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this minority tends to have the most wealth, knowledge of the system’s quirks and weaknesses,
and resources to navigate avenues to appeal. The aggregate effect of appeals from this minority is
to reduce its share of the base, thus shifting more of the responsibility for property taxes to
everyone else.

Getting initial assessments right and ensuring the integrity of the appeals process are the keys to
making sure our assessment system is fair. We’ll always need the appeals process to identify
errors, but the more we can get right at the outset, the more we improve the assessment system
for everyone.

As you read this report, I hope you see the energy, talents, and commitment to equity that my team
brings to public service. Section 5 goes into detail about how we manage property tax exemptions
and incentives for economic development as well as the outreach we do in communities
throughout the county. Each person brings different expertise in terms of property valuation, data
science, customer service, analysis, technology, management, policy, and communication. What
unites them is the desire to support our core mission: accurate and fair assessments.

In publishing this report, we hope to provide information that will help you monitor the performance
of our office, our assessments, and the property tax system as a whole.

We will continue to publish reports on the results of our work. I hope you find this report useful and
look forward to future editions.

Yours Sincerely,

Fritz Kaegi

About the cover:

The cover of this report features original artwork by artist Chris Ware whose work is
frequently seen within the pages, and on the cover of, The New Yorker. A resident of Oak
Park, Illinois, Ware is the author of Jimmy Corrigan – the Smartest Kid on Earth and Building
Stories, which was listed as a Top Ten Fiction Book by both The New York Times and Time
magazine. His work has been exhibited at the MCA Chicago, MoCa Los Angeles and the
Whitney Museum of American Art, and was the focus of the PBS program Art21. An
eponymous monograph was released by Rizzoli in 2017 and his Rusty Brown Part I in 2019.

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