The Tribune has finally gotten on board the TIF Abuse train with an editorial today about our "flat broke take-a-furlough-day" city sitting on over a billion dollars of tax money, and not telling anyone how it'll be spent... or any details at all. Read "It's OUR Money" and know that if you donated to Fix Wilson Yard, you helped this happen.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. To bridge a $520 million deficit in the 2010 budget, Mayor Richard Daley says he'll cut 220 vacant jobs, require city employees to take unpaid furlough days and tap into the reserves set aside in last year's parking meter lease deal.
At the same time, Daley is quietly moving forward with plans to spend hundreds of millions of property tax dollars on projects he refuses to discuss publicly.
Very interesting, and long over due.
ReplyDeleteGlad 'transparency' was mentioned.
We all know things are opaque as cement up here.
It's about time someone at the Trib grew a pair!!!!!
ReplyDeleteNow...if only something would come of it...
The Tribune has never been a trend-setting newspaper. Only took them 10 years, and a half-billion in TIF money into Daley's piggy bank, to jump on Ben's TIF bandwagon.
ReplyDeleteBut the TIF spotlight is heating up and Daley may actually be sweating that taxpayers have finally realized why there's a $500,000 city deficit.
Find out if your property tax money is flowing into Daley's TIF bank account:
- Look at your property tax bill under Muncipality/Township Taxes
-First item on my bill--TIF-Chicago-Wilson Yard
- Columns show *** 0.00 (Big Lie)
- *** on right side says, Visit
cookctyclerk.com for information on TIFs and for TIF revenue distribution (Ah, the key to where your tax money is really going)
-Go to www.cookctyclerk.com
-Go to TIF information
-Enter your PIN #
-Find out the truth about where your money is really going--not to schools, not to parks, not to police.
- Found out almost 70% of our tax payment goes to Wilson Yard TIF...
$112 million to be exact.
So what did we get for $112 million?
A new Wilson El station that's safe and welcoming?
A vibrant, bustling retail area so people feel safe and have a positive reason to go out on the streets at night? Money for our dilapidated park and fieldhouse?
why there's a $500,000 city deficit
ReplyDeleteCorrection: $500,000,000 deficit