Will County Gazette

Thanks to an Amazon fulfillment warehouse within its borders, the tiny Village of Monee (pop. 5,082) has collected $11,425,288 in sales tax over the past twelve months, or nearly $5,000 per household.

That’s according to an analysis of Illinois Department of Revenue sales tax disbursement data by the Will County Gazette.

And the number is still growing. The village’s average monthly take was $687,000 the first six months of 2021. The last five it swelled to $1.35 million.

Some perspective: the combined sales tax collected by nearby and similarly-sized but Amazon-less Beecher (pop. 4,460) and Peotone (pop. 4,150) amounted to about $1.8 million, or 16 percent of Monee’s total.

More perspective. Monee’s largest village expense, its police department, cost it all of $1.98 million in 2020. 

All village operations in total— including police, office expense, street maintenance and management of its two parks— ran $4.5 million in 2020.

Amazon sales tax revenue netted Monee $2.75 million in July alone.

If they wanted, Monee leaders could cut the village's share of its resident's property tax bills to zero, cover two-thirds of their share of Crete-Monee Unit School District 201’s annual tax levy to Monee (approx. $15 million), and still be flush with cash.

Village officials haven't publicly discussed how they plan to use the funds. They didn't return a Will County Gazette call for comment.

Monee's mother lode

Monee had just 1,200 residents in 1995 when south suburban developer Mike Rose pitched the then-farm town on bringing a two million square foot shopping mall and hotel convention center to the village.

It didn’t happen. 

But Rose and his company, Location Finders International, didn’t give up on Monee.

The company has since been a protagonist for six different developments in the village since, including a business park that includes four industrial warehouses and a Thornton’s gas station.

The projects haven’t necessarily transformed Monee, which remains a small town. But they have transformed its tax base in previously unimaginable ways.

Village leaders were prescient two decades ago when they created tax increment financing districts (“TIFs”) on the outskirts of town, incentivizing developers like Rose to bet on Monee versus nearby Peotone or Beecher, or lower-tax communities in nearby Indiana. But they couldn’t have imagine they were establishing the foundation of what's become an e-commerce Saudi Arabia along Interstate 57.

At first, the incentives attracted industrial distributors.  In 2004, Rose recruited TNT Logistics North America, which distributes tires for South Carolina-based Michelin North America, to lease a Monee 721,000 square foot warehouse he developed. The goal then: attract jobs and industrial property taxpayers to take the pressure off soaring residential bills.

TNT Logistics is still there-- but is surrounded by Amazon fulfillment facilities that are the source of same day deliveries to homes around the Chicago area, and Monee's mother lode.

Every time Amazon fills an order out of its own inventory from the Monee fulfillment facility, the village of Monee gets a percentage of the purchase.

The same goes for other Will county facilities with Amazon centers-- including Joliet, Romeoville, Channahon, Crest Hill, Lockport and Elwood. But all have more people and/or fewer orders fulfilled than Monee, which generated $219 per resident in sales tax revenue in September alone.

Joliet, in contrast, received $34 per resident; Romeoville, $39.

In Sept. 2018, Monee received $102,507 in sales tax; neighboring Crete received slightly more-- $104,323-- that month.

Three Septembers later, Crete received $133,243. Monee received eight times more, or $1,114,485.

Monee's Mayor is Dr. Therese M. Bogs. Village trustees are Heidi Gonzalez, Doug Horne, Elizabeth Rakis, Michael Wilson, Anthony Raczek and Scott Youdris.

September 2021 Will County Sales Tax Receipts, Per Capita

Community	Pop.	Per capita	Total
MONEE	5,082	$219.30	$1,114,485
SYMERTON	101	$81.79	$8,261
ROCKDALE	1,979	$76.61	$151,617
NEW LENOX	26,454	$58.17	$1,538,834
ORLAND PARK	58,749	$55.69	$3,271,811
SHOREWOOD	17,164	$55.40	$950,871
MOKENA	20,674	$52.31	$1,081,542
BOLINGBROOK	74,431	$47.89	$3,564,767
FRANKFORT	18,999	$45.71	$868,530
ROMEOVILLE	39,666	$39.47	$1,565,753
TINLEY PARK	56,505	$38.84	$2,194,701
NAPERVILLE	149,540	$36.69	$5,486,187
OSWEGO	34,933	$35.70	$1,247,169
JOLIET	150,362	$34.06	$5,121,614
MATTESON	19,385	$31.34	$607,559
CHANNAHON	12,833	$29.40	$377,330
MINOOKA	11,094	$28.96	$321,273
HOMER GLEN	24,592	$27.94	$687,201
AURORA	180,542	$25.99	$4,692,541
LEMONT	17,023	$24.86	$423,153
WOODRIDGE	33,455	$22.36	$748,115
PEOTONE	4,331	$21.77	$94,268
LOCKPORT	25,307	$20.92	$529,471
BEECHER	4,527	$19.26	$87,171
WILMINGTON	6,030	$19.03	$114,728
CRETE	8,118	$16.41	$133,243
BRAIDWOOD	6,377	$15.72	$100,258
COAL CITY	5,294	$12.26	$64,891
UNIVERSITY PARK	6,947	$12.02	$83,496
ELWOOD	2,367	$11.78	$27,887
MANHATTAN	8,164	$9.74	$79,482
DIAMOND	2,697	$8.39	$22,614
STEGER	9,366	$5.26	$49,242
SAUK VILLAGE	10,423	$4.57	$47,600
PARK FOREST	21,563	$2.51	$54,213
GODLEY	631	$1.06	$669

Sources: Illinois Dept. of Revenue; U.S. Census