-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
In rapid-fire questioning that harkened back to his days as a prosecutor, Ald. Bill Conway sought to show that his local TIF would be left with just $6.5 million after Johnson declares his record surplus. “This is not the day or year that we want to be draining LaSalle Street TIF…Every city in the world needs to rethink its Central Business District,” Conway said.
Audio and summary linked here.
A mess of uncertainty and litigation is sure to follow.
Summary and audio linked here.
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
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There are laws about how TIF money is allowed to be spent. General Fund discretionary spending on gov’t worker salaries/benefits isn’t one.
But nobody polices/enforces these laws. Citizens who might be able to claim local standing would need to spend tens or hundreds of thousands personal dollars in legal fees, and to what end? Get a few dollars off their own p-tax bill?
So many simple legislative fixes are available, yet Springfield has had decades to address TIF abuses and willfully declined to do so.
Has anyone followed the TIF money and see if the so called investing in blighted areas as it is intended to do has increased the EAV and property tax income? I think not.
Are you aware that TIF districts are deliberately wide swathes of taxable PINs because it allows collection of inflationary EAV increases. (Everything goes up in price over 35-year legal life of TIF. Taxes on that ‘incremental increase’ which is due to nothing other than ordinary inflation, is captured into dark pool of funds directed by Mayor. Other properties outside the TIF are required to pay nearly all expenses, for 35 years, for all the mandated social services required by that TIF: notably, new school enrollment. However TIF makes taxable EAV in school districts artificially low, so wealthy Chicago school districts… Read more »
La Salle Street blighted? It is a pretty broad criteria if it is…
It will be soon if BJ’s plan will go thru. Here’s some info on TIF’s
https://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/insights-blog/what-is-tax-increment-financing-tif
TIF money should be returned to the taxing bodies denied the revenue due to the TIF, no? I don’t live in the city so I don’t know if CPS is a line item on the City of Chicago property tax bill.
TIF is a workaround to overtax Illinois tax law limits. It enables local mayors/city council to spend (often by selling bonds backed by municipal taxpayers) to pay their personal friends to whom they give millions of public money grants. Over the next 35 years, tif money goes to a restricted (but unpoliced and unenforced restrictions) fund under mayor/city council control. This enables a bypass of statutory limits on municipal taxation which are percentages of equalized assessed value. Schools and other taxing bodies usually don’t care because they get paid anyway–they don’t care if the tax money comes from TIF properties… Read more »
The Ghost of Xmas Future says that there will be a fire in one of these converted office to residential buildings 5 years from now resulting in a death toll similar to that Hamas missile strike on that Baptist hospital.
Everyone will wonder how this could have happened.
Only a few years ago it would have been unthinkable that downtown Chicago would become a literal cesspool. Once downtown goes the tourist business will completely evaporate. Nobody wants to deal with lowlifes and those suffering from mental health issues. That’s all you’ll have downtown. So avoidable, but you know, equity and stuff.
“……It’s also clear that the projections going forward for this TIF are based on questionable, if not fantastical, tax revenue projections.”
I’m shocked, in a BJ-n-CTU guvmn’t budget?
That can’t be true. Everything else they do is so well organized, transparent and seamlessly implemented…..
Ha ha ha! I used to work in 135 S. LaSalle. I worked on a supposedly remodeled floor, yet the one bathroom was the original bathroom from the 1930’s. Oh, and there’s almost no sunlight during the day for most of the floors. There’s not enough money in failing Chicago to rehab the old buildings on LaSalle St. Plus the city requirement that 30% of the buildings be reserved for low income people effectively makes them public housing projects. 5% low income would be too much. 30% means that you’re looking at the new Cabrini-Green. There’s a reason that many… Read more »
And continue to believe in the glory of next tuesday.
30 years from now, LaSalle St. will have been completely abandoned as a shanty town / skid row. The elevators will have stopped working long ago and squatters will have taken over the buildings. The first four or five floors will be occupied and the remainder will be vacant. It will be quite dystopian.
And the dystopia will spread, taking over adjacent areas, including Michigan Avenue from south to north. The old buildings will be killed by taxes and maintenance costs. The residents will sadly become victims of crime. As the rich Boomers leave these buildings, no one will replace them. The buildings will fall into disrepair, never to be fixed.
At least we all saw the downtown at its peak. West Detroit, here we come.
And when downtown collapses, most of the RTA’s light rail system will be effectively useless. Metra ridership today is only 1/2 what it was in 2019 and today is probably the peak. Our light rail system exists for one purpose: to take people back and forth from down town during business hours. Remove the reason to go downtown and Metra in 2032 could be 20% of what it was in 2019. Neighborhood transitions happen quickly too. Most of the south and west sides emptied out in less than a decade and a half and by the time the riots happened.… Read more »
Ataraxis and debstor, at least the two of you know how to connect the dots.
The best part is, I get get to do it from 700 miles away.
@debtsor: great point about Metra that I didn’t consider. As it runs out of money, Metra will be forced to close redundant train lines, which will greatly affect real estate prices in many of the marginal suburbs. The death spiral of downtown Chicago is becoming clearer. Once Emanuel and Lightfoot kneecapped the police, the pandemic created the perfect storm. Increased crime from less cops combined with work from home is making downtown an no-go zone and unnecessary for hundreds of thousands of high earning people. Those missing high earners will not be spending money downtown like they used to, corporate… Read more »
Turn the buildings over to the immigrants “as is” and take the TIF funds and apply them to the pensions.
In an odd way this is not negative news. Residential conversions for the most part are not realistic from both a cost and utility perspective. But of course it reflects an increasingly dire budget situation.
Start with Water Tower Place. I hear it is being vacated by retailers. The heat and water supply should be in good shape there. And it has the benefit if immediate availability.