• Real Estate Tax Bills
• Election Information – Anywhere – Anytime
• Interesting Facts About Your Real Estate Tax Bill
• Spanish Election Materials Required by Voting Rights Act
• Navigating Your Voter Power Page

Real Estate Tax Bills
The County Clerk’s office has calculated tax rates for all districts in Lake County. Rates are based on the levy requests passed by each local district, the assessed value of all properties in that district, and any limits in place by state law. The Lake County Treasurer announced that the first installment is due June 6 and the second payment due September. Watch the April 2013 Word with Willard for explanations of Tax Extension and Redemption and how the tax bills are calculated. Learn more about how to reduce your tax bill here.

Election Information – Anywhere – Anytime
The Clerk’s QR code makes it easy and simple for Lake County residents to find personalized election information by linking smart devices to the Voter Power web page. After entering name, house number, zip code, and birthday on the landing page, each registered voter is shown their current districts and elected officials. Web visitors will also find addresses, photos, maps, and driving directions of their early and Election Day voting sites. Data transmission is via a secure page and is not stored or collected.

Facts About Your Real Estate Tax Bill
Here are some interesting stats about the process:

• Property values in Lake County dropped a total of 6.88% in 2011. The declines range from a drop of 3.3% in Libertyville Township to 13.8% in Waukegan Township. These numbers reflect a drop in property value after applying the state multiplier.
• Lake County’s state multiplier was +2.81%. The multiplier is a countywide factor issued by the IL Department of Revenue to “balance out” any over- or under-assessments, meaning everyone’s assessed value, before exemptions, was increased by 2.81%.
• The state multiplier affects every parcel in Lake County (except for farm land), yielding almost no effect on the tax bills, as taxes are only affected by changes in value relative to surrounding properties. The only properties affected are those in districts overlapping into another county with a different multiplier.
• There is a common misconception that if property values drop, taxes will drop. Property value is only half of the equation. The other half is tax levies set by districts.
• The statutory “tax cap” rate is designed to float inversely to property values. As values go down, rates go up, to ensure district tax revenues remain stable (regardless of property value changes) unless a district lowers its levy below their limit.
• No district was forced by statutory limits to receive less money than last year, but 40 districts abated their levy sufficiently to fall below their 2010 tax amount.

Spanish Election Materials Required by Voting Rights Act
In late 2011, the United States Department of Justice sent a certification letter requiring Lake County to provide complete bilingual election administration in the Spanish language for 2012. This requirement is a result of 2010 U.S. Census data applied to the requirements test under §203 of the Voting Rights Act (42 USC §1973aa-1a).

The first trigger to qualify a jurisdiction under §203 is the response to race and then the language proficiency response on the American Community Survey. When 5% or more of the voting age population respond to the Census as limited English proficient voting age citizens, the bilingual threshold is met.

The protected language groups according to interpretation of the 2006 Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act are Asian (Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Tagalog, etc.), Native American and Native Alaskan dialects (not of European origin) and Latino races. The Census Bureau does not consider Arabic an Asian language. Also languages of European origin such as Russian, Polish and Hebrew are not deemed covered languages.

The Lake County Clerk's office is working diligently to comply with the bilingual requirements and to ensure Lake County taxpayers and voters are not at risk for any facet of non-compliance. All election administration materials will be provided in English with Spanish translations as required by the federal law under the Voting Rights Act.

Navigating Your Voter Power Page
Watch this video to learn how you can use Voter Power to view all your personalized election information – elected officials, voting districts, Early and Election Day voting sites and more.