Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Crain's Chicago Business
by Dennis Rodkin

After waiting through months of delays to see their latest tax bills, this morning property owners swarmed the Cook County Treasurer’s Office website, which seemed to sag under the heavy traffic.

Trying to call up the tax bill sparked a long delay, sometimes followed by an error message. Several users reported this on social media throughout the morning. Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas said some users couldn’t get their bills to print. All of that seemed to be fixed as of 2:30 p.m.

The high volume of online traffic “was no different than traffic around the United Center after a Bulls game,” Pappas told Crain’s. “It passes.” Her office brought in assistance from Microsoft to clear up the trouble. At 1:30 pm, she said the site would be operating normally within an hour.

Pappas said the extra traffic came at an already busy time: the first day of the annual tax sale, where properties with delinquent tax bills are offered up to anyone who pays off the bill.

The tax sale crowd was expected, as it happens at this time every year. The people checking on their second-installment tax bills were not scheduled. Pappas merely delivers the bills and was not part of the bureaucratic finger-pointing that delayed the bills by five months.

Yesterday, Pappas announced the bills would finally be ready, after months of haggling between Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi and the Board of Review. A report yesterday revealed that residential owners, not commercial owners, would carry more of the tax burden after many landlords scored big reductions by appealing their assessments.