Voters in the county will decide in April whether or not to add a countywide tax that would be used for infrastructure upgrades and in some case tax abatement for the county’s school districts. The question of County Schools Facility Tax will be on the April 2nd ballot. The County School Facility tax is currently in place in 54 of Illinois’ 102 counties and is used for things such as building new school facilities, adding on to or renovating existing facilities, upgrading technology infrastructure, roof repairs, security and safety upgrades as well as refunding bonds or abating or lowering property taxes levied to pay bonds issued for capital purposes. Area counties such as Bond, Montgomery, Shelby and Christian counties already have the tax in place which includes everything in the municipal and county sales tax base with the exception of cars, trucks, ATVS, boats, RVs, mobile homes, unprepared foods such as groceries, drugs, farm equipment and parts and farm inputs which would NOT be taxed. Services are also not taxed and items that are currently not taxed now, would not be taxed under a county schools facility tax.