Excerpts from the DailyHerald.com:

A Kane County judge has ordered a do-over for the Fox River & Countryside Fire/Rescue District referendum for Nov. 6 because the early voting and election day ballots in the spring were incomplete.

The rescue district’s tax increase question was rejected by 32 votes in the March 20 primary election, but Ken Shepro and other residents filed a lawsuit arguing the Kane County clerk failed to include a sentence on the ballot explaining what the tax increase would cost homeowners. That sentence is required by state law for tax increase questions and the clerk’s office failed to fix the problem after being notified, the suit says. In this case, it should have informed voters their taxes would increase $53 a year for every $100,000 in equalized assessed value of a home.

According to the lawsuit, Kane County Clerk John Cunningham was informed during early voting that the ballot question was incomplete. The remedy was to have election judges hand applicable voters a slip of paper explaining the tax increase’s effect for each $100,000 value of a home. Some voters got the slips but many did not.

Fire officials have said the tax increase was needed to avoid closing one of the district’s two fire stations every other day. Since the ballot effort failed, officials have cut several firefighters.

thanks Dennis

Tags: Fox River & Countryside Fire/Rescue District, tax increase referendum for fire district