SYCAMORE – New businesses coming into Sycamore now will receive a school tax abatement on their property taxes.
Sycamore School District 427 Board unanimously adopted a resolution, 7-0, for the district to join the DeKalb County enterprise zone during its meeting Tuesday night.An enterprise zone’s purpose is to encourage economic development in a geographical area by offering property tax incentives to new businesses and industrial developments. The DeKalb County enterprise zone was certified by the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity in 2016 after the County Board approved the zone in 2014 with the support of several municipalities.
Whether District 427 could afford joining the enterprise zone was the big question when the city initially approached the district board about the matter a couple of years ago, Superintendent Kathy Countryman said. This time around, she said the District 427 will see an equalized assessed value increase and joining the enterprise zone could result in a tax levy increase for the district.
“It’s not a matter of whether we can afford it, but looking at it futuristically,” Countryman said.
Currently, more than half of Sycamore property taxes go to local schools.
District 427 board President Jim Dombeck said the school funding formula change, which no longer results in lost state funds, affected its decision to join the enterprise zone this time around.
“We can navigate this a lot better now,” Dombeck said.
Nicole Stuckert, chief financial officer and chief school business official for District 427, said the resolution is effective immediately.
She said new businesses coming into Sycamore would not receive the schools abatement in their first year but would receive a 90 percent abatement in the second year, 80 percent in the third year, 70 percent in the fourth year, 60 percent in the fifth year and 50 percent in the sixth year.
City Manager Brian Gregory said DeKalb County applied for the enterprise zone to leverage state incentives with local incentives.
He said other school districts in the county are part of the enterprise zone, along with other taxing bodies such as the Sycamore Library.
“It allows us to be competitive with other communities in Illinois and other communities in the Midwest and, in some cases, nationally,” Gregory said.
Board member Jeff Jacobson said this was something that the district needed to do to help Sycamore be more competitive within the county.
“More development means more jobs,” Jacobson said. “More kids means more classrooms.”