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News
Cut taxes by 20 percent? : News : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisCut taxes by 20 percent?
| Citizens' group places advisory referendum on November ballot
| by Tony Scott
| 8/9/2012
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Unless its petitions are challenged, a citizens' group has successfully collected enough signatures to put an advisory referendum on the ballot in November asking for a reduction in overall property taxes.
The group, calling itself Kendall County Property Tax Revolt, is seeking to place the referendum on the Nov. 6 ballot calling for a 20 percent cut to property tax levies collected by all taxing districts in the county.
The group, consisting of county residents Mark Johnson, Jan Alexander, Greg O'Neil, Judy Burks and Don Burks, delivered their signed petitions to the Kendall County Clerk's office in Yorkville Monday morning.
The exact wording of the referendum will be, according to documents filed with the County Clerk's office: "Shall every levy of every governing body within the County of Kendall, Illinois be reduced 20 percent over the previous year's levy?"
The group has held Tax Revolt Day events in Yorkville and Oswego this summer to inform people about how to protest their assessments and about property taxes in general in Kendall County.
While the group successfully collected enough signatures to place the referendum on the ballot - they needed 2,600, according to Johnson - they ran into a snafu when they attempted to collect signatures for their petition outside the Kendall County Fair in Yorkville last Thursday.
"We had plans to have a table set up outside the (fair) with signs to have people sign our petition," Johnson wrote in an email to local media. "We had no plans to approach people or walk around inside bothering people."
Johnson said his group was confronted by a fair board member who told them to leave.
"I guess they may be afraid that they might lose funding/support from the County Board?" Johnson asked. "I do not have another explanation."
When asked about the incident, Fair President Mike Drendel said the fairgrounds on Ill. Route 71 are private property, not public property. The fair is not a county government entity, but a private, non-profit organization that collects its own funds.
"They can do that kind of thing on public property," Drendel said. "This is private property, and they needed to get permission long before they walked up here. We have the right to ask them to leave; that's all we did."
He continued, "We call ourselves the Kendall County Fair, so they think they're paying taxes for Kendall County property. It's not Kendall County property. We have a non-profit business here."
Drendel said the fair tries "not to have protests out here; we avoid it like the plague."
"This is a family-friendly situation out here and it always has been and we want it to always be that way," he said. "Got nothing against the people, got nothing against their idea. It's just, protesting is not gonna happen at the Kendall County Fair."
Johnson said in his email that protesters had been allowed to set up during Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's visit last year to a Kendall County Republican Party event. Johnson also pointed to animal rights activists that had protested rodeos and other events at the fair in the past.
Regarding the protesters at the Arpaio event, Drendel said the fair board was notified of them beforehand.
"We were notified about that, and we gave them their own special spot where we wanted them to be, not where they wanted to be," he said.
Drendel said if the petition supporters wanted to arrange something, they needed to have discussed it with the fair board, he said.
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