Fed Up With Airport Noise: Appeal Your Real Estate Taxes

This is worth the effort:

Appeal your real estate taxes based on the amount of noise pollution you have to endure since the O'Hare expansion.

Chicago residents fed-up with new plane noise from O’Hare Airport said Friday they are appealing their property taxes based on it — and hope to encourage others to do the same.

Members of the Fair Allocation in Runways coalition revealed the latest anti-noise-pollution strategy during a meeting of the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission.

FAIR member and Sauganash resident Diane Yost said the planes that now stream over her house like a “string of pearls” have lowered her property’s value, perhaps as much as 10 to 15 percent, so her property taxes should go down, too.

 

“It’s prima facie evidence that your house values go down [based on airplane noise],” said Yost, a 39th Ward resident. A “very desirable swath of homes” on the city’s Northwest Side have been impacted by a new flight runway pattern launched in October yet are not eligible for O’Hare sound insulation, she said.

 

Yost said she filed an appeal of her property taxes by arguing that the new east-to-west flight flow has lowered her home’s property value by creating plane noise that didn’t exist when she purchased her house. She has yet to receive a ruling from the Cook County Assessor’s Office, she said.

FAIR member Judie Simpson, a North Park resident, asked the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission to resume publishing a list of each high-noise incident picked up by O’Hare noise monitors so residents can use the data to bolster their appeals.

 

Members said FAIR is considering briefing community groups on how to file property tax appeals based on new O’Hare noise -- a move that could hit the city in its pocketbook. FAIR also has sent Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel two sets of letters asking for a meeting about the “virtual highway of airplanes” over the Northwest Side, but has yet to hear back from him, members said.

The switch to mostly parallel runways should reduce delays in all kinds of weather and increase flight capacity, city officials have said. However, FAIR contends it has resulted in lopsided runway use, with 100 percent of night arrivals expected to be absorbed by one runway 70 percent of the year.

During Friday’s Noise Commission meeting, city officials revealed that O’Hare noise complaints continue to rise since the most recent phase of the O’Hare Modernization Program was completed in October. January 2014 complaints hit 6,321 – a new monthly record. The January 2014 total is up more than fourfold from January 2013.
 

Chicago Department of Aviation officials noted that the number of people complaining in January -- 462 -- is down from the 642 who beefed in December. About two-thirds of all complaints came from just eight homes, they said.
 

However, Aviation officials did not mention that the number of complainants in Chicago increased by 18 percent between December and January, with the bulk concentrated in the 41st, 39th, 45th wards. It’s beefs from suburban homes that are dropping.
Read the entire article in today's Sun-times.  Article written by Rosalind Rossi