Saturday, December 5, 2009

Helen's Wish List Made Public By FOIA

Courtesy of The City Releases The "Shadow Budget" by Mick Dumke at Chicago Reader

Alderman Shiller's Wilson Yard TIF budget (and all of the others in the city) has now been made public thanks to FOIA requests at City Hall filed by the folks at the Chicago Reader. This list shows what is proposed, pending, and already committed to. Enjoy.

One interesting note: $3M is "proposed" for CTA Wilson stop improvements. Can you tell an election is near? Will these funds magically disappear too, like all the other times money was allocated for our Wilson station?

21 comments:

  1. another interesting note, "annual debt service payment" is $3.5M.

    note the fund is in the red $1.4M at the end.

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  2. I want to change my legal name from "Bucky Near" to "Clifton Magnolia" so I can get those annual $375,000 payments.

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  3. "administrative costs" = mark kaplan and denise davis salaries

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  4. Silly question, What is our alderman's annual salary?

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  5. what you see as "administrative costs" are nominally transfers of TIF dollars to the City of Chicago operating budget to compensate Department of Community Development and Law Dept. staff for time spent on TIF projects

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  6. budgetted for 2009 were 42 alderman at $110,556 a pop and 8 at 104,100 each

    budgeted for 2010:
    39 @ $110,556
    6 @ $106,644
    5 @ $104,100

    not sure who is who

    the tiers developed when some aldermen declined their annual, automatic no-additional-vote-required COL

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  7. I recall Shiller turning down a relatively recent pay increase.

    If that changes and she gets her full potential salary and doesn't take any "furlough" days I would take that as a sign that she is not running for reelection.

    That would disappoint me.

    What is best in life?

    No way will Shiller be able to stand up to the Gerald Farinas juggernaut!

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  8. While this is nice...wouldn't past expenditures be what we are really looking for here? I have the feeling we are only scratching the surface on what Daley and the Alderlemmings are really spending our tax money on.

    Say expenditures for the last 5 years for the Wilson Yard TIF?? My guess is you would really see some "interesting" payments.

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  9. EITS,

    Thanks in part to the TIF sunshine act, expenditures over the last 5 years of the WY TIF are available somewhere on here, and they are indeed "interesting".

    The bigger issue is that, unlike city budgets, future TIF expenditures are not subject to review by the city council or the community.

    That's what we open government types call lack of oversight and accountability.

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  10. Didn't Helen hand over a big chunk of change (Menu Funds) over to the Wilson Yard? I wonder where we can find information about that in this report? They seem to have forgotten to report that as income.

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  11. I'm wondering how much Denise Davis makes as compared to other assistants and alderman. Just curious. I know my salary is publicly accessable.

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  12. JW,

    Yes, as Uptown Update stated in a prior thread, a half million. Check here

    EITS,

    Upon further review, the WYTIF annual reports are more easily accessible at Ald Shiller's website

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  13. All part of the political game.

    Thanks for turning our tax dollars into your personal campaign financing stash, Helen.

    She'll landslide the ward with secretly planned improvements and then spin about and say: See? I told you I was working on this.

    Ignoring, of course, the fact that maybe a little disclosure could have dispelled the animosity around here.

    Of course - that would go against the image she's worked so diligently to veil upon her supporters.

    Remember Denise Davis' cock of the walk dance after the CDC meeting?

    Expect to see more of that.

    Horrendously disgusting and certainly not in the vein of what is expected from a representative democracy; but, we expect no less from this office.

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  14. Yo-

    I don't see these improvements before election time as a bad thing. She has no chance of getting re-elected. Too many people are upset at this point. So she does all these things and then we get a new alderman. Its a win-win in my mind.

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  15. Eye,

    if we were to get a new alderman, and the improvements - I'd agree.

    Win/win.

    But don't for a second think that she doesn't stand a chance to get re-elected.

    As long as she can take advantage of socio-economic and racial divide that she (and her staff) consistently promote, she's got a good chance of dazzling people who are otherwise disengaged from the process into voting for her.

    IE - do you think the opening of Wilson Yard to tenets exactly one year before the election is a coincidence?

    Then Target a few months later?

    And then a revamped L stop?


    The irony of the situation is, had she been more open, honest and transparent with any of her planning, the vitriol she faces wouldn't be nearly as pronounced as it is.

    Unfortunately, she lacks the political acumen to adjust to current trending and believes that she needs that vitriol to stay in office.

    And, more unfortunately, it could work.

    In the meantime, those needing to live off the public teet will continue to live off the public teet and they, and the area, as has been the case historically, will continue to stagnate.

    *sigh*

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  16. The city's patronage leaders always provide Shiller, along with other incumbent aldermen, taxpayer-funded goodies to hand out to constituents during their reelection campaign speeches at neighboring buildings.

    One year it was city bus shelters. The next campaign cycle it was parkway benches. Then it was bike racks.

    I recall when Shiller was so intent on getting votes at 4300 N Marine Drive that she gave them a bus shelter located across the street on the narrow LSD on-ramp median strip. The block club called the city department to complain that it was a totally unsafe location that didn't meet the requirements for bus shelter placements. The dept. head responded that it was the alderman's project to give away and that they couldn't interfere in her decision. Sure as heck, the dang thing was run over by a truck a few months later - fortunately with no one standing inside. You can still see the cement pad on the grass where it was once located.

    In the last election, the city fathers gave Shiller a taxpayer-funded paint crew to paint the Wilson and Lawrence Avenue LSD bridges white. Note that these are the only LSD bridges that are painted. The painters were redirected from a South Side project to get those bridges painted right before the election so that their condition would not become a campaign issue. The painters told me that it was a total waste of taxpayer money because they were instructed to get it done in time by painting over the tar residue that remained after the cement facade panels were removed. They said the paint job would never last and if you look at those bridges today you can see that the white paint is peeling off the black tar and looks like hell, just as they predicted.

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  17. "I'm wondering how much Denise Davis makes..."

    she's in the BGA payroll database

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  18. 2003-2007 WY TIF annual reports are also available on the UNC site (which availability pre-dates the City's or the alderman's I might add)

    Wilson Yard TIF Annual Reports

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  19. I'd like to know what the money for the "Clifton Magnolia Apartments" is going for. Is she subsidizing already heavily subsidized housing units? Geez. How much do we have to pay for her voters?

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  20. Ditto on what 'yo' said above, if Shiller runs for Alderman again you underestimate her at your peril of another 4 years. Don't forget she once fended off Mike Quigley way back in 1991 for that seat, and he's had a pretty good political career since. Never mind the string of Mayor supported candidates who tried to take her down in elections after that.

    And this time she'll have a couple hundred extra Wilson Yard votes in her pocket if she runs.

    But I'm hoping that's a big "if". She's (fat) pension eligible, and could resign in the next couple months and likely hope the Mayor appoints her requested successor, and gives the successor a huge incumbency advantage against a splintered primary in February 2011.

    Going to be very exciting in Uptown for the next year and a half - I mean more so than our usual exciting street brawls, bike by shootings, and SRO resident hijinks quality of life.

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  21. Joe: Helen did defeat Mike Quigley back in the 1990s but there are two things to remember about that race. One, Mike was aligned with the Mayor back then. He was considered a "machine" guy, if you can imagine. Two, he has had a good political career since but not the cushy one you might expect. He's bucked the Mayor and the good 'ol boy way of business ever since. It's been a rough road, if you ask me. I think he's had to work a lot harder than many of his colleagues.

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