D200 committed more nancial ‘sins’ to fund Project 2

As this chapter in the OPRF High School “pool saga” closes, I expected to encounter magnanimous celebratory comments from OPRF folks. Instead, in his public comments and letter to this paper, OPRF Board President Tom Cofsky made some odd rationalizations and characterized Project 2 referendum proponents like me and the Wednesday Journal as spreading “misinformation.”

Let’s talk misinformation.

Mr. Cofsky implies the OPRF Community Finance Committee (CFC), made up of experts in school finance, supported debt certificate financing. Several CFC members, in fact, said this was inappropriate for Project 2.

Cofsky and supporters implied referendum funding would be added to tax bills. Yes, taxpayers would have seen another line on their bill, but the amount they paid for D200 would have been basically the same if the board simply reduced its operating taxes by the same amount. The CFC objected more than once to district documents presenting the referendum option as a tax increase; they were never cor rected

Cofsky said the plan would not put an additional burden on the taxpayers.

Board members contended Project 2 was just too urgent to wait a year for voters to weigh in, yet they had the Imagine Project 2 plan since 2018. There were at least a half-d ozen opportunities to put the project on the ballot since then and they did not.

Cofsky says those of us who advocated a Project 2 referendum are disingenuous because we criticized the 2002 referendum. No one I’ve ever encountered had a problem with the school asking for more taxes in 2002 to operate and getting them. Like many residents (and the Wednesday Journal), we objected to OPRF using a loophole in that referendum in 2005 to take millions more in taxes than voters approved — overtaxing that OPRF on its own website says led to “high tax levels in our villages and eroded community trust.” OPRF’s exploitation of this loophole was so bad, the state legislature changed the law to prevent others from doing it.

Cofsky ag ain says that not taking the maximum taxes allowed by law each year demonstrates OPRF’s sensitivity to high taxes. This doesn’t make sense.

His most incredible contention is that the school had to use debt certificates to prevent growth of the reserve — in other words, they needed to spend more to keep up with the amount they were taxing the community. Surely, Cofsky and the board know it’s possible to reduce revenues — our taxes — to stay in line with expenses and not build a reserve? They choose their revenue level every year.

Many suppor ters of not going to a referendum for Project 2 argued that we elected our board members to make this decision. Then why does referendum financing exist at all? Because Illinois (and most other states) believe that schools should get explicit permission from taxpayers to spend large sums. Some schools don’t have a choice whether to go to referendum to fund major projects. OPRF could bypass this requirement because it used a nowclosed loophole to take more taxes than it needed year-after-year for almost 20 y and our communities neve