For the last several weeks, the 13 or so mayoral candidates have been promising to defend Chicago’s already overburdened taxpayers from future hikes to our ever-rising property taxes.
All in the name of eradicating blight in low-income communities.
We’re talking about hundreds of millions of property tax dollars a year—a number that will rise if Mayor Rahm gets the City Council to create the Cortland/Chicago River and Roosevelt/Clark TIF districts. Together, those two TIFs would siphon off another $1.6 billion or so from the taxing bodies (at least $800 million from schools alone) over the next 23 years.
In a perfect world, the board would be stocked by high-ranking officials—like, Janice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools—who’d ask probing “but for” questions. That is—but for this TIF subsidy, would the land get developed?
In a nutshell, the coalition believes it’s obscene to earmark hundreds of millions of dollars for upscale developments in gentrifying neighborhoods when our schools are so broke they can’t afford to adequately fund special education. Hard to argue with that.
With all due respect, Mr. Ellis, you got it wrong. The main point of the Joint Review Board is to examine the impact on taxing bodies. It says so in the state law book, where it permits the Joint Review Board to consider “an assessment of any financial impact” on “any taxing district affected” by a proposed TIF. (Go to Sec. 11-74.4-3 of the good old TIF code and check it out yourself—for some scintillating nighttime reading.)
