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A third generation family business is now vacant after a change in how they are assessed for property taxes, they said, has ruined them. Their 2019 Cook County property tax bill skyrocketed to $183,000 from just under $25,000: an increase of 640%. In 2020 they got another bill for $151,000.
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Audio and summary Illinois bill would override local law to allow homeless living in all public parks – Wirepoints
April 14, 2026
27 Comments
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago Fiscal Crisis Worse Than Pre-Bankruptcy Detroit, HIV Surge and Public Health Threat From Open Borders Goes Unreported
April 10, 2026
2 Comments
Summary and audio linked here.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades
April 3, 2026
9 Comments
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times falsely blame Texas Gov. Abbott for 2020 to 2024 surge in Chicago Latino HIV, AIDS infections – Wirepoints Quickpoint
March 31, 2026
11 Comments
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The question that should be asked by the owner and ABC is . Where is the money going to?
Remember the Palatine school district teachers signed a 10 year contract a while back with at least 40% in raises and very little if any increase in health insurance cost. They should be 4 or 5 years into that contract. Someone has to pay for that deal.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/palatine-area-district-15s-new-10-year-contract-unprecedented/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-palatine-teachers-contract-met-20160415-story.html
Yep my taxes on a 60,000 sq.ft. building have gone from $60,000.00 to $190,000.00. Cant wait to get out of this s… hole.
Why not try to get together with others in your situation and try to fight the assessment and taxes. Not easy to do but a group of taxpayers may have a better chance than just one. On the http://www.taxpayersunitedofamerica.com website a lot of people got together to fight the school raises. Search Berwyn
https://taxpayersunitedofamerica.org/tax-protest-meeting-berwyn/
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
I do fight the assessment. It was $240,000.00 got reduced to $190,000.00 and lawyers get 1/3rd of savings.
Isn’t that crazy that we have to fight a higher assessment so we can try to reduce our taxes but no one fights with the bank that we have too much money there. We have more equity with a higher assessment but that leads to more taxes. With these crazy high taxes we will never know the true value of our properties. In Rockford taxes were over 5% of total value for a few years now just over 4%. To me high taxes are a theft of equity which should be a crime.
assume you meant ‘sinkhole’. Because fecal matter is a growth medium, and nothing can grow in this salted earth of Illinois.
… and the Palatine school district raises you referred to don’t include step increases.
Why is Palatine High School so mediocre? It’s test scores are barely above the state average. And the gap between my Lake County high school and Palatine has materially increased since I graduated in the late 70’s. Palatine back then was not all that indistinguishable from my high school. What happened? It can’t be teacher salaries. In private business, I do see gaps between performance and compensation levels, but without sustained performance compensation declines and the jobs simply go away.