Lake County Gazette

Former House Republican candidate Adam Solano told the Lake County Gazette he stands behind the website he created, scamyingling.com, that illustrates how low state Rep. Sam Yingling’s (D-Grayslake) property taxes are compared to his neighbors.

“All the records are public, but it took countless man-hours to put it all together,” Solano said about the site that compares the taxes on Yingling’s house at 21870 Washington St. on Highland Lake to others in the community.

Solano lost the Republican primary in March to banker and fellow Grayslake resident Ken Idstein. Idstein will face off against Yingling in the November general elections.

Rep. Sam Yingling’s (D-Grayslake)

The former candidate said that he was initially reluctant to disclose his role in creating the site, which has been up for more than a month, because he was concerned about backlash against Republican candidates.

“The site was going to be a pet project of mine whether I won or lost the primary,” Solano said. “I wanted it to be tied to me and not to anyone’s campaign.”

He added that he first got the idea for the site before the primary when he found out that taxes on Yingling’s house were much lower than his -- a smaller house on less property.

“My house is on a lake about a mile from Yingling’s,” he said. “It’s about 30 to 40 percent smaller than his and it’s on about a third of the property that his is on. But he’s paying $14,000 a year and I’m paying over $20,000 a year.”

The taxes on other nearby houses are considerably higher than Yingling’s as well. The assessed property value on Yingling’s house as of July 2018 was $100 per square foot. Others start at $126 per square foot and go all the way up to $189 per square foot.

A spokesman for Yingling previously said that the comparably lower property value stemmed from correcting earlier assessments of the house that included lake bottom property. But a review of the records at the Lake County assessor’s office showed that the value of the house dropped only slightly in 2016 when the inclusion of the lake bottom property was discovered. And between 2012 and 2017, the home’s value increased only from $105,106 to  $115,502. That’s a 1.61 percent increase in value over a time when other homes in the area jumped in value.

The Yingling spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Solano said that in all the research he did for the scamyingling.com site he could find no reason why the value of the Yingling property is coming in so much lower than other, nearby properties.

“He clearly doesn’t share our (tax) burden as he says he does,” Solano said.

Yingling is political allies with Avon Township Assessor Chris Ditton and with Township Supervisor Terry Wilke, who is also a Lake County board member and works as a real estate broker at Yingling’s family real estate business, New Century, in Round Lake Beach.