MTD Tax Levy

The Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District approved an increase to its tax levy this week, which may not translate to any significant increases in property tax rates due to rising property values, Carle tax case issues, and their piece of the county property tax pie. From WCCU:

C-U MTD approves tax levy increase
The Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD) has approved a nearly 30 percent tax levy increase.

MTD is funded through property taxes, grants, and ride fares. This increase does not mean that your property taxes will go up by 30 percent. Property tax rates are determined by the Consumer Price Index.

MTD only collects a three percent of that property tax, which is paid for by residents of Champaign, Urbana, and Savoy...

Last year MTD received $7,831,609 from property taxes. With the increased tax levy they expect to bring in a little more than $10 million.

Full blurb here. The MTD board covered the issue in their 12/12/2018 meeting with video, agenda, and specific budget breakdown of the levy information in the board packet available at this link. This appears to be a larger increase than was discussed previously and reported by the News-Gazette in October:

MTD board approves seeking 21.7 percent tax-levy increase
The Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District is seeking a nearly 21.7 percent increase in its tax levy for next year.

But Managing Director Karl Gnadt said like last year, the increase in the levy — to $10.3 million — is intended to create room for new valuations that could potentially be added to the tax rolls, and it doesn't mean the MTD is necessarily going to get that much more tax money.

The 21.7 percent levy increase represents $1.8 million more than the amount collected for the preceding year...

Gnadt said the levy increase is intended to create room to capture additional money that would primarily come should Urbana hospital properties ever be added to the tax rolls.

Both OSF Heart of Mary Medical Center's former owner, Presence Health, and Carle Foundation Hospital continue to be engaged in litigation with taxing authorities over their property-tax exemptions — though the disputes have centered largely on taxes the hospitals paid for past tax years.

Full article here, including some information on objections raised over an ever-increasing budget. For an explanation of tax levies versus tax rates, I have a primer post with a few different attempts to explain the concepts (as I struggled with it myself): Tax Levies versus Tax Rates