Why is your Cook County property tax bill so high? South, southwest suburbs recently reassessed

COOK COUNTY, Ill. (WLS) -- Cook County property tax bills are due on Thursday and homeowners in the south and southwest suburbs said their bills are through the roof even after the region was recently reassessed.

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi has declined to speak on camera with the I-Team for years, but we were able to catch up with him before he spoke at a south suburban community-investor meeting.

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The first thing he said homeowners should do is make sure they have their exemptions on their bills. But some, like Emma Archibong, said that's not enough.

"Compared to last year it's $2,000 higher," she said. "I saw it on the news, but I didn't think it would happen to me."

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The assessor's office said Archibond's property tax bill spike is due to the increased market value of her Harvey property, and her exemptions were less than previous years.

As the I-Team reported previously, the median tax bill went up more than 19% in the south suburban region this year. Experts said some property values rose, and, at the same time, the assessor's COVID-19 reduction on assessments ended.

An expert is providing tax tips, as Cook County property taxes are due Thursday.

Since the tax bills went out, the I-Team has received dozens of emails and voicemail messages from homeowners saying they can't afford to stay in their homes.

"One thing I'm concerned about is we've seen massive reduction in commercial bills," Kaegi said.

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Kaegi blames the higher residential bills on reductions in commercial tax bills He said properties like apartments and condos, businesses and big box stores won almost $1 billion in reductions after appealing to the Cook County Board of Review.

"There's an obscure part of Cook County government called the Cook County Board of Review that dramatically cut assessments for commercial properties like those, and it shifted in on to homeowners," he said. "The problem is this other body of government reduced commercial properties by $1 billion and that shifted about four percentage points of the burden on to homeowners "

So the I-Team went to the Board of Review, who denied they're lowering commercial tax bills specifically.

"No. Again, we look at individual cases. And our data and our analysts look at PIN numbers and look at numbers. They don't look at where it's coming from. They look at numbers and they look at the underlying facts," said Georga Cardenas, commissioner of the 1st District of the Cook County Board of Review.

Commissioners Cardenas and Samantha Steele said the commercial assessment reductions in the south and southwest suburbs were justified.

"While it is easy for assessor to say we lowered values, we are being forced to lower values because they are being increased inappropriately," Steele said.

MORE COVERAGE: Cook County Assessor to correct thousands of errors in south, west suburbs

So then what should residents do?

"Then [Kaegi] should stop over assessing commercial properties," Steele said.

Steele said residential properties have also been over-assessed because there has not been a full, in-person field evaluation for Cook County's nearly 2 million properties since 1997.

"So when you are starting with out-of-date information, it doesn't matter how fancy and progressive your models are. When you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out," she said.

The assessor's office said it "follows modern industry practices that use in-person inspections," and added it uses "Geographic Information Systems," a set of hardware and software to often visualize geographic data.

"People think I love property taxes as the assessor," Kaegi said. "I don't like property taxes, I think it is a regressive way for schools and villages to be able pay for our services, but it is the system we have."

Unless there is a square footage error or a mistake on the number of rooms in your home, it's too late to appeal this year's property taxes, but appealing can help on future bills. You can appeal with the assessor, the Board of Review, and P-TAB, the state agency that has a final say.

You can also set up a payment plan if you can't pay your property tax bill in full right away.