:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/shawmedia/NX7QPNX3L5FLFJ6Z2IBTG5THSA.jpg)
DeKALB – The DeKalb Park District didn’t annex in the Meta DeKalb Data Center for two tax years, likely causing the district to miss out on more than a million dollars in tax revenue, an official said.
The 2.3 million-square-foot development was left off of the park district’s tax rolls for the 2022 and 2023 tax years as a taxable property, according to city documents. DeKalb city officials and taxing bodies have for years touted the data center – owned by the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – as a significant tax revenue generator, bringing in needed money to fund city services. The center went online in November 2023, investing more than $1 billion in the city, Meta representatives said.
Park District Executive Director Paul Zepezauer said he’s not sure how what he called an error on the district’s tax rolls went unnoticed for years.
The board originally went through the annexation process for the DeKalb Meta Data Center in July 2020. Zepezauer was hired four years later.
“I wasn’t here, and most of the people I work with weren’t a part of this process,” Zepezauer said. “For whatever reason, the annexation ordinance was never filed at the county.”
In 2022, about $39 million of taxable value from Meta didn’t make it onto the district’s equalized assessed valuation, which means the amount of property value the district can tax to bring in revenue, documents show. That number was about $197 million in lost property value in 2023.
“It’s been corrected. The board took the appropriate steps. ... That is certainly a staff responsibility and not a board responsibility to do the actual filing. So, it was a breakdown at the staff level.”
The Park District, like other government entities, taxes properties through an annual levy voted on by its Board of Commissioners. The levy brings in revenue based on residents' property tax bills.
It’s not clear exactly how much money exactly was left on the table by the district for failing to annex the Meta Dekalb Data Center.
“You would have to go back and assume that the board would have elected to levy the maximum,” Zepezauer said. “Now have they done that? Theoretically, they would have left a little in excess of a million dollars on the table for the park district.
Again, that’s assuming that they would have taken those same steps with that information. I think that’s a little hard to say with certainty. All we can do is look forward.”
When asked if this issue could impact how much the district will need to levy in future years to make up for what it’s lost, Zepezauer said he doesn’t expect it.
“This is in the past,” he said. “There’s no recapturing that money. All that will happen on the district side of things is we’ll have to push out our projects out to future years.
I’d say the district currently has a backlog of projects. A lot of our facilities have some pretty significant needs. We just have to budget appropriately and be wise with our choices and make sure we tackle one project at a time, make the best decisions we can and we move forward.”
The park district in November passed its 2024 property tax levy, which shows the district expects to collect about $6.6 million in tax revenue, up from $5.3 million in 2023.
When asked how much money the district anticipates receiving from Meta in 2025 with the adoption of its property tax levy, Zepezauer said it’s hard to say. He said some of Meta’s buildings are partially assessed and do not have abatements applied this year.
“However, looking at previous years data for the other taxing districts, I would feel comfortable saying that it appears that Meta’s 2025 park district tax will be in excess of a million dollars,” he said.
The amount taxing bodies received in 2022 and 2023 property tax bills ranged from $107,523 for DeKalb County Forest Preserve to $9.5 million for DeKalb School District 428, according to city documents.
The DeKalb library received $639,867 in total.
Zepezauer credits the park district’s board president for spotting the error so it could be corrected.
“Our president Dag Grada discovered that in the spring of 2024,” he said. “At that point, he notified staff. The staff that was here at that time, the previous director filed the ordinance and got everything in line. In the summer of 2025, we’ll start to receive the Meta value there.”
Zepezauer said the district is doing its best to move forward.
“It’s been corrected,” Zepezauer said. “The board took the appropriate steps. ... That is certainly a staff responsibility and not a board responsibility to do the actual filing. So, it was a breakdown at the staff level. It’s been corrected, and now we’re moving forward. That money has been added to our EAV for this year. It will be received starting next year, and we look forward to it.”