Results tagged “tifs”

• A CTA bus driver was injured last night when his bus got caught in the crossfire from a shoot-out; the driver's injuries were cuts caused by flying glass.
• The three teens charged in the beating death of Derrion Albert all pleaded not guilty at a hearing today.
• Shocker: Daley defends TIFs.

If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people that will get stuck with a higher property tax bill this year, one of the things you may be wondering (besides 'why me?') is where that money goes, specifically. Thanks to a new search engine Cook County Clerk David Orr put up the other day, property owners in TIF districts can now see how much of their tax money is going into Mayor Daley's personal slush fund. Progress Illinois took it for a test drive, using Mayor Daley's permanent index number.

For fun, we plugged in Mayor Daley's PIN number (17-22-109-027-0000) and found that a whopping 92 percent of his property taxes were redirected into the Near South TIF last year. By contrast, cash-strapped schools are getting a mere 3.9 percent of the Daley's property tax dollars. This goes to show how much strain the TIF system are putting on those local taxing bodies entrusted to deliver education and other public services.

27th Ward Alderman Walter Burnett thinks he's found a way to fox up neighborhoods, put people back to work, and help some Chicagoans find affordable housing. Burnett would like to put the more than $1 billion in TIF funds that the city is holding into building affordable housing. "You build the houses, people work, people get affordable housing, people pay taxes, money comes back to the city," Burnett told CBS2. Currently only about four percent of TIF monies go to affordable housing in the city. He'd like to see that number closer to 20 percent. "We need to do our own stimulus package," says Burnett.

The wheels of justice are still turning at Republic Windows and Doors, it seems. According to the Chicago Tribune, an official from the company was arrested yesterday in connection with looting the business last year.

Here's a shock: there may be some financial shenanigans afoot dealing with the 2016 Olympics and TIFs. A few weeks ago, we took at a look at the city’s new TIF Sunshine website where you can see all of the city’s TIFs, what they’re for and where they’re boundaries are. Last winter, the city announced Michael Reese Hospital would be the future site of the Olympic Village should Chicago be awarded the 2016 Olympics. In June of this year, the City of Chicago bought Michael Reese hospital for $86 million and Mayor Daley later announced that a new TIF would be created to help finance some of those Olympic dreams. That didn’t quite gel; we thought the hospital was already located in the Bronzeville TIF. So we took a look at the TIF transparency website with Friend of Chicagoist Adam Verwymeren and, lo and behold, Michael Reese Hospital was already in the middle of that existing Bronzeville TIF.

It's been quite a week for Mayor Daley's favorite change jar: TIFs. The city's new TIF sunshine ordinance went into effect on Saturday (the website that's supposed to list all of the information sucks, oddly enough), the mayor announced that the city will cough up $25 million to help relocated United Airlines into what used to be named the Sears Tower, and Chicago will create a TIF to help build the proposed Olympic Village. Whew! That's a lot of hot TIF action for only seven days.

With all the doom and gloom about the city's 2010 budget, it seems the always-on-top-of-things Whet Moser of The Reader has zeroed in on a pretty easy solution: TIFs.

Crain's Chicago Business is reporting that Michigan developer Villiage Green Companies is looking to the City of Chicago to help finance conversion of a 45 story vintage office building into apartments, after private financing fell through.

The failed financing is the latest trial for the ramshackle Gothic Revival office tower, which is well-known for its crumbling terra cotta facade and has made two trips to Bankruptcy Court this decade. Village Green, which wants to convert the building into 313 apartments, is pushing ahead despite the bad economy, betting that the downtown rental market will pull out of its slump by the time the project, called Randolph Tower City Apartments, is finished.

Continue reading "Michigan Developer to City TIF Slush Fund: Brother Can You Spare a Dime?"

• Wow, if you can't trust a fine city steward like Ald. Ed Burke to not be involved in shady dealings, who can you trust?
• This sounds like a plot from an episode of Rescue Me -- a 23rd Battalion Chief on the South Side is being investigated after he allegedly slept through a fire.
• And this sounds ripped from Nip/Tuck -- car dealer and ubiquitous TV ad presence Bob ROOOHRman is suing a plastic surgeon for "stealing" his wife. Life imitates FX.

Mayor Daley hopes to hold a face-to-face meeting today with leaders of the unions representing Chicago city workers in an effort to stave off proposed budget-cutting layoffs. The mayor has been trying to get city workers to accept 16 unpaid furlough days and forgo paid overtime in an effort to close a budget deficit that is projected to be around $400 million.

While the city sits on a literal slush fund of $1.4 billion in TIF funds ($3.4 million of which they gave to London-based Willis Group Holdings Ltd to spruce up their new Sears Tower offices), City Hall is threatening layoffs if unionized city workers don't accept more cutbacks and unpaid furlough days. The city is facing a budget shortfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars this year.

Block 37 is a black hole where money and plans go to die, and when you combine those forces with the CTA's money-guzzling abilities, well, it's the financial equivalent of a a shark riding on an elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they see. Time to call City Hall for a bail-out.

The City Council approved a plan Tuesday by Mayor Daley to put $25 million in TIF money toward making public schools handicapped-accessible. "Helping the handicapped ... is great. [But] every time I turn around, I see more TIF dollars being used for education. . . . It's going to leave these TIFs dry. When we have proposals in our communities, we're going to have a hard time finding dollars," Ald. Ray Suarez (31st) told the Sun Times.