McHenry County Blog

Two of three regional daily newspapers took shots at District 300 tax hike efforts today.

When I saw the front pages, I concluded that the tax hike leaders would probably have a bad day. It’s ten days from election day.

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When I was in grad school at the University of Michigan, I did a paper on referendums. (I probably called them “referenda” then.)

I was trying to figure out what made referendums pass or fail.

I found that people in wealthy precincts combined forces with those in poor precincts to pass referendums. (I’m not saying they interacted; just that their voting patterns were positive.) Those voting “No” were in the middle of the income mix.

After looking at everything I could find, I concluded that the only common feature in successful referendums was a lack of an active opposition.

Presumably, District 300’s paid professionals—local resident Kathy Myer and the tax hike committee’s long-time St. Louis-based consultant Unicom, Arc—know this as well. (Actually, we do not know if Unicom is involved this year. State campaign disclosure laws do not require expenditures to be reported until July.)

That would explain why the tax hike committee thinks it needs $153,000--or, maybe, upwards of $200,000--to convince the voters to act in what the tax hikers consider “their own best interest.”

If one goes back to the $9,125 baseline poll that Unicom, Arc took last April, the tax hike committee already has over $150,000 to spend on this effort. (My previous estimate of total resources available--$143,000 in the bank as of July 1, 2005, plus contribution since--did not include the poll’s cost. I figure the tax hikers already have over $152,000 to spend to convince District 300 voters to cast a “Yes” vote.

Yet tax hike leader Nancy Zeller told Northwest Herald reporter Allison Smith that she’s $40,000 short of here fundraising goal this spring.

That would mean the proponents want to put on almost a $200,000 campaign.