W E D N E S D A Y
OPRF, Fenwick win state titles Sports, page 44
JOURNAL of Oak Park and River Forest
February 21, 2018 Vol. 36, No. 20 ONE DOLLAR
@oakpark @wednesdayjournal
D97 apologizes for income tax withholding error The district’s payroll software failed to adjust for higher income tax rate By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
Some employees of Oak Park Elementary Schools District 97 are fuming after learning of an accounting error that resulted in an insufficient amount of payroll taxes being withheld from their paychecks last year and that could affect their state tax returns this year. Dr. Alicia Evans, D97’s assistant superintendent for finance and operations, sent out an apologetic letter to staff alerting them to the error. “Please be advised that the Illinois income tax rate increased from 3.75 [percent] to 4.95 [percent],” she wrote. “The new rate was effectively July 1, 2017. However, the tax withholding increase was not changed in the D97 payroll system.” As a result, Evans explained, the lower rate was withheld from employees’ paychecks for all of 2017 — meaning those employees may likely owe state income taxes when they file their 2017 returns this year. Evans said that the 4.95 percent rate was applied as of Feb. 16, resulting in “slightly lower take home pay.” The assistant superintendent said that district administrators learned of the error during the week of Feb. 5, after an employee noticed it See DISTRICT 97 on page 10
ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer
ORGAN DOCTOR: Tonal director Jonathan Oblander, of Forest Park, sits in his shop on Friday, Feb. 16, 2018, at Berghaus Pipe Organ Builders on Madison Street in Bellwood.
Pipe organs are (like) people, too
In Oak Park, the instruments are ubiquitous, but where do they come from? By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
The dying, duct taped, more than centuryold organ at St. Paul’s Memorial United Methodist Church in South Bend, Ind., was on life support, so the church’s leaders called on Berghaus Pipe Organ Builders.
A local Indiana newspaper described the Bellwood-based company, one of a few dozen organ manufacturers in the United States, as an “organ hospital of sorts.” If Berghaus is a hospital, consider Jonathan Oblander — the musical director at Oak Park’s Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 611 Randolph St., and
the company’s tonal designer — it’s chief surgeon of sound. Oblander has a master’s degree in organ performance from the Juilliard School. He’s played the instrument for more than 30 years, he said. See BERGHAUS ORGANS on page 13
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