By Bill Cameron, WLS-AM News

(CHICAGO) Today  – March 1st – is the deadline to pay the first installment on your property taxes, and Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas is trying to put a positive face on it.

Pappas claims “people love” the way she’s streamlined the process of paying property taxes or getting exemptions on cookcountytreasurer.com. People, of course, don’t love the high taxes due, but she’s put the local units of government levying the high taxes on the left side of the website screen on each taxpayer’s account.

“What we’re trying to do is get people to understand why it is these bills have gone up and on most of the bills 65% of it goes to school districts. If you look at the City of Chicago, there’s a pensioneer problem this year, so they’ve had to throw in an extra billion on their operating budget to cover the pension cost.”

@ 2019 WLS-AM News