Echoing problems first publicly raised by suburban school district leaders, a subset of public library directors reported they have had to go into “ongoing financial triage” because property tax receipts that typically land in their bank accounts in the summer were months late.
Libraries received the bulk of their expected dollars last week and are expected to be made entirely whole this week. But in a memo shared with the Tribune, a group of library leaders said in recent months they’ve had to put off payments to vendors, paused new hires and canceled or scaled back public programs.
The impact on libraries is another wrinkle in the long-delayed upgrade of the county’s internal property tax systems with contractor Tyler Technologies. Though taxpayers settled their bills between mid-November and December, it has taken extra time to get those dollars into the bank accounts of cities, park districts, schools and libraries.