.7% of the $374.9 million total property tax revenue the district expected for its 2025-26 budget.
U-46 and other Cook County taxing bodies have been waiting months to be given their cut of property tax revenue because there have been issues with the county’s new system from Texas-based Tyler Technology, which handles data between property tax offices, according to the county.
The glitches led to the second installment of annual property tax bills being sent out in October when they’re typically to be paid by Aug. 1. Then, after the tax money came in, county officials struggled with their distribution system to correctly allocate the $8 billion in collected dollars to the county’s hundreds of districts.
Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas’ staff worked over the holiday to build a stopgap solution so that taxing districts would receive about 20% of their money via an ACH, or automated clearinghouse transaction, according to a Dec. 26 news release. About $2.3 billion in emergency funding is being distributed from the county straight into about 500 taxing bodies’ accounts, according to Pappas’ office.
The stopgap measure won’t replace the latest system fix, part of a roughly decade-long upgrade the county undertook with Tyler Technologies, officials said. They will have to go through a “true-up process” after the fix is made to ensure final distributions are correct. Other fixes are still needed to handle refunds and certificates of error.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s office doesn’t have a statutory role in the property tax system, but her Bureau of Technology maintains the mainframe computers that hold decades of property tax data, according to reports.
In recent weeks, officials discovered Tyler had not been given the correct file to run tests. Pappas blamed the Bureau of Technology, which originally maintained the data on the old system, and faulted Tyler’s past failures in the Friday release.
Preckwinkle’s office said it essentially functions as a waiter and provides what’s asked. The problem “was the responsibility of the treasurer, and no other office,” Preckwinkle’s office said in a statement.
The Chicago Tribune contributed to this report.
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.