Thrive65

Tax impact estimator

What would this cost my household?

District 65 could raise property taxes in several ways over the next few years. Enter your home's value or your rent, choose which increases to include, and see what they would add to your tax bill or rent, year by year.

Your numbers

Everything below is adjustable. Nothing entered is saved.

Do you own or rent?
$

No bill handy? Estimate it from market value below.

$

Cook County assesses homes at 10% of market value, then the state applies its equalization factor (3.0300 for 2025), and the $10,000 standard homeowner exemption comes off. A $500,000 home works out to about $141,500. Senior and other exemptions would lower it further. "Market value" here means the assessor's value, which can differ from a sale price.

$

The "Evanston/Skokie School District 65" line on your 2026 tax bill. If you enter it, every estimate on this page uses it, which also picks up the 2025 reassessment. Until then, this is estimated from your EAV.

What to include

Untick a piece to leave it out of your total. Open one to change its amount, term or start year.

Yearly levy increase

The district requested a 4.99% increase, but existing homeowners should expect closer to 2.4%. State law caps growth on existing property at inflation, 2.7% for taxes paid in 2027, and that cap covers about 95% of the District 65 tax. The other 5%, existing bond payments, is estimated to fall 2.88%. The district's own memo estimates capped extensions will actually rise about 3%, with the extra coming from newly built property, billed to its owners rather than to you. The levy is set to be adopted December 14.

%

The inflation rate the state set for taxes payable in 2027.

% / yr

3.0% is the district's own planning assumption. State law caps it at 5%. The operating referendum grows at this rate too.

Which increases to count

Districts usually levy the maximum every year, and each increase builds on the one before. "Just the 2026 levy" isolates this year's decision.

Health & life safety bonds

The district has started to borrow for this work. Its FY2027 budget anticipates about $22.1 million in health and life safety bond proceeds, and the proposed summer 2027 repairs use $5 million of these bonds alongside $3.85 million of district funds. The full $128.8 million survey is a ten-year ceiling, not a plan.

Amount borrowed for safety work
$

$22 million is the bond amount in the FY2027 budget. $128.8 million is the full ten-year survey reported to the board in August 2026, much of which can be deferred for up to a decade.

years

Illinois caps these particular bonds at 20 years.

% / yr

4% to 5% is a common range for school borrowing.

year paid

Bonds sold during 2027 would most likely first appear on bills paid in 2028.

Capital referendum

No capital referendum has been proposed. The district has said it is exploring a bond referendum in November 2028 to build two new or significantly renovated schools and invest in the buildings that remain. It has not named an amount.

Amount borrowed, approved by voters
$

For scale, District 65 has identified about $409.6 million of facilities needs in the first ten years.

years

Illinois caps voter-approved building bonds at 30 years. Terms of 20 to 25 years are common.

% / yr

4% to 5% is a common range for school borrowing.

year paid

This assumes a November 2028 vote, with bonds sold in 2029 and first repaid on bills paid in 2030.

Operating referendum

No operating referendum has been proposed, and an operating increase does not expire on its own. Unlike bonds, which end when they are repaid, an approved operating increase becomes part of the district's permanent tax base unless the ballot question sets an end date. District 65's 2017 referendum was presented as a time-limited bridge.

How is the increase described?
$

Referendum questions are often described this way in news coverage and district materials. $20 million is the reduction target in the district's FY2028 plan, shown for scale.

year paid

Operating money arrives through the next tax cycle. A question on the November 2028 ballot would first show up on bills paid in 2029.

Added on your 2030 bill
bill paid

The headline figure below is the total for this year. 2030 is the first year all four pieces would appear on a bill under the default start years.

years

Counted from bills paid in 2027. Levy and operating increases do not expire on their own, so this is just a window for comparison.

Already on your bill

What you still pay for the 2017 referendum

Per year, 2026 bill

$0

Per month

$0

Voters approved an operating referendum in April 2017 (about 80% yes) to raise about $14.5 million a year, starting with bills paid in 2018. It had no end date, so it is now part of the district's permanent tax base and has grown with the tax cap every year since: an estimated $18.4 million on 2026 bills, about 12% of what District 65 collects. This is already in your current bill, so it is not counted in the increases above. Thrive65 estimate.

District-wide

What the borrowing would cost the district

Every taxpayer together, using the amounts, terms and rates set for Health & life safety bonds and the Capital referendum above.

How to read this. Annual payment is level debt service: principal plus interest, the same each year. Interest is highest in the first year and falls as the loan is paid down, so the first-year figure is the peak, and the average spreads total interest evenly over the term. Thrive65 estimate.

For scale. District 65 extended $7.43 million for bond and interest on Tax Year 2025 bills and had $99.1 million of long-term debt principal outstanding on June 30, 2025. The levy memo doesn't publish the interest share of that payment.

Year by year

Added to what you pay on your 2026 bill, by the year the bill is paid.

Show as a table

How that number is built

What this estimate assumes

Why a vote may not be required

Sources

  1. District 65 FY2025 annual financial report (fiscal year ending June 30, 2025), Financial Profile Information page, reporting a Tax Year 2024 equalized assessed valuation of $4,203,686,381 and long-term debt principal outstanding of $99,111,300 as of June 30, 2025.
  2. District 65, HLS Approval for Submission to ISBE, board memo (August 4, 2026), reporting $128.8 million in identified health and life safety work.
  3. District 65 FY2027 tentative budget memo (August 31, 2026) and FY2027 budget filed with ISBE (September 2026), showing about $22.1 million of anticipated health and life safety bond proceeds ($22,000,000 in bond principal in the Fire Prevention and Safety Fund) against about $4.4 million of eligible spending in FY2027.
  4. Evanston RoundTable, "District 65 board debates budget cut plan again amid community backlash" (November 10, 2026), reporting proposed summer 2027 repairs of $3.85 million in district funds and $5 million in health and life safety bonds.
  5. District 65, "2026 Tentative Tax Levy," memo from CFO Eric Miller (October 26, 2026): 2025 extension of $148,509,149 ($141,083,900 capped, $7,425,249 bond and interest); a 4.99% request for capped funds with an estimated 3.01% extension; bond and interest estimated down 2.88%; estimated levy set November 16, public hearing and final adoption December 14.
  6. Evanston RoundTable, "District 65 proposes 4.99% property tax increase" (October 27, 2026), reporting the 4.99% levy request, the 2.7% inflation factor for taxes payable in 2027, about $15 million in assumed new property, the district's estimate of about $110 a year for a $500,000 home, and a public hearing set for December 14.
  7. Evanston RoundTable, "Property tax report: Median residential bill up 5%" (August 24, 2026), citing the Cook County Treasurer's 2025 Tax Year Bill Analysis: District 65's Tax Year 2025 levy of $150.43 million, up $4.58 million from Tax Year 2024; District 65 at 41.25% of Evanston bills and the city, including the library, at 18.87% ($62.68 million); and, after the 2025 reassessment, median residential taxable value up 17.67% against 8.58% to 11.14% for other property types, moving homes from 69% to 70.4% of Evanston's taxable value. The District 65 Tax Year 2025 extension (source 5) divided by the Tax Year 2025 EAV (Cook County Clerk, below) gives the rate, about 2.985%, this page uses to estimate your District 65 tax when you have not entered one.
  8. Cook County Clerk, "Tax Year 2025 Agency EAV by Class Report" (October 6, 2026): School District C C 65 (agency 04-0270-000) total valuation less exemptions of $4,975,974,449, of which $4,011,594,534 residential. Used as the district's total taxable value. Illinois Department of Revenue 2025 Cook County final equalization factor of 3.0300 and the $10,000 general homeowner exemption are used to estimate EAV from market value.
  9. District 65, Financial Projection Assumptions (October 2026), assuming inflation of 2.7% for levy year 2026 and 3.0% in later levy years.
  10. District 65, "A Sustainable Path Forward," board committee presentation (September 14, 2026), with long-range financial projections running through FY2032. The "through 2032" figures on this page stop at the same year so they can be read alongside the district's own outlook.
  11. District 65, FY2028 proposed financial sustainability package (October 2026), describing a potential bond referendum in November 2028 for two new or significantly renovated schools and investment in remaining buildings, and a $20 million FY2028 reduction target.
  12. Minnesota Department of Revenue, "Percentage of Rent Constituting Property Taxes," presuming property taxes on residential rental property average 17% of annual rent; and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noting that Maine's Property Tax Fairness Credit assumes 25% of gross rent. Used for the share of rent that covers property tax.
  13. Research on how much of a property tax change reaches rent: Carroll and Yinger, "Is the Property Tax a Benefit Tax? The Case of Rental Housing" (about $0.15 per $1); Schwegman and Yinger, U.S. Census Bureau CES Working Paper 20-43 (2020) (about 14%); Baker, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Working Paper 25-41 (2025) ($0.50 to $0.89 per $1); Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Working Paper 26-51 (about 73% in professionally managed large apartments, no significant market-wide effect); and Löffler and Siegloch (about 83% over several years, Germany). These set the low, middle, and high presets.
  14. For a Brighter Evanston, "D65 Ten-Year Financial Model, v4" (New_Money tab: $17,000,000 operating referendum from FY2030 growing with local revenue; $63,737,800 in bonds replacing $7,967,225 a year of capital transfers; memo debt service of $4,899,916 a year) and "Model Executive Summary" (November 2026), used for the community v4 package preset.
  15. District-wide financing costs use level debt service on the bond amounts entered on this page. Existing bond and interest ($7,425,249, Tax Year 2025 extension) is from source 5; long-term debt outstanding ($99,111,300) is from source 1.
  16. The Daily Northwestern, "Voters set to decide District 65's financial future through property tax referendum" (April 3, 2017), reporting that the referendum would raise about $14.5 million a year; Evanston RoundTable, "80% Yes! D65 Referendum Passes" (April 5, 2017). Growth since then applies the Illinois Department of Revenue's PTELL inflation factors for levy years 2018 to 2025 (Thrive65 estimate).
  17. 35 ILCS 200/18-185, Property Tax Extension Limitation Law, limiting annual growth in a district's capped levy to the lesser of 5% or the prior year's change in the Consumer Price Index, plus new property.
  18. 105 ILCS 5/17-2.11, school board authority to levy taxes or issue bonds for fire prevention, safety, and specified repair purposes, with such bonds required to mature within 20 years.
  19. Illinois House Bill 4582 (103rd General Assembly), effective July 1, 2024, setting a 30-year maximum maturity for voter-approved school bonds issued to purchase, construct, or improve real property, for referendums held on or after November 5, 2024.

Thrive65 is an independent community coalition and is not affiliated with or operated by District 65. These are estimates, not tax or legal advice. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it.