When the Cook County Treasurer's office published its Tax Year 2025 bill analysis in August 2026, Prospect Heights had the largest jump in the north and northwest suburbs. The median homeowner bill rose 20.9%, or $1,254, to $7,268. Across the region the median rose 6.7%. The first version of the report tied the increase, in part, to the March 2026 referendum in which voters approved a $21.5 million road bond. The office later corrected that. In a footnote to the revised analysis, it says the bonds had not been issued when the report came out, "so approval of the referendum did not play any role in the increase."
The correction matters to anyone comparing homes here. The road bond drew the headlines, but it is designed to leave the city's tax rate about where it was. The 20.9% came from the reassessment, which moved more of the existing tax load onto houses. Anyone pricing a Prospect Heights home needs to know which of those two forces is behind the bill they're looking at.
The tax bill on a listing right now is the first one that includes the reassessment
The tax figure a buyer sees for a Prospect Heights home this fall most likely comes from the Tax Year 2025 bills. Their second installments arrived late. In an August 18, 2026 announcement, Cook County said these bills were running two months behind because the previous year's overhaul of its property tax technology had delayed everything after it. The county planned to mail them by September 1, with payment due October 1, 2026.
So the 2025 north suburban reassessment has only just shown up in final bills. A comparison with last year's tax figure, or with a neighboring suburb's, is really a comparison across a reassessment cycle. Prospect Heights went through that cycle harder than nearly every other community in the region.
Where the 20.9% actually came from
In the Treasurer's municipal tables for the north assessment region, Prospect Heights had the second-largest increase in median residential assessed value. It went from $23,423 in 2024 to $31,824 in 2025, a 35.87% rise. Only Kenilworth was higher.
A higher assessment does not raise a bill on its own. Each taxing body sets a levy, which is the total dollars it plans to collect, and that levy is split among properties according to their share of the total assessed value. When home values rise faster than business values, homes take a bigger share of the same levy. That is what happened here. The corrected analysis says Prospect Heights home values rose 31.4% while business property values rose 12.4%, at the same time as the city and every school district serving it raised their levies by 3.5% or more.
The same pattern ran across the whole region, only less sharply. In the north and northwest suburbs, residential taxes rose $359.5 million, or 9.9%, while taxes on business property rose $3.7 million, or 0.2%. The Treasurer describes this as a shift of about 2% of the region's tax burden onto homeowners. The Assessor's office reported that after 2025 Board of Review appeals, residential property made up 68% of total assessed value across the 13 townships, up from 66% before the reassessment.
In Prospect Heights, the gap between home and business value growth was 19 percentage points. That gap does more to explain this year's bills than anything on the ballot did.
What the road bond actually changes
The March 17, 2026 ballot question read:
"Shall bonds in the amount of $21,500,000 be issued by the City of Prospect Heights, Cook County, Illinois, for the purpose of improving, reconstructing and resurfacing roads, improving and maintaining bridges, intersections, curbs and sidewalks and purchasing road maintenance vehicles and equipment, said bonds bearing interest at the rate of not to exceed 6.5%?"
It passed 1,345 to 524, according to the Journal & Topics. The Treasurer's analysis puts turnout at 13.3% of the city's eligible voters.
The bond continues an existing road program. Voters approved $15 million in road bonds on November 2, 2010, after a 2008 street assessment found deteriorating streets. That debt is paid off on December 31, 2026. City Administrator Peter Falcone told the Journal & Topics that the city wanted the new 20-year bond to follow straight on from the old one, "to cause the least amount of disruption to our residents' property taxes," because the net tax rate would stay consistent.
The Daily Herald reported the dollar amounts involved. A typical $450,000 Prospect Heights home pays less than $500 a year in property tax to the city. Falcone said rejecting the new funding would have cut that city amount by about two-thirds, and left the roads in much worse condition. In other words, most of what the city collects in property tax goes to roads, and the March vote kept that payment going rather than adding a new one.
In return, the city has named the streets it plans to work on. According to the Journal & Topics, work in 2027 would be concentrated in the Rob Roy area and along:
- Wheeling Road
- Coldren Drive north of Camp McDonald
- Portions of Alton Road, Edward Road, Alderman Avenue and Roberts Lane
- Quaker Lane, Piper Lane and Apple Drive
The Daily Herald reported that about 14% of the money goes to new projects. These include finishing bridge maintenance on Maple Road, sidewalk improvements on Willow Road and Burning Bush Lane, curb work at intersections, and road maintenance vehicles and equipment. The city's financial report says 2026 bonds will fund the road and equipment work. The sources we reviewed do not confirm a bond sale date or the first tax year that will carry the new debt.
The city is one of the smaller lines on the bill
A Prospect Heights tax bill combines charges from several overlapping taxing bodies. The city's own financial report lists 2024 rates per $100 of equalized assessed value. Which elementary district and other bodies appear on a particular bill depends on the parcel's tax code.
| Taxing body | 2024 rate per $100 EAV |
|---|---|
| Wheeling CCSD 21 | 4.906 |
| River Trails SD 26 | 4.330 |
| Prospect Heights SD 23 | 3.516 |
| High School District 214 | 2.574 |
| Prospect Heights Fire Protection District | 1.170 |
| Prospect Heights Park District | 0.798 |
| Prospect Heights Public Library District | 0.560 |
| Harper College | 0.433 |
| Cook County | 0.390 |
| City of Prospect Heights | 0.357 |
| Metropolitan Water Reclamation District | 0.340 |
| Oakton College | 0.237 |
| Forest Preserve District | 0.069 |
| Wheeling Township | 0.055 |
Each home pays one elementary district, one community college district and one set of special districts, so no bill includes every row. The proportions are still clear. In 2024 the city's rate was lower than any of the school rates. The Cook County Clerk released its Tax Year 2025 rate report on September 23, 2026, so these 2024 figures show the structure of the bill rather than this year's exact rates.
The next vote affecting part of the city is three weeks away
Since the city's portion is designed to stay flat, the next likely changes to Prospect Heights bills come from the larger taxing bodies. One of them is on the November 3, 2026 ballot.
Board materials from Prospect Heights School District 23 show the board approved putting a limiting rate increase proposition before voters in that election. The proposed limiting rate is 3.634147% for levy year 2026. Under the state's tax cap law, the district's total extension can normally grow each year by 5% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. The draft resolution of intent would set the levy-year 2026 limit at $28,075,097. That figure is the expected 2025 extension of $23,442,159, plus a 2.7% inflation increase of $632,938, plus $4,000,000. In the draft, the $4,000,000 and the total are still in brackets, so they are proposed figures. If those numbers hold, District 23's taxes would be about 20% above the expected 2025 extension. That would affect only homes within District 23.
Other local bodies have also been adjusting their levies:
- On October 29, 2025, the Prospect Heights Public Library District board approved an additional 0.02% tax for sites, buildings and related building costs.
- In November 2025, the Prospect Heights Park District approved a $723,810 limited-tax park bond ordinance, with an annual levy to pay principal and interest.
- In October 2025, High School District 214 surveyed taxpayers about funding roughly $900 million in school renovations and was considering its first referendum in more than 50 years, as the Daily Herald reported.
None of these is large compared with the reassessment shift. Together they show where any future change to a Prospect Heights bill is more likely to come from. Our Prospect Heights neighborhood page and our breakdown of single-family inventory by price point cover how these costs fit with what is for sale.
Quick answers
Did the March 2026 road referendum raise Tax Year 2025 bills? No. The Treasurer's corrected analysis says the bonds had not been issued when it was released, so the referendum played no role in the increase.
Will the road bond increase the city's tax rate later? City officials designed it to replace the 2010 debt, which ends December 31, 2026, so that the net rate stays about the same.
Why can two Prospect Heights homes with similar values have different bills? Elementary district boundaries and other overlapping districts differ by tax code. Districts 21, 23 and 26 had noticeably different 2024 rates.
This post explains how Cook County property taxes work and is general information, not tax, legal or financial advice. Please confirm how any of it applies to a specific property with a qualified tax professional or the county offices.
If you're weighing a Prospect Heights home and want to see how its tax history fits with the rest of the numbers, or you're selling and want buyers to understand this year's bill, The PAK Group can go through it with you. You can start by requesting your complimentary home valuation.
