Brandi Lentz

“My husband and I own a couple hundred acres. When I heard about the tax on wooded acreage going up, I emailed the assessor. My previous tax bill was $756. I found out that was going to go up over $10,000.”

“What I’ve learned from [state Rep. Wayne] Rosenthal is that when this law passed in 2007, it was meant to keep ground from being cleared for farming to bring down the taxes. It would allow for this ground to be put into woodland programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program.”

“If you look at the properties here in Montgomery County, you couldn’t do that. They’re covered in ravines. They have no utilities. They’re actually considered what’s called ‘wasteland’ in some cases.”

“When I sent emails to other counties in Illinois, I couldn’t get a clear idea of how ‘wooded acreage’ was being defined. The Department of Revenue description is different than the Bureau of Land Management.”

“The counties who say they’re enforcing this, there’s no way they’re doing it the same way as Montgomery County, or you would have heard about it from them first. This would have been like a 3500% increase in some cases. That doesn’t just happen without anyone hearing about it.”

“I feel our county is lacking transparency. I believe I’m a pretty educated person – I have a bachelor’s of business administration from the University of Illinois – but this can be extremely confusing. I read the newspaper, but what I’ve learned is that the newspaper doesn’t always pick up on everything that goes on in committees.”

“Once I dipped my toes into this, I knew there was no going back. I think that this could still very well rear its ugly head again. My immediate hope was that we could pause this for 2024, and thankfully that has happened.”

“The county is going to put this on hold and do a study, which is the right call. Now we don’t have to worry about the tax assessments coming out in a couple weeks and the bills being due in six months.”

“But this ultimately needs to be taken care of at the state level. We need to revisit some of these laws and look at whether these taxes are appropriate. What do they actually mean when they say ‘woodlands?’”

“Montgomery County already has very high property taxes compared to a lot of counties around the state. And I know from my real estate business, a lot of properties are taxed incorrectly. Some are over-assessed and some are under-assessed.”

“At some point I feel like people are just tired of being taxed. Every time you turn around it’s ‘Let’s throw this tax here or that tax there.’ And when you’re talking about completely unproductive land, it’s just: at what point does this stop?”

Brandi Lentz

MCR Realty Professionals Inc.

Hillsboro, IL