Will County began mapping plans Tuesday to join other collar counties hoping to beat the state`s Oct. 1 tax-cap deadline.
County officials are considering a $10 million bond issue to build a new juvenile detention facility and two satellite offices for the Health Department.
The proposal surfaced Tuesday in the County Board`s Budget and Revenue Committee, which will hold a special meeting next week to pin down costs of the projects. A spot has been cleared on the board`s Aug. 15 agenda to consider the question.
The new sense of urgency grows out of the law adopted this summer imposing a 5 percent annual limit on property-tax increases as of Oct. 1. After that, if the Public Building Commission issues construction bonds that would raise taxes beyond the limit, it will need approval in a referendum.
”Time is of the essence,” said Joliet Democrat Ruth Kennedy, a member of the Budget and Revenue Committee.
While county officials make no bones about rushing to beat the deadline, their $10 million target is considerably more modest than others.
In Lake County, a $50 million bond issue and another of undisclosed size have been proposed. Du Page County is looking at $349 million in bonds.
In Will County, the bulk of the bonds would go to finance a juvenile facility that the County Board promised last summer to build in exchange for the state`s permission to open a temporary unit for juveniles in a wing of the new county jail.
The county had previously rented space elsewhere at a cost of more than $500,000 a year but was running into trouble finding such space.
The county is proposing construction of a 50-bed juvenile home that could be expanded to 100 beds when the need develops.
The estimated cost, originally at $3 million when the project was broached three years ago, had grown to $5 million in May and hit $7 million this week.
Total cost is expected to reach $8.5 million if the county must acquire and clear a site rather than using land it owns.
The rush to beat the deadline means the county must set bonding figures before detailed project costs can be assembled.
Lloyd Collins (R-Peotone) has called for a pledge by the board to cut back the bond issue if the project costs less than the estimates.
”We wouldn`t have to spend it just because it was there,” Collins said as other members of the board`s Executive Committee rolled their eyes and grinned.
The Health Department project, which appears to have considerably less backing than the youth home, calls for construction of branch offices in the northern and eastern parts of the county.
The department runs branches in leased offices in Du Page Township, Plainfield and University Park. It has been offered free land by Bolingbrook and a utility company in University Park if the county agrees to construct buildings on the sites.
The bonding proposal appears to have grown out of a suggestion last May to refinance $22 million in bonds sold in 1985 and used to build the new jail and to sell $21.5 million in new bonds to finance the juvenile home, buy new communications equipment, finance a variety of smaller projects and have money left over to ease the county`s ongoing fiscal problems.
The plan, advanced by bond specialists hired by the Public Building Commission, would have meant an increase in property-tax rates of 12 cents per $100 of assessed value.
The drastically scaled-back proposal would mean an increase of only a cent or two, officials said.
With the Oct. 1 deadline approaching, bonds have gained a new luster in discussions among officials in many local taxing districts.
Republican board member Judith Bredeweg of Bolingbrook, who chairs the Public Building Commission, said the new popularity of bonds has suddenly made salesmen scarce.
”Bond issues have so flooded the market that we have been moved to the back of the line,” she said. ”The bond people were everywhere a few weeks ago and now we can`t get anybody`s attention.”
