Park Ridge and Niles homeowners will see the effects of a countywide tax burden shift when second-installment property tax bills arrive in mailboxes Sept. 1, but reforms to the commercial appeals process kept the shift smaller than three years ago.
Residential properties now make up 68% of the total assessed value across 13 north and northwest suburban Cook County townships, up from 66% before the 2025 reassessment began, according to data released Tuesday, Aug. 18, by the Cook County Assessor's Office. Both Maine Township, which includes Park Ridge, and Niles Township fall within that group.
That 2-percentage-point shift is half the size of the swing in 2022, when residential properties jumped from 63% to 67% of the tax base after commercial appeals.
The difference: commercial properties received only a 14% average value reduction on appeal at the Board of Review in 2025, compared to 20% in 2022. The Assessor's Office attributed the improvement to reforms implemented after a December 2024 study, including data-sharing with the Board of Review, joint methodology development for tax expense estimates and more staff appearances at appeal hearings.
"When big businesses no longer get the same huge cuts as they did before we began our reform of the appeal process, homeowners benefit," Assessor Fritz Kaegi said in the Aug. 18 announcement. He added that while the results represent a promising first step, the overall burden held by residents shows much more needs to be done.
The 68% residential share is the highest since the Assessor's Office began tracking the metric in 2019. Over eight years, homeowners' portion has climbed 11 percentage points.
Data centers played a key role
The Assessor's Office prepared individual defenses of its assessed values for 14 large commercial properties at Board of Review hearings, most of them data centers. Four received no reduction at all; another four received reductions of less than 25%. In 2022, north suburban industrial properties like data centers and warehouses were typically assessed at only two-thirds of their market value after appeals.
In Elk Grove Village, where many of those data centers sit, homeowners maintained their share of the tax base at roughly 41% after appeals concluded, according to the Assessor's Office.
What Park Ridge and Niles homeowners should do now
Bills are due Oct. 1. Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas announced Aug. 18 that property owners can already view, download and pay their second-installment bill online at cookcountytreasurer.com, two weeks before the Sept. 1 mailing.
Payments can also be made at nearly 400 Chase Bank locations in Illinois, at more than 100 participating community banks, or at the Treasurer's Office at 118 N. Clark St., Room 112, Chicago.
Homeowners who want to see how the reassessment affected their specific township or municipality can check the Assessor's interactive dashboards at cookcountyassessoril.gov/data-dashboard-townships and cookcountyassessoril.gov/data-dashboard-municipalities. Both Maine Township and Niles Township fall within Board of Review District 2, overseen by Commissioner Samantha Steele.
The next reassessment cycle for north suburban properties will occur in 2028.
