The TIF Illumination Project

50th Ward Illuminated

Tom Tresser — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 03:52:41 +0000

70 people made it to the Devon Bank Tuesday night to see the TIFs of the 50th Ward Illuminated.

Ben Joravsky, political reporter for The Chicago Reader, gave a great talk and urged all the attendees to call their Alderman and demand that she vote against the proposed massive public subsidy for a DePaul stadium in the South Loop.

Here is the presentation. The audio is 45 minutes long.

The TIFs of the 50th Ward from Thomas Tresser

Time To Illuminate The 50th!

Tom Tresser — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 21:57:58 +0000

We’re heading north on June 11 to Illuminate the four TIFs in the 50th ward. Details and RSVP via Facebook @ http://tinyurl.com/TIF-Forum-June-11. Download a flier.

A special TIF treat – Chicago Reader political reporter Ben Joravsky will be a featured speaker. He got us started in the TIF biz! CivicLab co-founder Tom Tresser produced a meeting on TIFs in Lincoln Park back in 2008 where Ben broke it all down. No, Ben won’t be appearing with former Mayor Daley. It’s just a great picture!

11th and 12th Wards Illuminated!

Tom Tresser — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 06:10:53 +0000

It was a packed house at the McKinley Park Library for the 11th and 12th Ward Illumination. The TIF Illumination Project lit up the 16 TIFs inside those two wards. See the presentation and listen to the audio (59 minutes). If you find this work valuable, please make a non-deductible investment via WePay. Who else is telling you how TIFs are impacting Chicago on a ward-by-ward basis?

The TIFs of the 11th & 12th Wards from Thomas Tresser

11th & 12th Wards To Be Illuminated!

Tom Tresser — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 13:56:00 +0000

Coming up on June 5! https://www.facebook.com/events/639944039354990

11th Ward TIF Illumination Preview

Tom Tresser — Thu, 30 May 2013 22:17:14 +0000

Check out this ten minute interview from Outside The Loop radio to get an overview of TIFs and a sneak preview of the 11th Ward TIF Illumination coming up on June 5.

Inside Story Of TIF Abuse Plus A Call To Get involved

Tom Tresser — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:34:58 +0000

This post was contributed by a person who has attended several of our TIF town meetings.

I work for a Chicago company that was the recipient of a $5 million dollar TIF grant. We got a building makeover, including a new roof, an upgrade to the electrical service, remodeled bathrooms, and advanced window coatings. Everything was done according to LEED guidelines, which promote environmental sustainability. The parking lot got planters with trees.

I like sustainability. I think LEED can be a worthwhile tool to nudge our scandalously wasteful society toward sustainability. I think this country should be investing in upgrades to its infrastructure to make it more energy-efficient. You would think, then, that I would be a big fan of the TIF program, and happy that our company received a TIF grant.

I am not. The more I learn about the TIFs, the more leery I am of this untransparent, unplanned, undebated, scattershot, bloated goodie bag of untracked city expenditures. Some TIF projects are worthy expenditures of taxpayer monies. But the program is prone to dubious giveaways to private interests. Listen: When my company’s grant was announced, the alderman of the ward proudly declared that she had helped save 450 jobs. That would be nice if it were true. The fact is, no strings were attached to the money in terms of retaining jobs, and my company is hemorrhaging workers. We offshore jobs as fast as we can. Most of our domestic workers are from the suburbs. The owner of our company is a multinational corporation based in Europe. Their annual profits are in the hundreds of millions. If you want to buy their stock, you’ll need to go to a foreign stock exchange—it’s not sold on the NYSE or NASDAQ.

It is difficult to see how the $5 million given to my company is helping Chicago’s economy or workers. Think of it—this is money that is removed from circulation in the local economy. Money which would normally go to schools and city services is being presented as a gift to a foreign-based corporation.

Here are a few more things that bother me. The workers at my company were never informed of just how much the grant was. I know the grant amount, because I looked it up on the city’s website. No one I have talked to among my coworkers had the slightest idea how big the gift to my employer was. Shouldn’t that be common knowledge? It’s not, and that’s not an accident.

Obfuscation and murkiness: that’s pretty much how the TIF program rolls. Ask your friends about TIFs. Most residents of the city don’t know what a TIF is, much less how it works. I don’t blame them—I didn’t know diddly until a couple years ago, and I’m still learning. TIFs operate for the most part out of the public view. A travesty.

I’ve attended several of the TIF illumination presentations and have become hooked on going to them. Not only do I learn things from the presentation, but I also have become aware of the great efforts of neighborhood groups in Chicago, virtually all of which I did not know existed. The Resident Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G..E.), the Grassroots Collaborative, Resident Matters, Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP)…there are great people in the city working to try to wrest control of things back from the neoliberal power elite that is plunging the country, and the world, into corporatization, privatization, militarization (Chicago’s schools are the most militarized in the country), and denial of basic public services. I’ve decided that they’re worth supporting.

These are historic times.Watching events unfold in our corner of the world is, in many ways, like watching a crime drama of huge proportions. We need to get involved if we expect our descendants to have a city, state, and world worth living in. Besides, it feels good. Activating yourself can be fun.

I hope that many of my fellow citizens can find their way to a TIF illumination presentation of CivicLab, and peruse the information on www.tifreports.com, and begin to educate themselves, learn how power works in this city, and begin to form their own conclusions.

DePaul Wants $103 Million Of Public Funding For New Stadium Complex

Tom Tresser — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:21:46 +0000

The Mayor has announced plans for hundreds of millions of dollars on tourism-related construction, including 10,000 seat basketball arena for DePaul University near McCormick Place. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the project will require $103 million in public finance and TIF-related dollars. Read DePaul’s description of the project.

When you read the hype, you hear phrases like “world-class destination” and “tourism mecca” being offered as visions for the city. The plan includes giving DePaul naming rights to the new stadium. The President of DePaul, Rev. Dennis Holtschneider said “I’d like to keep our student tuition from rising. Any way we can keep the cost down so I don’t have to put this on student tuition is a wonderful thing.” I’d like to keep my property tax bills down. I’d like to keep our public schools open and hire more teachers. I’d like to expand public transportation, not cut service. Giving DePaul, the largest Catholic university in America over $100 million of public dollars for a private stadium is a gross misuse of public funds.

DePaul’s 2013-2014_budget is expecting revenues of $629,557,366! Why do they need our $103 million for their facility?

It’s another example of…

Coverage Of 4th Ward Illumination

Tom Tresser — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:42:12 +0000

Despite a Bull’s playoff game 50 people came Room 43 on Monday, May 13 for the 4th Ward Illumination. Read the coverage at Progress Illinois. See the presentation and listen to the audio at SlideShare.

4th Ward TIFs To Be Illuminated!

Tom Tresser — Sat, 11 May 2013 19:18:27 +0000

It’s time to shed some light on the 11 TIFs inside the 4th Ward. Join us on Monday, May 13 at 6pm at Room 43 to learn:

- How much property tax is extracted from each TIF inside the ward

- How much money FROM the ward was left in the TIFs at the end of 2011

- What projects inside the ward got funded

You can get the details and RSVP here: http://tinyurl.com/TIF-Forum-May-13.

Pass The Privatization Transparency Ordinance

Tom Tresser — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:34:53 +0000

Is your alderman on the list of sponsors of the Privatization Transparency Ordinance”? If so, call them and tell them to get it out of Alderman Mell’s committee and have voted on by the full City Council.

The sponsor is 6th Ward Alderman, Roderick Sawyer. He said, upon introducing this bill in November of 2012, “I do not believe that there are no good privatization deals, I just think we should be clear about which deals are in the best interest of the city and which are not. I have a concern about touting a monetary savings if we haven’t thought about the people that will lose a job, the families that could lose a home and the local businesses that could lose a loyal customer. ”

Download the proposed law here – Privatization Transparency and Accountability Ordinance. Read it for yourself.

If our City Council can’t pass this, they should all be fired in the 2015 municipal elections.