Kane County is looking at a roughly $2.3 million property tax levy hike for 2027, as its county board’s efforts to clamp down on cash reserve spending and solve the county’s budgetary woes continue.
At its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, the Kane County Board OK’d measures setting the tax levies for its various funds — for taxes to be paid in 2027. The bulk of the increase above last year’s levy will go toward the county’s general fund, its main operating fund.
This approval comes just a week after the board OK’d a $402.9 million budget for the new fiscal year starting Dec. 1. The approved budget relies on the now-approved property tax hike to be balanced.
Over the past few years, the county board’s annual budget-making efforts have largely centered around addressing a looming shortfall in the county’s main operating fund. For several years, the county board had been spending down its reserves to balance its budgets.
But county staff has long cautioned that using reserves this way wouldn’t be an option forever, warning that significant cuts needed to be made or new revenue found before 2027 to ensure the county maintained 90 days’ worth of reserves in its general fund to cover county expenses, which county policy dictates be maintained.
The county tried a 0.75% sales tax referendum question in 2025 to increase its revenues, but the matter was overwhelmingly shot down by voters. Since then, the board has taken both cost-cutting and revenue-generating measures in an attempt to avoid further spending down of the county’s emergency funds.
Though the county has technically already fallen below the 90-day threshold in its general fund’s general account, the narrowly-passed $402.9 million budget for the coming year doesn’t, at least at this point, use any of the cash reserves in question.
Included in the revenue sources that balanced budget counts on, however, is a roughly $2.3 million property tax levy hike, nearly all of which is set to go toward the county’s general fund. Property tax revenue makes up nearly one-third of the county’s total expected revenue for its general fund in fiscal year 2027.
The total levy amount approved Tuesday for the county’s funds is about $64.9 million, up roughly $2.3 million from the 2026 levy amount. Nearly $40 million of that will go toward the general fund.
At Tuesday’s meeting, at which the tax levies for the county’s funds were approved, several board members voted against the proposed hike for the general fund — Jennifer Abbatacola, Deborah Allan, Mohammad Iqbal, Bill Roth and Clifford Surges.
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The county board has not always raised the county’s levy this way – 2025 was the first year since 2013 that the county board increased the general fund property tax levy except to account for new construction. At last week’s meeting, at which the coming year’s budget was approved, Kane County Board Chair Corinne Pierog attributed the county’s current financial woes in part to the past freezing of the county’s levy.
The move to approve the budget before the property tax hike did generate some discussion last week among the board, though the budget was still ultimately approved. The year prior, the county board approved a levy increase and the county’s annual budget at the same meeting.
In May, the county board had approved of a proposal to use 2.7% — in line with the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, which is a measure of inflation set by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — as the planned hike for tax extensions in 2026, for taxes to be paid in 2027.
Though approving tax levies for the county’s funds sets the total amount the county plans to collect, the actual property tax amount residents pay is not yet set.