The board of Grayslake Elementary District 46 should have stuck with its initial decision from October: to rebate property taxes to homeowners who paid more than they expected after approving a tax increase in 1999.
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Board member Keith Surroz, who last week reversed his previous support for the rebate, said the district, by hanging on to the money instead of returning it homeowners, can operate longer without returning to voters to ask for another tax increase.
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The problem, though, is that the district acquired the extra $6.9 million through means that almost certainly were not clear to residents who supported the tax increase.
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a school district accepting a premium collects more money than advertised in the original bond issue, but taxpayers also end up paying a greater overall cost for the loan than advertised or publicized.
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District 46 bond issue was among the most costly of all those examined. District officials agreed to pay 9 percent compound interest on the loan in exchange for collecting money that otherwise would not be available because of state-imposed debt limits. The result? District officials have several million more dollars with which to work but district taxpayers will pay back $2.41 for every dollar borrowed.

Instead of asking themselves how the school system would get by without the revenue that they would be rebating, District 46 officials should have been asking themselves whether they honestly think that voters would have OK’d the bond issue in the first place if they had been informed of all the details that emerged later. The related question is how long will it be before voters trust district officials sufficiently to approve any future tax-increase request. It doesn’t take much imagination or a particularly jaded view to venture that it might be a while.