Former Rutland Township assessor accused of omitting property from tax rolls

Rutland Township’s former assessor has been accused of omitting property from the tax rolls and costing 17 taxing bodies, including Algonquin-based School District 300 funding.

Gary Fritz overtook former assessor Jan Siers in the 2017 election with
55 percent of the vote – 1,221 to Siers' 826 votes – and began Jan 1. Siers had been assessor of Rutland Township, located south of Huntley in Kane County, for more than two decades with the township. Fritz also has years of assessment experience and is a deputy assessor in Batavia Township.

When he came into office, he said he found omitted properties from both 2016 and 2017, payable in 2017 and 2018, respectively. He said he found 82 homes omitted in 2017 and 57 in 2016.

“This is highly unusual,” Fritz said. “But it’s getting done. It’s corrected. It won’t happen again.”

Although Siers contends she did nothing wrong, Fritz is working to increase the office’s budget so potential mistakes won’t cost the taxpayers again.

The missing parcels

Fritz said Siers missed about $1.5 million worth of new construction in 2017, which would have resulted in $130,767 in new property tax revenue. In 2016, about $1.8 million in new construction wasn’t included on the tax rolls, which would have been about $103,155 in property tax revenues, he said.

The Kane County Board of Review went over submissions from Fritz and placed an assessment on 82 parcels for the 2017 taxable year, according to county records.

Many of the alleged omitted properties were the result of new construction where occupancy wasn’t recorded, Fritz said. In those circumstances, the property owner received an assessment and property tax bill associated with the empty land, which would be a much lower value than a home, he said.

“We are a growing township,” Fritz said. “We probably put on about 300 homes this year. That is a lot. … We have a lot of builders that are doing really well, but we need to get them on the books. The most important job is to list and discover this stuff.”

The majority of the so-called missing properties were located in Gilberts and Pingree Grove. Units at the Cambridge Lakes, Gilberts Town Center, Conservancy Pod and homes across the two towns all were deemed missed, according to county documents.

Siers called the accusations “laughable.”

According to the Illinois Property Tax System's handbook, the township assessor must value real estate by
Jan. 1 and return the books to the chief county assessment officer by June 15, for counties with less than 600,000 people.

Siers said if a home became occupied after her deadline to get properties on the books – between Sept. 1 and Oct. 1 – she would assess the properties as complete after Jan. 1.

“Fritz is claiming [82] parcels were not put on, technically he’s correct, but they didn’t meet the deadline to go on,” Siers said.

Siers also said she wouldn’t mark homes as being occupied if the develper had finished a building, but it hadn’t been sold to residents yet.

“All assessors have their own time frame. There is nothing wrong with what I did,” she said.

Assessors typically become aware of new property when occupancy and building permits are submitted to their offices, Kane County supervisor of assessments Mark Armstrong said.

“[Assessors] are good, but they aren’t psychic,” Armstrong said. “There can be timing issues. … A lag can be in effect. If they are working on completions, an assessor has to be out and see it. To just drive around and look can be time consuming.

“From the outside and my vantage point, being negligent and having more work than you have staff resources for kind of look the same.”

Illinois property tax code says structures shall be valued for tax purposes as of the date when the occupancy permit was issued, or from the date the new or added improvement was inhabitable and fit for occupancy or for intended use.

Armstrong’s office doesn’t have the authority to investigate or charge Siers for any of the alleged offenses, which under state property tax code could be considered a Class A misdemeanor, he said.

“I am not aware that it’s ever been employed. Typically, if people are unhappy with an assessment, they can file a complaint,” he said. “Other than that, it’s noise. It’s routine. A month doesn’t go by that I don’t get a call that says, ‘So and so is violating the law.’ I say, ‘File a police report,’ and to date, it hasn’t happened.”

Funding

The office has been the subject of budget woes in the past, and Fritz is continuing attempts to get more money to operate longer hours – which is necessary to properly do the job, he said.

“You need that money to work with in order to do the job,” he said. “We don’t have half the people some townships that are smaller than us have.”

The assessor’s office employs Fritz, two full-time employees and a part-time clerical worker with a budget of $120,000. He wants to see it upped to at least $165,000 to continue full-time operations, he said.

“I grabbed the bull by the horns, and we are working full-time now,” he said. “But I don’t know how long we can sustain that unless the budget gets increased.”

The township starts its fiscal year June 1.

Siers in 2015 also requested more funding from the township to pay her employees and at one point shuttered the office because of lack of funding.