David Burns.

Representative Dave.

Good morning.

David Burns, Chief of Staff, Cookhand Treasurer's Office.

Um, here in the place of CookAn Treasurer Maria Pappas.

Uh, thank you to the finance committee and Chairman Daly for having me here.

Our 2026 budget is $19.1 million dollars, and our budget is is relatively simple.

The overwhelming majority of the Treasurer's budget, $18.4 million comes from our automation account, not general county revenue.

Per accounty ordinance passed years ago by this board, the fees collected from commercial and bulk payer pay bulk payers fund the office.

We don't have any anticipated budget or spending concerns for the remainder of this fiscal year.

We currently have nine open positions.

One is on the corporate fund, eight are on the special purpose fund, and I'll speak to some of our special purpose needs here in a couple minutes.

As far as some of our budget updates, our our revenue from late payers is trending higher.

The budget revenue estimate is $35 million, and the revenue that we've collected through June was $33.8 million.

The reason for that is that roughly uh $14 million in revenue was collected between December of 2025 at the start of the fiscal year through April of 2026 because of the second installment due date for last year, which fell into fiscal year 25.

So the year-end revenue projection will is expected to come in higher at 47.4 million dollars.

So that's a uh a difference on the plus side of 12.4 million dollars.

And we do not expect to spend over our budget on the corporate fund.

As far as some of the highlights for 2026, what the office has has been doing, we continue to work on the full implementation of the uh Tyler integrated property tax system.

There's been a great deal of attention on this project.

We remain focused to see the implementation of a defect free system, and our our staff is is aligned accordingly with um with the the respective stakeholders in the county.

Uh as I've discussed and and I think uh Treasure Pappas has discussed and other folks in our office numerous occasions.

The Treasurer's Office is at the tail end of the property tax cycle.

In order to establish a property tax due date, we rely on data and processes from other offices.

The assessments and exemptions come from the assessor's office, appeals are heard and finalized by the Board of Review.

The State Department of Revenue calculates the equalization factor, tax extension tax rates are calculated to determine by the county clerk's office based based on the levies, revenue uh sought by taxing districts spread throughout the city of Chicago and suburban Cook County.

Only after those tasks are completed that we will get a tax bill file and from the Tyler system and review that.

Once we go through our comprehensive testing and determine it is generally free of defects, we pass it to the vendor to print fold and mail the property tax bills.

We continue to see uh a number of defects within the Tyler system.

When the defect does arise, we log that defect, attach relevant screenshots and evidence to um the supporting documentation and turn it over to the vendor to fix.

While we have been successful in greatly increasing the number of refunds to taxpayers, there are certain refund processes that are still impacted by by defense by defects.

Additionally, our distribution process remained remains uh impacted by some defects as well.

Hopefully, the distribution detail data sought by taxing districts can be added to the taxing agency extra net in the next few days.

We are currently loading a file into our development site to test, and then we'll have it released for taxing districts to see the detail of their distributions, which is something that they have asked this board for as well.

So that should be done today, tomorrow, by the middle of next week.

From an IT stand uh staff standpoint, we continue to add several data experts.

And the reason is is threefold.

One, we do have some upcoming um retirements over the next few years.

We want to bring folks on board so that we can enable proper knowledge transfer of the those tasks and and and institutional knowledge.

Additional help has been needed to analyze and diagnose ongoing data challenges with the system.

And then the third reason is once we have stability in the integrated property tax system, uh, we're gonna turn back our our focus to AI implementation and utilization.

On July 10th, the governor signed into law of the historic property tax reforms uh sought by the treasurer's office in the county.

The new law creates that tax deed auction system and it phases out private tax buying in Cook County.

The credit goes to Justin Kervin and Chinique Ross from our office for for pushing those those reforms and spending countless hours in in Springfield trying to get the ball across the line there.

Our annual property tax sale is postponed for 2023.

The 2023 annual tax sale was postponed twice by Springfield.

It will occur in December of this year.

The reason for those delays was predicated on those tax sale reforms being passed by by Springfield.

That's the current current state of the treasurer's office.

And I chairman, I'll be happy to entertain any questions.

Commissioner Nye.

Thank you, Chair.

Um Thanks for being here.

Um so I have a question regarding um you walked us through some of the variances and um in the late bills and what that did to what was coming in um as of as a form of revenue.

But I um I saw also some different variances in the personnel and contractual services.

Can you walk us through those?

Yes.

Particularly I'm interested in the contractual services.

The contractual services um we have we have several, I guess, invoices or contracts that are paid will be paid later this year.

So it's it's a timing issue where um instead of those being paid uh at the onset, the invoices and and timing of which is later in the fiscal year.

And what type of contractual services?

I Andrew Jadico is our chief financial officer.

I can I defer to him.

He's he's on teams.

Andrew, Andrew Jadico.

Andrew, we see you connected and your mic is up in.

Can you hear us?

I can hear you guys.

Go ahead.

Go ahead, Andrew.

I'm sorry.

Um can you guys repeat the question?

Yeah, I was um this is Commissioner and I have just wondering what contractual services are um gonna be paid um later in the year.

I mean it's a relatively small budget, but um just wondering.

Yeah, there's uh there's a couple of contractual um purchases that strictly revolve around um uh armored car services and whatnot.

So we typically pay those uh in the second half of the year when we get invoiced.

So um nothing nothing too major on the Andrew.

Is that normal every year that that's when you get the bills?

Yeah, that's a very normal that's a very normal thing.

Umfortunately, unfortunately, but it's I know it's a little silly, but I end up putting that same response uh on that specific item on the document uh annually.

Right.

Okay, thank you.

Um and then my second question was in regards to uh personnel.

Um so there is mention in two um places that there's restructuring of positions.

Is that the one you were just talking about?

That's that's sorry to IT group.

Okay, you're right, bringing in additional data help.

Okay.

And and DBAs.

Those that was my only question.

Thank you, Chairman.

Commissioner Miller, anything?

Commissioner Trevor.

Um no questions right now.

Thank you.

Commissioner McCasco.

Okay.

Commissioner Fascis.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, and before I begin, I just like to personally thank you for all of the assistance you've provided for our office, um, as well as a couple of other folks on your team, uh, Kelly Carvelis, I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, as well as Evet Velasquez.

Um, both of them have been really helpful in answering some pretty complex questions.

So I appreciate the responsiveness of the treasurer's staff and especially you David.

So thank you.

Um you mentioned uh that this Gavin, is it the scavenger sale that's moving to December?

Is that annual property tax sale?

I'm so sorry, annual property tax sale.

Uh, what is the status of the scavenger sales system?

Do we expect a new system to be set in place and operational?

The scavenger sale was largely phased out um two years ago with legislation that was that was approved by by Springfield.

And because it wasn't it wasn't productive, it wasn't returning property back to the tax rolls.

So after the annual sale now, property that is forfeited or or not sold to a private tax buyer becomes not languishing in 20 years of unpaid property taxes, but that tax certificate is held by the county, and the county can proceed to to deed on that property if it so chooses, or uh deed it to another municipality partner or or another non not-for-profit entity.

So the scavenger sales system is inefficient as it was, has been largely phased out and replaced by that county program.

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

Yep.

Thank you, Chair, and I apologize for being late in asking this question.

Uh you may have uh already answered it.

I came in about a couple minutes late.

Uh so um I've heard a lot from my district about about uh disbursements.

Um and can you describe any uh uh any barriers uh this time round to producing those those disbursements?

We we uh uh uh commissioner we don't foresee any issues upcoming with distribution once property tax bills come out, given the fact that both installments a full tax year will be within the Tyler system.

Last year, some of the problems that we had with distribution were exacerbated by the first installment through the mainframe, second installment through Tyler.

So that created, I think a a bit of challenges for both Tyler and and the county that we are still working our way through.

But as far as the second installment, the assurances that we've been given is that we don't see any any problems for distributing second installment revenue comes in after we start collecting it.

Great.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner McCasco.

I believe good morning, good morning both.

Um I believe you've answered it, but um just for some of my very south um suburban areas.

Um, how can the treasurer's office strengthen the collaboration um between the assessor's office so that the municipalities no longer suffer the burden of poor communication across the county's systems because it's impact their budgets?

So is there greater collaboration now that we've seen the what the issues with Tyler?

Are we working conjunctively?

Um the assessor, the treasurer, the so are we working in conserv?

Are the the stakeholders and and I believe uh CIO Tom Lynch mentioned this the other day, there is daily collaboration across not only the treasurer's office, the clerk's office, the assessor's office, but also from the president's office and and the Bureau of Technology.

The the the county really is in lockstep as far as what the priorities are, getting out the property tax bills, getting a defect-free system.

Obviously, there's going to be pain points there that have to be dealt with, but it's not done in a vacuum.

There is a significant amount of collaboration that that is done, whether it's myself, whether it's Justin Kervin, our policy director, whether it's it's you know the treasurer herself in in trying to um you know establish a way to keep moving forward despite of the challenges that we faced.

Okay, thank you.

And I actually asked my mayors to shoot me questions that they had specifically, but it seems like everything has already been uh basically addressed.

I believe the most important thing was um as we move forward with things to try and assist our municipalities like our bridge loan, some of my municipalities they simply would just like to have the taxes they are entitled to on time because with that they don't need the bridge loan, whereas other communities could benefit from it.

Um I have some communities that specifically have stated I don't want it.

I just want you to release what's already due to us, and then also when the bill comes out to make sure to actually itemizes what those dollars are for.

Yep.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate you.

Did Fred over there for indeed?

Brian.

Okay, there you go.

Frank, did you have any questions?

If that the status of I know they gave an update if you see it moving along, yes, because it comes to you fine.

Yeah, for for the 2025 second installment, um the goal is still trending towards October 1st.

The treasurer's office doesn't have the bill file just yet.

It currently is residing with the clerk who's in the final stages of doing the tax extension and tax rates.

At this point, we don't see any blockers from getting the tax bills out in late August, early September for in October 1st due date.

Once those those amounts are known, um it's the intent of the Treasurer's Office to put those up on the website in mid August if all keeps going well.

At least people can see the amount that they owe, and if they do want to pay early before they receive a tax bill in their mailbox.

That's something that we we intend to do is as as well.

Again, stay tuned.

And if there are any questions that that Chairman, either you or any of the commissioners have, um feel free to reach out to me and my staff as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you.